Tool Tuesday: Story Grammar Marker can help your brain!

This month’s post is a support for you and your students’ brains as we get deeper into this new school year. I have tried to make a habit of bibliotherapy, the practice of consuming books— literature or the more “self-help” type—that connects you to emotional regulation and growth. This month, I am reading Hardwiring Happiness: The New Brain Science of Contentment, Calm, and Confidence by Dr. Rick Hanson and I see such a connection to narrative language and Story Grammar Marker!

Hardwiring Happiness explores how our brains are shaped by what we repeatedly pay attention to and experience. Rooted in neuroscience and psychological best practices such as Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, Hanson explains that the brain has a built-in “negativity bias,” meaning we tend to notice and remember threats, problems, and disappointments more readily than positive experiences. His central idea is that we can intentionally counter this tendency by “taking in the good”—deliberately noticing positive experiences that bring about gratitude, connection, accomplishment, safety, or contentment and allowing ourselves to fully experience them. Through repeated attention and practice, these positive experiences can strengthen beneficial neural pathways, gradually supporting greater resilience, emotional regulation, and well-being.

I have written before about gratitude and Story Grammar Marker and the concepts in this book provide an enhancement and strong linkage to story elements for an activity that could be practiced regularly with students. This became particularly apparent to me when Hanson broke down the steps of “taking in the good” using the acronym HEAL:

H — Have a positive experience: Notice or intentionally create a beneficial experience.

E — Enrich it: Stay with the experience and give it your attention and extended thoughts. Rather than immediately moving on, allow yourself to really notice what feels good or meaningful about it.

A — Absorb it: Imagine taking the experience in—letting the feelings and sensations become part of you and recognizing how they might give you strength and happiness.

L — Link positive and negative material: Gently bring to mind something difficult or uncomfortable that the positive experience could help counter. Hanson presents this as an optional, more advanced step (probably not one we would include with our younger learners).

Where is Story Grammar Marker in this process? All over it!

H-Have: In introducing SGM to my graduate students, I am always emphasizing the brilliance of the Kick-Off as representing an initiating event, as opposed to other structures that focus on Problem. Our stories, particularly relating to personal narratives, can and should include positive experiences! In this step of the activity we can model and elicit simple positive experiences, like seeing a nice sunset while driving home or (for kids) enjoying a snack or completing a difficult math problem!

E-Enrich: The Thought Balloon representing mental states connected to the Kick-Off is another strong asset of SGM, not as emphasized in other narrative development programs. Directing thoughts takes a bit of practice and is quite abstract for younger learners. Use of visual thought balloons, books such as Puppy Mind (Andrew Jordan Nance), or use of a Five Senses strategy will support this step of the activity, in which we mindfully take a few moments to think about the experience and what is positive about it.

A-Absorb: The Feeling/Internal Response asks us to tune into our positive emotions, connecting to how the experiences, even simple ones, can make us feel happiness, satisfaction or gratitude, and to “sit with” that feeling for a moment. The Last, optional step, if pursued, could have us returning to the Kick-Off icon and comparing the positive experience we are thinking of with a more negative situation.

So, right now I am (H-Kick-Off) noticing the positive experience of having completed this month’s blog post. I am (E- Thinking) enhancing this by considering that a number of readers might take this lesson and adapt it for their learners, installing a helpful strategy that they may use again and again. Then (A- Feeling) I’m pausing for a moment on the feeling of purpose, particularly on this rainy still-Nor’eastering morning in Boston. (L-Kick-Off 2) Finally, I can briefly compare this to the realization last Friday that I hadn’t written this month’s post yet, so this feels extra good!

I hope Dr. Hanson’s strategies bring out that positive feeling for you and your students too! I was able to find his book for free on Libby and Spotify, and he also has a free TED talk you can review for more context on the strategies in this post!