Know

Take a moment to think about your work with young children and youth. What are some of the emotions that you feel? Do you feel energized and resourceful, or maybe frustrated and overwhelmed by some of what you face? 

Teaching and caring for young children is important work. Teachers shape the tone of the classroom, model kindness and problem solving, and help children learn to manage emotions and gain the social skills needed to form healthy relationships.

Teaching and caring for young children is also emotionally demanding work. Classrooms provide opportunities for joy and laughter, but they also involve responding to children’s negative emotions, managing relationships between children and with parents, and dealing with the need to be constantly “on” and vigilant when it comes to children’s safety and learning. Many early-childhood teachers report feeling stressed, and some report feelings of depression.

It is not surprising that researchers find that, beyond education and professional development training, there is a link between teachers’ social-emotional well-being and the development of children in their care. Researchers also have found links between teachers’ coping strategies—how they manage stress—and job burnout.

Thus, as a teacher and caregiver, you have two powerful reasons for taking care of yourself: It makes a difference to your own physical and mental well-being, and it makes a difference for the children in your classroom.

One way to think about strategies for attending to your social-emotional health is to divide these strategies into two categories: practices that are preventive and those that are helpful in situations that are more acute. Much like the daily brushing and flossing of our teeth and what we do when we crack a tooth, both are important to our health.

The Social Emotional Learning for Teachers course is designed to equip you with both types of strategies as well as an understanding of how stress, and the coping strategies you use to deal with stress, affect your social-emotional and physical well-being. 

The Nature of Stress

Stress is defined as a physical or emotional factor that causes bodily or mental tension. It is a normal part of human life—a little stress keeps us from being bored and checked out. But too much stress in a short amount of time or stress that is constant or chronic has a negative impact on our physical and mental health. In care and education settings, stress can affect how we interact with children and families, how we treat our colleagues, and how much satisfaction and commitment we feel when it comes to our work.

When we experience stress, our body reacts as a whole—both mentally and physically. And it makes no difference if the source is personal or professional, as both are intertwined and mutually influential. Stress is accompanied by changes in our physiology and our behavior. Stressors, those things which cause this response, may be experienced differently by each person. Think about giving a speech at a community meeting. You might be comfortable in front of a crowd and welcome the opportunity to share your thoughts about a particular issue, or you may be someone who experiences a near panic attack at the very thought of speaking in front of a group. This individual variation in responding to the event highlights two very important aspects of stress. First, its meaning is unique to the person experiencing it, and this interpretation drives a particular response. Second, the thought alone of a stressful event can be enough to trigger a stress response. Anticipating a difficult conversation with an angry parent or some worrisome personal circumstance can bring about a wide range of reactions.

Stress and Health

“The diseases that plague us now are ones of slow accumulation of damage—heart disease, cancer, cerebrovascular disorders. … We have come to recognize the vastly complex intertwining of our biology and our emotions, the endless ways in which our personalities, feelings, and thoughts both reflect and influence the events in our bodies…extreme emotional disturbances can adversely affect us…stress can make us sick.”—Robert M. Sapolsky, 2004

From an evolutionary perspective, stress provides us an advantage that can be traced back to our ancient ancestors when life in a cave came with lots of threats. We evolved so that when faced with immediate danger, the brain prepares a reaction: muscles are primed, attention is diverted away from distractions and narrowed toward the source of danger, and all our systems are steeled for the fight or flight response. Mission critical—survive the threat!

In our modern world, survival has moved beyond overcoming the physical threats of our ancestors. Psychological stressors common across workplace settings (e.g., managing difficult behaviors in the classroom) and home life (e.g., arguments with romantic partners or children) confront us daily and challenge our ability to remain relaxed and focused on day-to-day tasks, and our brain responds to the perceived “threats” as if our lives depend on surviving them.

Although evolution has positioned us to react to danger, both physical and psychological, with a sophisticated set of bodily reactions, this state of readiness is not without consequence. Continued engagement in the “stress struggle” depletes physiological resources of the body and may lead to physical and mental health issues and accelerated aging. On the physical side, stress has been linked to lowered immune system functioning, cardiovascular diseases, respiratory problems, problems with weight control, sleep dysfunction, gastrointestinal disorders, and chronic muscle tension. Psychologically, stress is linked to mental health concerns such as anxiety and depression. Furthermore, stress affects perception, cognitive processing, role functioning, morale, job satisfaction, and performance. Stress affects your body, mood, and behavior and, therefore, it affects those around you as well.

Stress and the Brain

Neuroscientific research has identified the various ways the brain directs our bodily responses, how the brain responds to the environment, and how it is shaped by it (neuroplasticity). This information has helped us understand the brain’s role in both conscious and nonconscious processes involved in behavior.

The brain works as the master organ that controls bodily functions and behaviors through a complex system of electrochemical signals distributed throughout the body via the various parts of the nervous system. In a sense, it is the air-traffic controller of our behavior.

