The Unteachables Podcast

#63: Blame my brain! What's behind those big, bad, bold, and downright bloody baffling behaviours.

• Claire English • Season 4 • Episode 63

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In today's episode, we're diving deep into understanding behaviours driven by the stress response. This foundational knowledge is crucial for any teacher looking to transform their classroom into an island of safety for their students which nurtures connection, reduces anxiety, and promotes growth.

In this episode, I discuss:

1/ The stress response and behaviours: Gain insights into how the amygdala processes information and triggers fight, flight, freeze, or fawn responses. Understanding this biological process is key to addressing student behaviours effectively.

2/ How to create a sense of felt safety in the classroom: Learn how to establish consistent boundaries, routines, and expectations to reduce anxiety and create a secure environment for your students.

3/ Responding appropriately (and effectively) to dysregulated behaviours:  Classroom management strategies to handle stress-driven behaviours with empathy and support, avoiding punitive measures that can escalate the situation.

4/ Practical classroom management support: Explore practical ways to reduce the unknowns in the classroom by using visual aids, clear communication, and structured lesson plans to help students feel more in control and less anxious.

Referenced episodes of The Unteachables Podcast:

  • Episode #32: "Teaching Kids with Big Baffling Behaviours: The Science of Opposition" with Robyn Gobble
  • Episode #62. 'Apathetic' teenagers, post-pandemic classrooms, and finding all the glimmers with Dr Lori Desautels

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Speaker 1:

Welcome to the Unteachables podcast. I'm Claire English, a passionate secondary teacher and leader, turned teacher, mentor and author, and I'm on a mission to transform classroom management and teacher support in schools. It doesn't feel that long ago that I was completely overwhelmed and out of my depth with behavior, trying to swim rather than sink. It took me spending thousands of hours in the classroom, with all of the inevitable ups and downs, to make me the teacher that I am today Confident, capable and empowered in my ability to teach all students yes, even the ones who are the toughest to reach and now I'm dedicated to supporting teachers like yourself to do the same. I created the Unteachables podcast to give you the simple and actionable classroom management strategies and support that you need to run your room with confidence and calm. So if you're a teacher or one in the making, and you're wanting to feel happy and empowered and actually enjoy being in the classroom, whilst also making a massive impact with every single one of your students, then you're definitely in the right place. Let's get started. Hello, wonderful teacher. Welcome back to another episode of the Unteachables podcast. If you're listening for the first time, where have you been? But that's okay, because you've now got 60, like a bank of podcast episodes I think it's like 62 now to listen to that you can binge listen if you want to, can keep your company on the way to work, whatever you choose to do on your run. Maybe I'm not the most motivational podcaster to listen to on a run, but nevermind, whatever you're into, today I am going to be doing an episode. I can't believe it's taken me this long to do an episode on this. It is specifically about behaviors driven by the stress response. Seeming as believe it's taken me this long to do an episode on this. It is specifically about behaviors driven by the stress response, seeming as though it's something so crucial to understand as teachers. It's so fundamental. It really shocks me that I haven't done this before, so let me rectify that today. This is one of those foundational episodes, crucial in your behavior backpack and probably something I'm going to send you back to to listen to throughout the rest of the podcast world for the unteachables.

Speaker 1:

So everybody, everybody has a stress response. I have a stress response, you have a stress response. I'm sure that you know that. You're aware of that. It is just such a crucial part of our biology. Our species would not have been so successful and survived without it. We are a very successful species, but now we're not in the throes of dealing with saber-toothed tigers and having to run away from our predators. The stress response now is triggered by any old thing like traffic, being late for work, having deadlines, knowing that we have our most challenging class coming up, financial difficulties, bills, all of it. Thinking about these kind of modern day problems, they've only been happening for such a fraction of our evolution as human beings, so our brain's still kind of responding to them in really big ways. I'm sure I don't know. I'm not a psychologist, I'm not a scientist, I'm not all the rest of it, so I don't know what will happen in a million years time with our brains and how we'll adapt. But right now in our brains the stress response is triggered by a whole variety of just everyday things.

