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(Describer) An empty classroom appears. Stray papers and pencils sit on desks. Title: "Insights for Educators: Supporting Mental Wellness with Bruce D. Perry, M.D., Ph.D."

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(Describer) Text: "Dr. Bruce Perry and his colleagues are pioneers in bringing advances in neuroscience to the clinic and the classroom. He was one of the first to study the effects of stress and trauma on the brain. This collection is Part Two of the 'Insights for Educators' series. You can view Part One, 'Stress, Trauma, and the Brain,' at pbslearn ingmedia.org."

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(Describer) "We asked Dr. Perry how understanding brain science can help teachers in the classroom." Title: "Episode 2: Creating a Safe Environment." Dr. Perry, a white man with gray hair and glasses, appears.

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So we've talked a lot about how important regulation is in opening up the cortex so that you can both learn, put new stuff in your head, and then retrieve things that were previously put in your head, which is really the hallmark of a good educational experience. Regulation is brought about in a couple of different ways. We talk about this a lot when we teach educators, when we teach people who do therapeutic work, people who are parenting. Fortunately, there's lots of ways to become regulated, and unfortunately, different people get regulated in different ways. So this is a challenge when you have an aggregate care environment like a classroom. In the classroom, you're gonna have some kids who find one activity regulating, and another activity not so regulating. This is... This is part of the challenge of creating a simple singular plan to make your classroom regulated. But a couple of things that you can keep in mind. Number one, when the brain is not aware of what's about to happen, it gets dysactivated, it gets stressed. So unpredictability creates stress, which means predictability makes you feel safer. And so one of the most important things you can do is have aspects of predictability about the daily schedule, about what to expect, about how to build routines and class rituals around transitions, around projects, and so forth. And I know teachers tend to be very good at this. Now, the dilemma is, sometimes something will happen that will change the routine. And so when that does happen, the key to manage that and keep people regulated is communication. Tell kids what to expect. Tell them what the difference will be. Remind them about the fact that you will be able to get back to your routine, but this is going to be a change. And so, simple things. Again, most educators do a really good job with this. You know, they have a written schedule. There's routines. There's class rules. It may be up on the wall. It may be in their, you know, their takeaway materials they have. So this is a really interesting thing that most educators have seen. You can see the impact of no sense of routine in the first couple of weeks of school, before kids have built in what the routine is for their classroom. And so, when you first come in, and they're learning the routine, it's harder for them to learn. So all educators know that, the first couple of weeks of school, you don't really introduce a lot of new content. And that's because kids don't learn very well when they're dysregulated, because they're seeing new kids, and there's new routines, there's new expectations, there's new rules. But after a couple of weeks, and the kids are familiar, the routines are familiar. Then they're ready to learn, right? Oddly enough, some of the most regulating things are things that we tend to not like kids to do. What we know about the brain is that when we experience pattern repetitive rhythmic activity, or somato, which means body, and sensory means sensory, but from the external world, when these things are pattern repetitive and rhythmic, we feel regulated. So we actually are going to learn better when we move. And I know it's hard to have a classroom that's moving, but if you have pattern repetitive rhythmic opportunities over the course of your instructional minutes, either by yoking somatosensory activity to cognitive presentation of content or by having somatosensory breaks, you're gonna be much more effective. It's gonna be a much more regulated classroom. And I think that there are ways to do this. There's some very, very creative ways to, for example, teach math using hip hop, or to start the class with three minutes of deep breathing and stretching that are... Those are somatosensory activities that are regulating.

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(Describer) In a classroom, a teacher stands before students sitting at desks. Text: "Managing Class Escalations."

