Stress Responses: Teaching Resilience for Trauma and Everyday Crises

By Jennifer Gunn

Many of the challenging behaviors we see in classrooms stem from stress or trauma in our students’ lives. Explicitly teaching our students about stress responses and resilience can help them better recognize their emotions, cope with stress, and reach out for help before they act out. Social-emotional learning tools can have a profound and long-term impact on our students and the classroom. Here’s how to get started.

Exploring stress

The first step toward building a critical awareness is teaching students about the ways that stress can manifest in emotions, behaviors, and physical symptoms. According to the American Psychological Association, “Your body’s stress warning signs tell you that something isn’t right. Much like the glowing orange ‘check engine’ light on your car’s dashboard, if you neglect the alerts sent out by your body, you could have a major engine malfunction.” In the classroom, we witness “engine malfunctions” often. However, if we teach students to become aware of the ways stress can present itself, they become better at managing it.

As educators, we see students reacting to stress in negative ways like these every day:

acting out/short temper

aggressive behavior/fighting

inability to focus in class

fatigue/irritability

getting sick often

stomach aches

giving up on assignments in frustration

crying/yelling in anger

shutting down

fidgeting/jitters

Often when students exhibit these behaviors, they don’t realize that the behaviors are actually symptomatic of underlying stresses. If we teach students the warning signs of stress, we make them mindful of what’s really happening when they feel these emotions or engage in these behaviors. Remember, kids and young adults aren’t always able to accurately label their emotions. Educators can do a lot of good through building emotional intelligence.

Ideas for teaching about stress: 

Create a cut out of a person and have students label the ways stress can affect the body. Have a circle talk and show students the list above, asking them to describe times they’ve felt these emotions and how stress may have been a factor. Have students make a mindmap of what makes them feel stressed.

Introducing mindfulness

Once students know the signs of stress, they can begin to practice mindfulness. Research shows that mindfulness helps students with attention, emotional regulation, compassion, and calming. When a student is feeling stressed, mindfulness teaches them how to pause and thoughtfully gauge their mood. They learn to self-assess and purposefully decide how to cope with their emotions. Perhaps the student is hungry, confused, tired, or in need of some deep breaths. Instead of lashing out, the student learns to pause, recognize, and cope.

Resilience

Teaching students about building resilience empowers learners to understand that emotional regulation is primarily a self-driven endeavor.  Resilience is not a denial of emotional weight, nor does it mean that we must always deal with our woes independently. Rather, resilience is the notion that through awareness, mindfulness, and practice, we can arm ourselves with coping skills to better survive life’s challenges.

Some ideas for teaching resilience: 

Give students examples of life challenges and ask them to brainstorm pieces of advice they would give to someone experiencing that challenge. Or, ask students to identify some life challenges (big and small) and then create emotional action plans for coping with those situations.

Triggers

Another important component of building resiliency is teaching students to identify their emotional triggers. What frustrates them? What stresses them out? What makes them sad? Exercises where students explore the things that produce negative emotions can build an awareness of situations that require more mindfulness. An important distinction to pass along to young learners is that triggers explain emotional responses, but they do not necessarily excuse them. One can’t merely excuse troubling behavior by saying, “Oh well, I was triggered.” That’s where mindfulness comes in, and the skill of asking for help when emotions become overwhelming.

Some ideas for teaching about triggers:

 Have students identify a list of times when they felt mad, frustrated, stressed, or sad. Discuss what students believe triggered their negative emotions. Have students create emotional trigger action plans that incorporate mindfulness techniques: “When I Feel…I Can…” Be sure to provide avenues for counseling or emotional support for times when students need assistance. Another option is to create a safe space in your classroom so students can learn to cope with different triggers and emotions in healthy ways.

Asking for help

In cases of trauma or when life becomes generally overwhelming, students need to know there is help. Again, resiliency doesn’t mean we have to go it alone. Part of healthy resilience is recognizing when we need help and reaching out for it. Teachers should continually make students aware of the options available for counseling and encourage them to reach out when needed.

Security Door and Two-Minute Drill

Hello All,

Thanks for a great first day back.  I appreciate your patience with our students as they transition back to going to school! 

