We had a Professional Development day this morning dedicated to understanding trauma in our students. Our elementary counsellor, Kerrilyn Behrman, gave an outstanding presentation on the affects of trauma on the brain and behaviour of students. Kerrilyn received her masters recently in counselling focusing on play therapy. I feel as though her timing could not have been any better. This topic fits in perfectly with our readings this week on Self-Regulation. Kerrilyn began her presentation by explaining developmental trauma as any event leaving us feeling overwhelmed and distressed. This feeling of distress greatly affects how the brain grows in children. Kerrilyn focused on the brain stem, limbic brain, and prefrontal cortex. She explained that the brain builds from the bottom up, if you are in danger the bottom part of your brain takes over and you go into survival mode. For students who are feeling distressed and operating in survival mod, they can not do any higher order thinking until their emotions are regulated. Two parts of the limbic brain that we discussed are the amygdala and the hippocampus. Kerrilyn attempted to cover these topics in a way that teachers (and not brain researchers) could understand. She explained that the amygdala is in charge of our fight or flight decisions and our hippocampus stores our memories. When we look at students who have experienced trauma, they may display behavioural issues due to a silent or hidden trigger that affects their brain. For example, every time a student is yelled at at home they encounter physical abuse. The hippocampus holds the memory and connects yelling to hitting. At school, when the teacher yells (even if their yelling is directed at another student) that one student’s hippocampus remembers yelling = hitting and their amygdala decides fight or flight creating a behaviour issue in the classroom. As a grade one teacher, the topic of self-regulation is very interesting to me. Whether the child has been subject to trauma or not, every year I see at least one of my students struggling with ability to control their emotions and calm themselves down. This year is no different. I have one student who started the year with daily emotional outbursts. She has now limited these meltdowns to about once a week. Over the last two months I have tried to determine what her triggers are and how we can prevent the meltdowns from occurring. Through the use of scatter plots, we determined one of the biggest triggers to her outbursts was transition time. She was unable to adjust her mood and energy along with the activities. “Silent reading, group activities outdoor play, and eating lunch with friends all require different levels of arousal and pose different kinds of stress” (Tranter & Kerr, 2016). My student is currently working on responding to these changes in a more positive and emotionally controlled way. Kerrilyn touched on many of the same strategies that are discussed in the article by Tranter & Kerr, 2016. Stress looks different for every student. Some may display characteristics of hyperarousal while others experience hypoarousal. It will be difficult to identify the small stresses for each individual student which leads us into the importance of developing relationships and getting to know our students. “The more you know about the lives of your students, the more you can understand their behaviour” (Tranter & Kerr, 2016). Kerrilyn challenged us today to ask our one emotionally challenged student a question about themselves every day for the rest of the year. The questions are as simple as “how was your night?” or “what is your favourite game to play at home?”. She also suggested driving by their home, keeping professional boundaries in check, to gain a glimpse into their home life. Knowing our students and building relationships can help students overcome stress. They need to know there is one person who believes in them and they can trust. Another strategy discussed in the article and in Kerrilyn’s presentation is modelling self-regulation skills and actively teaching them in the classroom. After recess, we will often do five minutes of yoga or take ten deep breaths to cool off our imaginary cup of hot chocolate. I do these calming activities with them and talk about our brain and bodies needing to calm down to be ready to work. Students may not recognize their need to calm down and re-focus so it is up to the teacher to direct them when necessary. I will also try to use feeling words when my student is upset such as “I can see you are feeling very sad right now. Can you tell me what happened? What can we do to make you feel happy or less anxious?” We can’t always tell students to “use your words” when they are upset. Students may not have the words or ability to express how they are feeling. Kerrilyn has done so much for our school. She has started a Self-Regulation room (SRR) for students to go when they need to adjust their arousal levels or take a break from the classroom activity. Teachers may need to act as the external brain and send students there when they see unregulated behaviour developing. The goal is for students to identify when they need some regulation time instead of the teacher. I have attached a few pictures of our Self-Regulation Room. Kerrilyn has also taken the time to do four sessions with my students (and the other 1-4 classrooms) focusing on a growth mindset, the brain, and self-regulation. The final session was used to introduce a calm down kit that we have utilized in our classroom already. Parts of the kit include: - stress ball - yoga poses - colouring pages - playdough I truly believe that we have to take care of issues like emotion, stress, and even hunger before we can do any higher order thinking. Children will not be able to learn if their brain is focused on regulating and safety. Teachers must take the time to teach self-regulation strategies in their classroom before teaching academic concepts. References:
Winne, P. H. (2011). Cognitive and metacognitive analysis of self-regulated learning. In D. H. Schunk & B. Zimmerman (Eds.), Handbook of Self-Regulation of Learning and Performance (pp. 15–32). New York, NY: Routledge. Tranter, D. & Kerr, D. (2016). Understanding Self-Regulation: Why Stressed Students Struggle to Learn. What Works? Research into Practice Research monograph # 63 Literacy and Numeracy, Secretariat, Ontario.
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