[Judith Norman]

#1199

As you reflect upon your current or previous work with educators, now through the lens of being an SPT therapist first, what thoughts or new perspectives come to mind? Does using this lens impact your thinking and/or behavior?

[Kira Colgan]

#1233

I hope bringing my SPT perspective into my work in schools will shift how I approach the interventions I’m asked to provide. As a counselor who was never a teacher, I feel uncomfortable when I’m asked to observe teachers and offer advice on how to work with a particular student or a class as a whole. I feel like I couldn’t possibly offer them any suggestions that they wouldn’t already know, since I don’t have a teaching background. But focusing on being an external regulator first, and making connecting with the teacher a priority and making sure he/she feels understood, seen, and supported for their hard work feels like something that comes more naturally to me. Also, I like the idea of helping teachers understand that kids’ behavior has much more to do with the kids’ nervous systems and environmental factors impacting it than their teaching.

I am hoping that as we move through the course that we discuss tangible ways that we can advise teachers on how to honor their students experiences/feelings while still teaching their content. I’m hoping to learn some classroom wide as well as individual student strategies to help teachers with this.

The “you are the intervention” reality, is unsettling for me at this point, and I’m hoping this class will help me feel more confident in my role as the intervention.

[Judith Norman]

#1235

Thanks so much for sharing Kira. I appreciate all the points you brought up. Yes, we will learn tangible things that we can both do with students, and that will also support educators in their work. I get how intimidating it can feel knowing how we show up is “the intervention,” this has both benefits and challenges. We’ll be exploring both!

[Heather Porter]

#1241

As a school social worker, I am constantly called in during challenging situations in classrooms. Recently, I’ve noticed as I walk toward the room I am guessing what the room will be like when I walk in. I’ve noticed that I am walking into the dysregulation many times already dysregulated myself. Since our first class, I’ve tried to recognize what I was bringing in to the room upon entry. It’s difficult to model skills when I’m not attuned to that. I have absolutely recognized how my unintentional behaviors may have extended challenging situations. So, I do feel using this lens will positively impact both my thinking and behavior. Now as I am coaching teachers, I am committing to using regulation strategies for myself immediately prior to our work as a teaching team.

[Judith Norman]

#1251

Hi Heather, great insight! It’s so valuable when we recognize our own dysregulation. This awareness is vital in helping us practice regulating in the midst of dsyregulation.

[Madeline Patrick]

#1255

I’ve noticed that I’m much more aware of the mirror neurons and picking up the class’ stress/dysregulation and/or the teachers. Its been helpful to try and be curious about that with the teachers. Also being aware of what its like for the kids to change settings so fast and not have time to decompress in between. I feel more confident about not having the answers (my perception – that I was meant to).

[Abigail Miller]

#1278

Oop! I know the assignment said it was a “post,” but I didn’t see the “Class Forum” on the site and just uploaded this to my Google Drive folder as a reflection. Judith’s email today drew my attention to the class forum. Sorry 🙁

Anyhow….Reflecting upon my work with educators through the lens of SPT, I can see that the educator will communicate how they are feeling through the setup. The way that they behave will be based upon their perceptions, and internal working models of relationships, and is not about me. As a result, instead of taking it personally, I can attune to how they are feeling, model a regulatory response, and name the feelings (“I feel nervous,” “I feel overwhelmed,” “It’s so frustrating,” “I’m worried about what you will think of me,” “I’m doing my best, but I feel exhausted,” “This feels really hard”). Since nervous systems impact one another, modeling a regulatory response, will assist the educator in regulating. This is one aspect that is unique to SPT.

In most modalities, one important mechanism of therapeutic action is the therapeutic alliance. Having someone observe the educator’s work (their classroom, their teaching) and provide feedback/support, in many cases at the request of an administrator and not because the individual requested assistance, possibly at times that are not convenient for the educator, and often with little expectation of confidentiality, may cause an individual to feel vulnerable, fearful, resentful, or defensive and may not be conducive to creating a strong therapeutic alliance.