If you did not get the chance to today, please make sure you see one of the secretaries in the main office for your new ID.  These will access the printers and allow you to gain entrance through the security door outside of the office.  You will not need it to go from the main hallway towards the office, but to go in the other direction, you will need to swipe your card.  This goes in to effect Tuesday, January 8 at 8:00 am.  This door will be open in the mornings and immediately after dismissal, but at all other times it will be closed.  Please explain this to your second hour classes when you show the video below.  Student IDs do not work on the door so they will need to be buzzed through by either the secretaries in the main office or in the counseling office. 

During your second hour on Tuesday, please show the video below to all of your classes.  It is just over two minutes long.  This will be a recurring video, and shortly after you show students, it will be posted to twitter and facebook.  Please let students know that they can find it there.  I will also get out a robo call.  Thanks and have a great day!

This Week at LPHS, January 7 - 11, 2019

Hello and Welcome Back!

I hope that you all had a truly restful and enjoyable break.  Hopefully you were able to spend some time with those that you love and celebrate the holiday season!  As hard as it is to come back after 16 days, I am looking forward to seeing you and our students and continuing the awesome work that we do.  Please read below for the details of the week ahead:

Monday:

* SST Meeting, 1:00 in the Media Center Conference Room

Tuesday:

* All four admin at BOE, 9:00-12:00

* I will get a Mindset video out to all of you to share with your second hour classes on Tuesday, in lieu of Mindfulness Mondays this week. 

Thursday:

* LPHS Choir Concert, LPHS Auditorium, 7:00 pm


* As the first semester comes to a close, please remember to fulfill your two after school events.  Basketball season is especially busy as we have home events every Tuesday and Friday and we are hosting the Orange and Blue Classic for wrestling on January 19.  Any and all help is greatly appreciated!

Have a great week!

Trauma Informed Tip of the Week, January 7, 2019

Welcome back! The article provided this week is intended as a refresher for how important it is to take a trauma-informed approach with all of our students. Please keep applying these strategies in your daily interaction with your students: they are working!

10 Things About Childhood Trauma Every Teacher Needs to Know

Institute for Trauma and Loss in Children, a program of the Starr Global Learning Network, Caelan Kuban Soma offers these tips for understanding kids who have been through trauma plus strategies for helping them.

1. Kids who have experienced trauma aren’t trying to push your buttons.
If a child is having trouble with transitions or turning in a folder at the beginning of the day, remember that children may be distracted because of a situation at home that is causing them to worry.

2. Kids who have been through trauma worry about what’s going to happen next.
A daily routine in the classroom can be calming, so try to provide structure and predictability whenever possible.

3. Even if the situation doesn’t seem that bad to you, it’s how the child feels that matters.
Try not to judge the trauma. As caring teachers, we may unintentionally project that a situation isn’t really that bad, but how the child feels about the stress is what matters most.

4. Trauma isn’t always associated with violence.
Trauma is often associated with violence, but kids can also suffer trauma from a variety of situations—like divorce, a move, or being overscheduled or bullied.

5. You don’t need to know exactly what caused the trauma to be able to help.
Instead of focusing on the specifics of a traumatic situation, concentrate on the support you can give children who are suffering. “Stick with what you are seeing now—the hurt, the anger, the worry,” Soma says, rather than getting every detail of the child’s story.

6. Kids who experience trauma need to feel they’re good at something and can influence the world.
Find opportunities that allow kids to set and achieve goals, and they’ll feel a sense of mastery and control, suggests Soma. Assign them jobs in the classroom that they can do well or let them be a peer helper to someone else.

7. There’s a direct connection between stress and learning.
When kids are stressed, it’s tough for them to learn. Create a safe, accepting environment in your classroom by letting children know you understand their situation and support them.

8. Self-regulation can be a major challenge for students suffering from trauma.
Some kids with trauma are growing up with emotionally unavailable parents and haven’t learned to self-soothe, so they may develop distracting behaviors and have trouble staying focused for long periods. To help them cope, schedule regular brain breaks.

9. It’s OK to ask kids point-blank what you can do to help them make it through the day.
For all students with trauma, you can ask them directly what you can do to help. They may ask to listen to music with headphones or put their head on their desk for a few minutes.

10. You can support kids with trauma even when they’re outside your classroom.
Loop in the larger school. Share trauma-informed strategies with all staff, from bus drivers to parent volunteers to crossing guards. Remind everyone: “The child is not his or her behavior,” says Soma. “Typically there is something underneath that driving that to happen, so be sensitive.

Source: We Are Teachers.com