(Describer) A 3-D model of a human brain appears. A title: Stress, Trauma, and the Brain: Insights for Educators -- with Bruce D. Perry, M.D., Ph.D. Words appear: Dr. Bruce Perry is a pioneer in the field of neuroscience research. He was one of the first to study the effects of trauma on the brain. We asked Dr. Perry how understanding brain science can help teachers in the classroom. Episode 4: Regulating Yourself and Your Classroom.

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I think we've created institutional conditions within schools that are making it very hard for educators themselves to be regulated, and because the third major point of the neurosequential model that we teach in schools is related to the neurosociology of human beings, it's that human beings are social creatures, and because of that, we are exquisitely contagious to other people. So if the teacher, who is the leader in the classroom, feels dysregulated, overwhelmed, exhausted, frustrated, that teacher will have her cortex or his cortex shut down. They won't be able to be as present, they won't be able to be as regulating and rewarding, and it'll be really, really hard, and so the big message we have--and a lot of times, institutions still like to hear this--is that probably the best way to really help kids cognitively and behaviorally in the classroom is to take really good care of your teachers, is to make sure that teachers are respected, the teachers get regulatory breaks, the teachers get respite, the teachers get teams to come and help them, and when we do that-- when an institution, when an organization, whether it's a school or a business, begins to appreciate this social contagion and takes steps to create organizational care models that complement self-care models, then you see huge transformations and outcomes, and we have lots of data from schools that have done this. One of the most powerful tools that we have to regulate are what we call somatosensory activities, and basically rhythmic movement, rhythmic sound, rhythmic visual input, and, you know, I can just tell you this and say, "Oh, yeah, do rhythmic things. It'll make things better," and that, you know, that's probably not that helpful, but if I help you understand why rhythmic things can make you feel better regulated, I think more people will sort of connect with it. So one of the things that we know from neuroscience is that during development, and even after development, that the major mechanism that the brain uses to kind of make sense out of the world is to take all this incoming sensory input, and when it occurs simultaneously-- if sensory input comes in separately into the brain, but it's happening at the same time with sufficient frequency-- it connects things. So when you see something and hear something at the same time again and again and again and again, your brain connects the fire truck with the siren or the dog with the bark, and that's how your brain makes sense out of the world. So your brain makes associations between things that co-occur. In utero, when you're a little fetus, your fetal body is sending signals back to the lower part of your brain, the stress regulatory part of your brain, saying, "Hey, I'm not hungry, 'cause I'm getting nonstop calories," and sending signals back that say, "Hey, I'm not thirsty, 'cause I'm in liquid," and it's sending signals back that say, "Hey, it's--I'm not cold. It's 98.7 in here." So all of these feedback signals from the fetal body to the fetal brain are that I'm regulated. Now, that's happening at the same time that sensory input coming in through other routes through your senses. The fetal senses are coming in in this syncopated, rhythmic way, basically driven by mother's maternal heart rate. So vibration from the aorta tapping on the diaphragm, so movement from the heart literally moving inside the body of the mother, and then the sound of the syncopated rhythm of the heartbeat.

So... [mimicking heartbeat]

So those rhythms and submultiples of those rhythms become associated with being regulated, and so as you get older, after you're born, simply rocking a child at a frequency that's similar to maternal heart rate makes them feel safer and regulated, and so opens up their cortex and makes them open for business. A little boy whose bladder's starting to get more and more full and he's just learning how to--he literally starts to rock himself while he plays Legos, because he's feeling discomfort, and, "I want to finish my Lego castle, and--" but rocking has nothing to do with your bladder. It has to do with making a kid feel better regulated, 'cause he's getting signals that say, "Hey, I'm full," and so we do this all the time. You know, if you ever see Pete Carroll, the football coach for the Seattle Seahawks, chew gum during a football game, right, he's trying to regulate himself, and we all do this. We all have some form of pattern, repetitive, rhythmic activity that makes us feels regulated. It could be walking, running, swimming, music, could be needlework, could be art, and different people are kind of different and develop different preferences, but as an educator, the great thing is that you can start using this in your classroom to take kids that might be dysregulated and start to make them feel more regulated, and so if you start your classroom with four minutes of pattern, repetitive, rhythmic activity-- it could be breathing. It could be, you know, you do a little bilateral movement. It could be jumping jacks. It depends on the age of the child and so forth. You could use a little music, hip-hop music if you're a little older, but if you start the class that way, more kids are gonna be ready for business, and then, if every ten, 15 minutes, you have a little two-minute somatosensory break, you can reset these kids who are starting to get dysregulated, and, again, these are one of the things that we try to use in this neurosequential model is help educators figure out what kinds of regulatory tools using rhythm they can bring into their classroom. We have schools that we've worked with that have gone from 500 referrals for behavioral problems a month to two a month, and it really is because the school, the teachers, understand what's underneath the behaviors. They learn how to coregulate rather than codysregulate, so instead of stepping forward and raising their voice and wagging their finger, they learn to lower their voice, step back, give the child a little bit of time and space, and I know that sounds really very overly simplistic, but just by doing that, you can decrease restraints and critical incidents in your setting by at least 30%.

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(Describer) The Neurosequential Model Network. Neurosequential.com BDPerry (P-E-R-R-Y) .com Additional materials: www.BDPerry.com/handouts Research: www.BDPerry.com/research On Twitter: @BDPerry @Neurosequential Copyright 2020 Public Media Connect. Accessibility provided by the U.S. Department of Education.

Accessibility provided by the U.S. Department of Education.