My experience is that educators are often natural caregivers who come to the field because of idealistic beliefs (wanting to make a difference, anticipating easy positive relationships with all students, believing that one year of student teaching experience will be adequate to feeling competent in all situations, sometimes underestimating the impact of trauma and developmental challenges) and often hold many (sometimes unconscious, and often unrealistic) expectations and beliefs about their work (“I should like all of my students,” “I should never feel frustrated, angry, or upset with a student,” “I should be able to manage all types of challenging behavior and developmental challenges,” “I should have ‘good’ classroom management,” “The children should be making x rate of progress,” “The classroom should be calm, quiet, peaceful,” “My relationship with each student should be transformative and have a protective, buffering, effect on their development,” etc. Educators are often like parents, seeing their students and classroom as a reflection of them personally. I can be aware that may feel discouraged and experience enormous shame, guilt, helplessness, and inadequacy (or resentment, anger, and blame) when they do not feel that they are meeting these expectations. Often, because of these expectations, there is a culture of shame and silence (or blame) surrounding these feelings (some educators do not feel comfortable acknowledging them or discussing them with colleagues, therapists, or support staff). Sometimes these beliefs are socialized through teacher education programs and laws/regulations which suggest that all types of developmental challenges and challenging behavior ought to be able to be successfully addressed in a typical, inclusive, classroom environment, and in school systems with many competing priorities, extremely limited differentiation of students (students of all backgrounds are supposed to be performing at the same level and meeting the same standards), prioritization of narrow academic outcomes (teachers are often evaluated primarily on the basis of test scores), with little emphasis on relationships (teachers work with many children, often seeing the child only a few hours a day, for 9 months, and then the children are moved on to a different teacher in different peer groupings), access to minimal biographical and developmental information about an individual child (educators are often not privy to “the story” of a child’s life, have minimal parental interactions, and lack a complete history which might allow them to contextualize student behaviors), and an American culture which primarily sees education alone as the key to reducing rampant inequality and social injustice (a tall order for a teacher). Finally, every teacher approaches teaching and comes to the relationship with the supporting therapist with a different history (different beliefs and expectations, levels of education and experience, relational histories, life stressors, sensory systems, interest in social emotional development, and understanding or “buy in” of the ways in which this affects cognitive development) and finds themselves working with different populations of students, with different needs (a novice Teach for America graduates in a Title 1 school, a veteran with no training put in charge of an Arizona classroom during COVID) and different levels of “goodness or fit.” Instead of feeling helped or supported, an educator may feel like an outside expert has been called in to evaluate, criticize, judge, fix, or improve their classroom or job performance. Since “shoulds” (judgment) are perceived as a threat by the brain, and dysregulating, this is not helpful. Without establishing a credible belief that they are “safe” in the interaction (a neuroception of safety), a therapeutic alliance is unlikely to be established and the educator is unlikely to engage authentically and honestly with the process, or experience integration, transformation, or personal or professional growth. In some cases, especially if there are many competing priorities and initiatives or the educator does not see the intrinsic value in the therapist’s support, it may also be necessary to make a compelling “case” to the educator that this will make their job easier, their classroom better, or result in other tangible benefits (improved academic and cognitive outcomes), although SPT theory would suggest that the (bottom up) “felt sense” of relational attunement, the neuroception of safety, and the therapeutic alliance might be more important than a compelling intellectual argument on the merits of the program/intervention. Having said that, investments in social emotional programming are often “justified” along the lines of these types of arguments (not for its own sake).

The SPT lens impacts my thinking and behavior by prioritizing (especially initially) relational attunement over evaluating/passing judgment on the social emotional climate of the classroom or imparting specific information and interventions. Creating a neuroception of safety (which includes maintaining confidentiality as appropriate) and acting as an external regulator (co-regulating the educator, allowing them to ‘borrow’ a more regulated nervous system) creates a supportive environment and allows the educator to “check in” with themselves, to become curious about how they are feeling (facilitating interoception), expand their own window of tolerance, improve their own regulatory capacity (since ‘neurons that fire together, wire together,’ with repetition this literally ‘rewires,’ or creates new pathways, in their brain) and increases their receptivity to support. As a result, the intervention is largely enacted (not didactically explained) and ‘The therapist is the intervention’ (in the same way that the therapist is the most important toy in the playroom). This is another aspect that is very unique to the SPT approach.