Speaker 1:

What happens is information, moment to moment, is filtered through the amygdala, and I'm talking about multiple pieces of information every single second. We are constantly scanning the environment and asking ourselves am I safe? And please go and listen to episode 32, teaching kids with big baffling Behaviors the Science of Opposition, with Robyn Goble for more on this, because she just expresses it so beautifully. She's now a best-selling author on this stuff. She is incredible and she can explain it much better than I can. But we have two modes that we're always in protection mode or connection mode, and it's so relevant for this episode. And we're constantly scanning protection mode or connection mode, and it's so relevant for this episode. And we're constantly scanning right and information is constantly coming in. And it's not happening consciously, obviously, it's just we're always scanning when we perceive to not be safe, for whatever reason, whatever information has come in and we perceive that we're not safe.

Speaker 1:

The amygdala the center in our brain, that little almond part in our brain that is in charge of all of those fight, flight or freeze responses and pumping out all the hormones and all the rest of it the amygdala sounds the alarm and it starts to pump all of those hormones out that we need to stay alive, to punch and run. When we have those hormones racing through our body, we can do what we can. We can behave in whatever way we need to to return to safety, to fight the danger, to flee from the danger, to freeze until that danger goes away, to fawn, to make sure that we stay safe in whatever way we can. So that is a really normal biological process. And, as I said, the stress response. We all have one.

Speaker 1:

But today I want to talk about the students who seem to always be in this protection mode. So protection mode is when we are shut off to learning. We're shut off to thinking. We are in that state of fight, flight or freeze. We are there to keep ourselves safe.

Speaker 1:

Some students experience immense trauma in their lives. They have adverse childhood experiences, they might be under chronic stress and their brains are shaped to accommodate this. So these are the students who might have an overactive stress response. Their brains are shaped to accommodate it. It forces them so, if they're going through those traumatic experiences in their early childhood, it forces them to adapt and grow in ways that help to keep them safe, so that amygdala actually increases in volume. It turns the brain into this hypervigilant machine so it becomes even more sensitive to stress coming in. So you know that we're always scanning, we're always thinking am I safe, am I not safe? Am I in protection mode? Am I in connection mode? That brain of that student who has experienced trauma, who has gone through these adverse childhood experiences, they are going to be even more sensitive to that stress coming in. This is their superpower, but also not exactly handy for being in the classroom, which is so reliant upon self-regulation and connection mode and accessing that prefrontal cortex, the thinking part of the brain. So it's not overly helpful for that particular context. But we do need to remember that these children that we are working with, they are superheroes. They have done everything they can, biologically, to stay safe and stay alive under immense stress, under traumatic experiences, through neglect, through all sorts of things they might have experienced in their life. Their brains have adapted to be able to keep them alive.

Speaker 1:

So what behaviors might we expect to see? Remember, first that these are the best ways in any given moment that a student knows how to return to safety. Their behaviors also differ, like I heard in a recent training that when abuse has occurred very early in a child's life, they might tend to exhibit more freeze responses because as a baby they can't run, they can't fight. All they can do is go inward and freeze to try to escape that abuse or that whatever's happening to them, and that is just horrific to think about. But everybody's fight, flight or freeze responses and the way that they behave in order to return to safety is going to be different as well. So one student's fight response is going to be different than another. So students are going to be acting in different ways and behaving in different ways. There's no one prototype of a student and how they're going to exhibit this response.

Speaker 1:

But the types of behaviors that you might expect from students who are in this stress response, who are in that fight, flight or freeze response if they're in their fight response, they might be argumentative, they might rip up their work, they might be acting silly because they're fighting against what they don't want to be doing. They might become physical with other people. So a lot of these fight responses, they might be volatile, they might have violent behaviors, they might and this is just remember to try to keep themselves safe. They don't feel safe and they're trying to return to that sense of felt safety Flight. So what you might see from flight is students sabotaging the lesson, because if you sabotage the lesson, there's no lesson that you have to run from. You know like there's nothing that you need to be doing there and a lot of anxiety and stress does come from the, even the act of being a classroom. They might be restless, they might be fidgeting, there might be a lack of focus, they might leave the classroom. There might be a lot of them standing up and physically running away and actually flighting from the room With the freeze response, and we see this so often in our young people head on desk, they're disengaging completely.

