Helpful reminders for teachers and other school staff regarding classroom behaviors and learning: poor social skills, no conscience and learning difficulties all have ONE thing in common…STRESS! Stress causes learning difficulties because when one is in a state of stress their thinking is confused and distorted. Stress suppresses short term memory. (Please be aware that all of these points are related to the science of brain development and are NOT “squishy”, therapeutic jargon).
Tips for Teachers:
- Continue to be aware of of where children are developmentally, cognitively, chronologically and emotionally. You may have a 5th grader who is behaving like a 3 year old, that child is STRESSED. Negative behaviors are signs that a child is acting from an unconscious state of stress: When we stress, we regress.
- Create structure and routine: predict that when the routine is going to be disrupted the stressed student/s will regress. Immediate example is a substitute in the class whether it is the regular classroom teacher who is absent or the “specials” teacher. Consistency and predictability are important factor for a at-risk/traumatized children.
- Be a mentor: if you can’t be a mentor for a child, identify another staff person who can be. It will be someone that the child can communicate with. It shouldn’t be someone who will tell them how they should behave; it is someone who will listen.
- Provide comfort, assurance: a pat on the shoulder will often be all a child needs to help them regulate (calm, stabilize, breathe). Or an arm around the shoulder, with a positive message will go a log way toward regulating the stressed student.
- Allow phone calls home. These should not be alls that the child makes to let a parent know they are in trouble, but rather a way to touch base, to assure a child that they are okay. You may have a students in your school who may had one parent leave the family; others who have been removed from their home by DCS, once, twice perhaps even more. Students who have had a relative die in the past couple of weeks, moths or a year ago at this time. A mid-morning call will go a long way toward helping some children get through their day.
- Involve parents. Involvement should NOT be to deliver news of inappropriate behavior. use the rule of 4 positive calls to 1 negative call.
About Author
I have been a social worker for 31 years. My work has been with families and children first in the area of Child Protective Services and then as a therapist working with the same population. I have worked with divorcing and divorced parents teaching co-parenting techniques, supervised therapists and have been a social worker for emotionally challenged children and adolescents in an inner city school system. About 7 years ago I was introduced to the work of Bryan Post and, as a friend and colleague said at the time…I went Post-al. All of my previous assumptions and indeed my work using behavioral interventions, got pushed aside. And along came the realization that none of the interventions, meant to change behaviors, had anything in common with helping children heal from the trauma they had experienced. My best work these days is as a coach/consultant for parents, other caregivers, and teachers. The services I provide are parent education, coaching, consulting and supervising. I am the mother of five adult children and grandmother to five. I am both a bio mom and an adoptive mom.
