Heather Porter
Participant
Post count: 10

The set up of this experience is loss of control, which is why I feel they may misunderstand this concept. They are feeling out of control of the situations and therefore misunderstanding what “behaviors make sense” actually means. When talking with educators about behaviors making sense, I talk with them about behaviors as a communication tool. We talk about body responses to stress and feelings of being safe. This helps to address the fact that behaviors people exhibit are their responses to what they are perceiving from our environment on a continuous basis, sometimes those responses may look maladaptive to others, other times they may be considered appropriate for the situation. It’s important to recognize that our responses to stress may be acceptable or not depending on what the situation is. What I feel they can learn to understand is that we can determine a lot about a student when we observe and experience the behaviors with the student. This allows for attunement and then co-regulation to occur. I believe in the power of leading the teachers to experiencing concrete examples, this can help them understand the concepts.