Speaker 1:

You might go up to them and you're trying to talk to them about that, but they're ignoring your request. You know those students who they've got their head on their desk and you go up to them and you're trying to talk to them and there is nothing. They don't give you anything. They might be deep in their freeze response. They might be staring into nothing. Then there's a fourth response, a fourth stress response, and people don't talk about this a lot, but it is the fawn response. And for the fawn response we might see a lot of people pleasing tendencies. There might be students who are always seeking approval from you or for others. They might really struggle with those personal boundaries. You might see them always apologizing. You might see them more likely to really do anything they can to get amongst a particular group socially. So those are the four responses, the four stress responses fight, flight, freeze and fawn and those are the types of behaviors that might be a manifestation of those stress responses.

Speaker 1:

That doesn't change the fact that those behaviors are happening. It doesn't excuse the behaviors, and this is why it's really important for us to recognize these behaviors as being driven by the stress response, because it explains them and why this does matter. And, by the way, if you want to listen to more on this, I did a podcast episode with Dr Laurie Disseltels last week and my gosh, she is just a fountain of knowledge and insights into this. I asked her why it matters. Why is it really important for us to recognize these behaviors as being driven by the stress response? She was saying that it matters because when we better understand these behaviors, we can then put things into place that actually work to reduce them. It highlights what is actually going to move the needle, and what is going to move the needle is not punishment, because what does punishment do? When you're shaming, when you're threatening, when you're disconnecting, that stress response goes up because we're not connecting with young people. And when that stress response goes up, so too do the behaviors that we see from the stress response. So if you've got a student in fight mode and they're argumentative, if you're going head to head with that student and threatening punishment because they're being argumentative with you. They're going to be more argumentative or maybe they'll start to do something else to increase that fight response. They might rip up their work, they might become physical, you know, like. So they're increasing, they're escalating that stress response. So it highlights what's actually going to move the needle.

Speaker 1:

Yes, it's not about punishment, but it's also not a lack of boundaries, because lack of boundaries actually drives up the stress response as well, because what we're wanting to do in our classrooms is create a sense of felt safety. If we can create more felt safety with the young people in our room, then we are going to create an environment where their stress responses are lessened, where they can. You know they're always scanning the environment. If you're getting students to scan that environment and you're not putting in place things like boundaries and consistency and clarity and all the things that create that felt safety, the relationships, the connection, then All of those things that are coming in are going to be coming in as a threat. They're going to be coming in as I'm not safe because there are no boundaries. There's something not right here. So again, even a lack of boundaries and I'm talking about kind, compassionate boundaries that are communicated with respect and collaboration or the rest of it. That too is going to drive up the stress response if they're not in place.

Speaker 1:

It is through a response to classroom management, where we are prioritizing felt safety, that we can support students to decrease these behaviors that are a manifestation of the stress response. Again, felt safety is more than just relationships. It is boundaries, it is consistency, it's how we set up the learning, the teaching and learning, the differentiation. All the rest of it is how we respond to them and their challenges, like how we actually go through the process of addressing their challenging behaviors in the moment, how we resolve them after the moment. It is how we facilitate those discussions.

Speaker 1:

Every single thing shapes what I like to call our islands of safety and what is also really important to note, that being physically safe in your classroom. So just say a student is physically safe in your classroom, no one's going to come in and punch them, they're not going to hurt themselves in any way. Being physically safe in your classroom space and them feeling safe are two very different things. You could be a very safe and welcoming person. You could be somebody that is warm, that is compassionate, that is kind. You could be the most beautiful, wonderful teacher that that student could ever ask for, but that does not mean that student will feel safe with you.

