Rhythm, reading and connection: The prosocial effects of expression

June is a long and demanding month. Today I want to talk about finding connection and calm through rhythm. As we enter the final leg of the academic year, this half term can feel quite long and challenging. I’m going to visit reasons for this in this post by discovering how the final weeks of term can induce a feeling of misalignment with the natural world, and with our instinct to be outdoors so much more, at this time of the year.

The final months of the school year are demanding because there’s so much to do in terms of getting the job done, and of course finishing the academic year on a high note.

There are additional tasks such as marking tests, report writing, supervising school trips. These months are also demanding in terms of our mindset because we anticipate a transition, - the end of the school year and this alone, can put the nervous system on edge.

What’s the answer? For those of us lucky enough to get away in August the promise of dedicated rest somewhere lovely shows our nervous system that the end of term is a ‘Good thing’. If there’s nothing in the diary yet? - then there may be a feeling of unease and unnamed ambiguity.

Imagine for a moment that this is the very middle of the school year - the experience would feel very different. There’d be no sense of the ‘end being in sight - and yet so far away’. Instead, the routines, the structure of the day, the sense of optimism offered by increased hours of daylight, would provide a feeling of well-established flow and continuity. The rhythm of the academic year as it leans toward the season of assessment, feels aligned with spring as we see the intense season of growth, with flourishing proliferation in nature.

Why does it seem that the final segment of the school year, is more demanding? It may because the academic year culminates in the production of data and as a concept this is very highly valued. There’s a strong sense of scrutiny, judgment and bureaucracy.

Grades, percentages, quotients are shunted through the machine. Processes involve tracking, predicting, matching and analysing are translated into ‘sorting hats’ and children are shuffled into new learning groups. This disrupts their social bonds, which may in certain cases, be helpful or unhelpful, but either way it’s unsettling, and teachers work extra hard to smooth over these problems in schools where this happens at this time of year.

People are quite fond of saying that, ‘numbers don’t lie’. We must also remember that they don’t tell the whole truth either. The Context matters now more than ever because of rising child poverty. If children go to bed hungry, and we know that many of them do, their end of year assessments, will reflect their hunger pangs. This is because memory processes are activated during sleep. Nourishment and replenishment are both necessary for learning. Numbers are only numbers. The children’s own stories are what really matter, and numbers and data conceal these.

The full version of this post can be found in the video where I talk about the importance of this time of the year for well-being and I also make the link between mythology, summer music festivals and mental health, illustrating this with examples from psychology of music research literature.

If you would like a copy of the Joyful June Free workbook please sign up here or for the 'Joyful June' webinar If you have a question, go to the contact page. This week, the webinar is on Thursday at 5.00PM London UK time.

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