For a therapist, or an educator, the idea of being responsible for simultaneously co-regulating 20-30 nervous systems, and cultivating supportive relationships and a holding environment for 20-30 individuals from widely varied backgrounds with developmental capabilities (not including parents and colleagues), amidst the need to perform pedagogical and other classroom maintenance/caregiving/record keeping/custodial tasks, may seem daunting, if not impossible. As a result, validation of the educator’s feelings and the SPT understanding of the mirror neuron system, that modeling a regulatory response, allows one individual to serve as an external regulatory support for others (the idea that in remaining regulated myself, and attuned to my own feelings, I can remain available, within my own window of tolerance, and assist others in doing the same and allow them to “borrow” my nervous system; ultimately, the only person I am responsible for regulating is myself- staying connected to myself, irrespective of what is going on, and modeling regulation), and that SPT’s mode of action does not require a complete history or knowledge of the child’s “story, may be quite a relief to educators and also a significant change from the way they are used to thinking of interactions with students (many educators focus is on cognitive development, “behavioral modification plans,” or top-down regulation strategies, their attention is often directed outwards, toward serving others, and toward their students reactions, behaviors, and emotional states). Honestly considering their own feelings and emotional states (interoception) during classroom interactions may be a new, difficult, and underdeveloped skill. Being willing and able to honestly share and reflect upon these feelings with another person may feel especially vulnerable. Additionally, many educators have been taught to manage student behavior with classroom management “systems” and models (behaviorism, functional behavioral analysis, token economies, PBIS and Pyramid SEL models) that focus on granular, transactional, classroom interactions/routines, focus almost exclusively on the child’s behavior and gaining compliance, reinforcing the idea that if the teacher just avoids the antecedent/trigger for problem behaviors or responds in the correct way, with the correct consequent, the challenging behavior should reduce in frequency or extinguish entirely (a somewhat coercive model), or more relational models that vaguely suggest that if the teacher just succeeded in creating a positive relationship with the student, the challenges and conflicts would vanish and dysregulation would not occur. The SPT model differs significantly and may be a bit of a paradigm shift, or even incompatible with these other approaches.

Finally, tracking starting points and shared goal setting (that is related to the educator’s values and motivations) is important in providing a sense of perspective. Documenting starting points is also important in understanding where the work is headed, tracking progress, and celebrating successes.

[Rebecca Blanco (Kidman)]

#1395

I loved reading your post, Abigail. So detailed and beautifully thought through. it really helped me formulate some ideas. I like the idea of starting with support for the teacher first. As a DDP psychotherapist, I always use PACE with teachers- and focus on validating their feelings before moving to giving strategies/advice etc. Through the SPT lense of ‘regulation first’, it’s useful to hold this at the forefront. I also think the focus on ‘shoulds’ as a threat to the brain (challenging perceptions) is soooooo relevant for teachers ‘I should be able to manage a class all the time’ (and also for me ‘I should have all the answers’!).

[Rebecca Blanco (Kidman)]

#1396

ps I also find the ‘set-up’ so useful when meeting with teachers/classroom assistants etc; when there’s a sense of urgency, a need for control, reaching for perfection, a need to know everything, a sense that nothing is good enough, frustration- the list goes on. It’s a process of remembering and forgetting (and then remembering again) this incredibly useful piece of information. It’s often the key piece of information that helps to regulate myself; ‘oh- doesn’t belong to me, it isn’t about me’. So useful when working in schools.

[Judith Norman]

#1434

Such a great discussion. Abby you brought up so many incredibly important points. As educators work within a system that often “shames” and puts “shoulds” on them, this is a piece of the puzzle we need to consider in our work with them. Sometimes we are able to do systemic work and sometimes our work is limited to supporting an individual person. I do believe that we can often work with systems and structures in place and add layers that move us towards a broader perspective of understanding. This is something we will continue to explore.

[Author]

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