Speaker 1:

As Robin Goble says in that episode as well, we can offer felt safety, but it's up to that young person whether or not they receive it. Again, another reason why it's so important for us to know about the stress response. So we don't have to take that personally. We can say to ourselves okay, I'm doing what I can right now and I'm going to be consistent in that, but they're not accepting my offerings of safety right now because of what is happening in their brains, because their brains are hypervigilant, because they have had to survive immense hardship to be able to get to this point right here. So how can we craft islands of safety to then reduce the stress response and create that that fell safety, so students can be more in connection mode rather than protection mode, so they can learn, so they can, you know, do all the wonderful things we want from them in our classroom.

Speaker 1:

It really is in every single thing we do. Everything is so incredibly interlinked. Every single podcast episode I put out there, every single piece of advice, is building your island of safety, brick by brick. So don't listen to other podcast episodes and think that they act in a silo. Every single piece of the puzzle is woven into everything that I do. But for the sake of this episode, if I was forced to pick one piece of advice right here, right now, the advice I would give you is to just reduce the unknown.

Speaker 1:

What do I mean by that? Well, ask yourself this when that student comes into the room, do they know what to expect when they walk in? What is happening? What do they expect from you? Is there somewhere they can look up to see what's happening during the lesson, that they know what is coming up? They know what kind of tasks are coming up. Is it going to be a group activity? Is it going to be an individual? Like what is happening in that lesson? What is coming up? Can they look somewhere and find that information? Do they know where they're going to be sitting when they walk into the lesson? Are they going to be scrambling to find a seat? Do they know where they're going to be sitting? Do they know who they're going to be sitting next to? Or is there a consistent place that they sit? And that is why I'm such a firm advocate for the seating plan, not about behavior and all that stuff. It is about felt safety for me personally in my lessons. And then I move students around later in the lesson, but when it comes to that initial walking into the room, I always have a seating plan.

Speaker 1:

Do they have a success criteria to be able to complete the piece of work that's in front of them and know what you're looking for? Do they know what success looks like for that task you've given them? Do they know how much time they have to complete something and is there somewhere they can look up and see how much time they have left? Is there a countdown? Is there something where it's really clear what they have to do in that moment, how much time they have, all the rest of it? Do they know what to expect from you and your personality and your responses? Like, are you a consistent person or do you fly off the handle at a moment's notice? And that's no judgment from me, because I have been that person in the classroom and out of the classroom, still out of the classroom, sometimes in the classroom a little bit less. I'm a little bit more conscious of it. I think you get the picture. I'm not saying you need to do all of those things right now, but I just want you to start reflecting on them. So just to recap on those points, remember, it's about reducing the unknown. So ask yourself is there something that the student can look at when they walk in the room to know what to expect? Do they know what's happening during the lesson and what is coming up? Do they know where they're going to be sitting? Do they know what success looks like for the tasks? Do they know what time they have to do those in? Do they know what to expect from you and your personality and your responses and your boundaries? So all of those things really matter.

Speaker 1:

Okay, just to summarize, all of us have a stress response. Some of our students will have bigger stress responses and will be caught in the cycle of being in protection mode. Their behaviors are a manifestation of this, and understanding that these behaviors are from their fight, flight, freeze or fawn response helps us to better understand their behaviors and actually implement strategies that work, rather than making things worse and escalating things in order to support their regulation. We can do everything we can to craft islands of safety in our classrooms. That is the goal. That is what we're striving to do and remember you can offer that safety. You can make your room as wonderfully safe as possible, you can be the most warm, welcoming and safe person, but they're not necessarily going to accept your offerings of safety.

Speaker 1:

Please go and listen to that episode with Robin Goble it is brilliant and listen to the episode with Laurie Disotels. That I did just last week. I will put both of the links to those in the show notes just so it's really easy to access for you. You can just click, click and go there straight away. And please remember that you also have your own stress responses. You have your own experiences, you have your own context. So please, as you know, compassionate and as kind and as brilliant as you are to your students, I really want you to go into the week ahead being that for yourself as well. Be compassionate to yourself, be kind to yourself, because it is really difficult being in a classroom and having our own stress responses and trying to manage that and also be regulating the rest of the room. So please hold space for yourself and I am sending all of the best for the week ahead and I will see you next week.

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Claire English

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