Relationships in the Classroom
Think back to your school and college days. Who was a grown-up who was there for you, providing a positive and nurturing influence in your life?
What did they do that was special?
The first and core principle behind safe and supportive classrooms is that learning happens when the student feels safe. Learning cannot happen when the brain is in survival mode. The next question is, what creates this safety? Is it possible to create safety in the classrooms when the outside world is extremely chaotic?
The student-teacher relationship in a classroom can lay the grounds for this safety. The relational aspect of teaching might be very underrated but a consistent, healthy relationship with the teacher is the cornerstone for a safe and supportive learning environment. Several strategies can be put into play to make a learning environment safer, but none of these would work if the student feels unsafe in the relationship with the teacher.
How the Brain Responds to Relationships
Survival Brain: It is in charge of all the automatic processes that keep us alive, such as breathing, blood flow, and digestion.
Emotional Brain: It works closely with the survival brain to make sure our needs are met. Specifically, that we are feeling safe, in control, happy, and connected — all things that are important for our survival.
Smart Brain(Thinking Brain): It is in charge of “executive functioning”, which essentially relates to things like problem-solving, learning, decision making, and thinking rationally.
Our brain is constantly scanning the environment for cues of danger and threats. Anything that our brain perceives as unsafe immediately activates our emotional and survival brain which resorts to one of the three responses — fight, flight, or freeze. These responses might look like yelling, running away, or completely withdrawing and not responding in the classroom. Do these responses seem familiar with any of your students?
The Trauma Brain
When we experience distress, our Survival and Emotional Brain is activated rather than the Smart Brain. This distress doesn’t have to be anything big. Seemingly smaller things like an unfamiliar face or a change in the tone of voice of the teacher can act as triggers in the classroom for students. It can make them switch immediately from Smart Brain to Emotional Brain. A student who has experienced prolonged trauma has better survival skills, but less ability to reason and process.
When children experience trauma, their developing brains actually form around surviving the perceived danger around them. This means their brains are only focused on developing that survival response in the brain stem, not on developing any higher brain functioning.
How do Relationships Help?
It is no surprise that as most trauma occurs in relationships, most healing does too. The relationships students share with their teachers have a significant impact on them.
When students trust their teacher, they feel safe in their classrooms. When they feel safe, they are more likely to learn and engage. They are also more likely to open up and share their struggles. When students spend more and more time in this state, they are constantly engaging their Smart Brain. Being in this state strengthens these neural connections and develops this reasoning part of the brain. This means that students are biologically predisposed to learn better, develop better and form better relationships. It literally assists in ‘rewiring’ the brain.
Building a safe classroom and healthy relationships with students takes patience, courage and consistent effort. It can be messy and scary. Dealing with feelings, emotions, and relationships is difficult, and so consequently, we cannot ask teachers to be perfect either.
As long as we keep trying and we put our students first, we are doing the right thing.
