Managing some difficult behaviour – Part two: Some ideas for the classroom

Part One of this article (see Issue 30 of Teachers Matter) discussed how children who have suffered significant, chronic trauma have neurological pathway differences due to an interruption in normal attachment development. Part Two gives some practical ideas for the classroom.

Helping your students understand how their brain works.

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Screen Shot 2016-01-28 at 11.40.22 amI have had several sessions in my class where we have worked through some ideas about our brains. What I believe is that if our students have an awareness of how their brain might be working, then they are better able to manage themselves, and if nothing else be more aware of their own behaviours so in time be better self managers.

Now if you haven’t seen the uTube video “Just Breathe” by JulieBayer Salzman and Josh Salzman, I recommend it, it doesn’t take long and is useful for ourselves if nothing else. After watching this I spoke to my Year 7 class about how it felt when our glitter jar of emotions were all shaken up and how we can help to calm them down. I then used this analogy of the glitter jar and teamed it with Glenn Capelli’s Magic Brain concept.

Initially I drew this on the board as we talked about it and then later made the visual as a reminder for us going forward. There are three rooms in our Magic Brain:

1.The blue thinking room – a place where we have a lot of choices and where most of our learning happens.

2.The multicoloured, or glitter room

– a place where our feelings are. When we are feeling big emotions or lots of emotions it can get pretty messy in here. This makes it hard to the get to the door for the thinking room, so we need to calm the colours/glitter down.

3.The red room of limited choices – often when we are afraid or angry we end up in the red room where we really only have 2-3 choices… fight, flight or freeze. When we are in the red room we can’t get to the thinking room very well at all (this relates back to Judith’s work discussed in Issue 30 around when the brain stem is engaged then the cerebral cortex is offline). We need strategies to help us get out of the red room, through the glitter room, and up to the thinking room to allow ourselves more choices.

It impressed me how my students seemed to understand this concept, so we moved on and, using the Just Breathe video as inspiration, created this simple strategy for the class (please note: this is for all students in the class but as stated in Part One – it doesn’t necessarily work for all)

Screen Shot 2016-01-28 at 11.40.35 am

This is in our classroom, and serves as a reminder for when we get stuck in the glitter room of emotions and the red room of limited choices. It gives us a visual cue. The stop button is really helpful when things are getting out of control. The first thing to do is stop, and if we can do that earlier rather than later then everyone benefits. For our dysregulated students there needs to be an extra step and that is finding a safe ‘place’ to calm the adrenalin and cortisol down. The next steps are breathing and thinking before deciding on a course of action to remedy the situation. Remember though, that learning to use these steps effectively takes time!

So far these simple tools have had some positive effect for a few of the children in my class and as a teacher I need to model this more obviously as well – it isn’t only the children that feel like their glitter jar is a bit shaken up from time to time.

Below are some poems I have written and shared with my class when talking about the brain:

My Growing Magic Brain

Guess what I have between my ears
That changes and grows all the time
It’s my magical wonderful brain
And it’s all mine, all mine, all mine

Trying things that are hard or tough Helps connections grow
The more I try, the better I learn And the more I get to know

So I will help my magic brain
Make links and learn and grow
By being kind and trying hard
And giving new things a go!

Growing and Changing

Egg, caterpillar, chrysalis, butterfly
Changing and growing fast
My brain changes when I try
I practice to make it last

A seed becomes a plant or tree
Branches grow like brain connections in me

When I try and have a go
My brain connections will grow and grow

I keep trying and what do you know
I change and grow and change and grow

Growing and Changing 2

A baby changes and learns a lot because
they try and try again,

An egg becomes a butterfly by changing
and then flying.

A seed becomes a giant tree by growing a
little every day,

And I grow and change as well by trying
when I learn and play.

Screen Shot 2016-01-28 at 12.11.53 pm

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Megan Gallagher


Megan is a committed learner. She has been a teacher and an educational leader who has specialised in health education for a number of years. She is an avid promoter of building resilience in our students and selves.