You know, part of the dilemma that educators will face is that sometimes you don't see a child on their way up, escalating, and then all of a sudden they reach a tipping point, and they're completely inaccessible, completely acting out, completely out of control. And a couple of things happen. One is it dysregulates you, right? So if there's a teacher, you're like, "Oh my God, what am I gonna do?" It dysregulates the kids, right? The rest of the children in the classroom are impacted by that. And then it impacts the child who's sort of overwhelmed. And managing these crisis situations is really one of the hardest things I think a lot of educators have to do. I can't give you a perfect formula for solving this every time, but I can tell you a couple of guidelines that I think are really important. The first thing is... and again, this is sort of a preventative thing, is that the number and the intensity of these episodes will be far fewer if you actually have proactively put in place regulating elements to your classroom. So you will predictably see far fewer behavioral disruptions and outbursts if there's proactive regulatory stuff. Now, even when you have that, sometimes you have these events. The key thing, the first thing is to actually make sure that you don't get swept up into the vortex of dysregulation, because it's so easy to kind of end up being influenced by that dysregulated child in a way that makes you start to add to the dysregulation, and you end up co-escalating each other into this mess. I've seen some very creative ways that different schools have handled this. One is that there was a, there's a school that I'm aware of where, when there was the need for help when this was going on, they had a pager, or they would text, and then there was a floating educator, floating teacher, who could come in and basically help. And that person could focus in on the child who was dysregulated and then allow the teacher of the class to both calm themselves down and then return to focusing on the rest of the kids in the classroom. The second thing that I think is really, really helpful when you have a situation like this is to have the option to give the child a place to have their meltdown. And I know that that sounds kind of, it's easy to say, it's hard to do, but what most educators will tell you is that there are a handful of kids who will predictably be the ones that are having these meltdowns. And if you, in a collaborative way, when they're not dysregulated, talk with them about, "What do you think would help you when you're starting to feel dysregulated? What do you think it is? Do you wanna go do video games? Do you wanna go for a walk? Do you want to go, you know... Do you just want us to leave you? What would help?" And so if there is some collaboratively arranged solution to a child starting to feel dysregulated, rather than the teacher having to keep an eye on that child, the child themselves will essentially recognize, "I don't wanna be here. I don't want to do this. I wanna go to the teacher, and have permission to say to the teacher, 'I need to go to the sensory room,' or, 'Can you help me take a walk?', or whatever." And because it's been prearranged, the child has control over the process in a way that frequently takes a lot of the fuel out of the escalation, and then they can go do whatever is regulating for them. And we've... We've seen places where they've done that sort of thing, used collaborative problem solving with that kind of set of choices, and they've gone from hundreds of incidents per year in some classrooms down to basically two or three. And so, again, that may not help in the moment, but if you know that you're gonna have a few kids like that, it's really helpful to have an intentional, proactive, collaborative problem solving process so that you can help avoid some of that stuff.

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(Describer) Students work together around a table. A teacher stands nearby. Text: "The Key Is Safety."

The key in all of this stuff is safety. You know, the human beings, and really, all mammals and all animals, basically, when they feel regulated and safe, will choose to explore the world. And this is what education's all about, right? You're exploring new ideas. You're exploring new relationships. You're exploring new movements. You know, all the kinds of things that we learn, all the way from pre-K up to high school, we're introducing kids to new things. But the human being does not want to internalize new things when they feel threatened. So when you feel threatened and overwhelmed and dysregulated, disrespected and not seen, you retreat into yourself and into what you know, what's familiar, what you already know, what you already believe, and your willingness to go out and learn new things is diminished. But if somebody feels safe, and the environment's made familiar, and there's a certain consistency and predictability, after a while, everybody wants to go do new things. So if you're an educator and you wanna create an environment where kids want to learn, you create an environment where kids feel safe. And when they feel safe, they will leave their comfort zone and explore these new ideas that you're introducing. And this is really, again, the hallmark of an optimal developmental environment, an optimal healing environment, an optimal educational environment, an optimal parenting environment, is safety. It's bedrock.

(Describer) Text: "Safe School Environment. Build predictability into the school day. Communicate with students if the routine changes. Patterned, repetitive and rhythmic activities promote learning. When a Student has a Melt-down: Prevention is key! Have a solution that has been collaboratively pre-arranged with the student. Have the option of a place where a dysregulated child can go. Don't get swept up into the escalation."

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

(Describer) Accessibility provided by the US Department of Education.