One part of the nervous system, the autonomic nervous system, has two parts: the sympathetic nervous system and the parasympathetic system. These two systems are complementary and work in opposition to keep the body functioning and to preserve life. Your sympathetic nervous system is activated by perceived threats in the environment (your brain interprets events as threatening or nonthreatening) and through a series of messages that call into play the “fight, flight, or freeze” response. When you experience fear, this system shuts down functions that are not necessary so the body systems can be engaged for defense. Typical sympathetic nervous system reactions include increased blood flow to muscles, increased heart rate, sweating, and pupil constriction. Bodily functions such as digestion are temporarily stopped as they are not needed for survival at that moment. The goal of the sympathetic nervous system is to protect your life from some immediate threat. It is a system that is designed for strategic short-term engagement and has been perfected through evolution.

The parasympathetic system is often referred to as the “rest and digest” portion of the autonomic nervous system. Once the immediate threat is removed, the sympathetic system functions slowly fade into the background and the parasympathetic system takes over. The body returns to a calm state and restarts the functions that rebuild physical health and wellness. Functions return, such as digestion, muscle repair, and cognitive processes, including creative thinking and problem solving. The body is free from stress and is able to relax.

The autonomic nervous system is an elegant, evolutionary design that has been perfected to maximize survival. Both humans and other mammals have this instinctive brain-initiated response, which occurs outside of consciousness. Humans and other mammals respond to physical threats in the immediate environment and are equipped to evade or fight-off a threat and eventually return to a pre-stressed state within minutes. Human brains are far more sophisticated than those of other mammals, and we are able to use the power of thought and reason to identify a stressor, evaluate its level of threat, and determine how we should respond. Changing your mind changes your biochemistry, your physical and emotional feelings, and possibly, your behavior. How we view a situation matters.

With higher brain power comes the ability not only to consider immediate threat events but also to consider those in the past and the potential for threat events in the future. Whether the threat is real or imagined, psychological or physical, in the present, past or future, our stress response may be the same. And it may start automatically without our conscious recognition of it.

Prolonged stressors lead to a prolonged stress response; in turn, the physiological stress response may be activated repeatedly or the system may fail to turn off the unnecessary reactions. In this way, humans overuse a system that was designed for short-term use. Scientists now believe that an individual’s personal vulnerability to heightened or prolonged stress reactions may be related to how one views external events. Research supports the notion that variability among people in perception of experiences as stressful is linked to the way individuals view the thing, event, or threat. One’s view of the world and events in it influences physiological responses. Through the use of resilience strategies, we are in a stronger position to identify stressors and diminish their impact on our daily functioning.

Stress and Teachers, Caregivers

Teachers and caregivers working with young children often report a common set of stressors, and researchers have linked teacher stress to their behavior in the classroom. You may be facing some of those stressors that others often experience, or you may be experiencing stressors that are unique to your circumstances. This course will guide you through how to recognize, identify, and deal with stressors that you are experiencing. Some common sources of stress are:

• Personal life challenges
• Working conditions, such as pay, promotion opportunities, and facilities
• Relationships with administrators, co-workers, families, and children
• Children’s challenging behaviors
• A lack of autonomy, control, and motivation
• A lack of stress-reduction resources and strategies

What is Resilience?

Resilience is often thought of as the ability to bounce back from adversity and to overcome obstacles in moving toward one’s goals. Within the world of teaching and caregiving, resilience is a personal quality that allows one to remain committed to teaching despite ongoing challenges in the workplace. It is a sense of personal control and the abilities to commit to learning outcomes and to manage our emotions and behaviors.

Teachers’ and caregivers’ resilience also includes the ability to manage the uncertainties that present themselves in the course of teaching and to maintain social-emotional balance in the classroom and beyond. Building and maintaining this resilience involves several principles. First, resilience is composed of many strategies that can be learned, and what strategies work is uniquely personal—not all strategies work for all people. Second, resilience waxes and wanes across the life span and across careers, making it important to build a personal collection of strategies that can be used during times that are particularly challenging. Third, culture influences the choice of appropriate strategies within various contexts —another reason for a broad collection of strategies. Fourth, resilience strategies support social-emotional learning in teachers and caregivers and in students. Finally, recent research finds that job-related stress in teachers is related to stress reactions among students in the classroom, which suggests a “contagion” effect. Thus, modeling personal resilience may reduce the likelihood of stress-related behaviors being mimicked and increase the likelihood of resilient behaviors being adopted through a modeling effect.

See

Watch this brief video for a better understanding of why stress affects you.

Stress Response: Savior to Killer

Stanford University

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sPS7GnromGo

Do

Body-Mind Review Exercise

As you begin to work on managing your stress, it is helpful to have a baseline of stress-related symptoms that you experience. The frequency with which you experience symptoms is related directly to your ability to use resilience strategies and positive coping methods when needed. While it is impossible to control all stressful events and circumstances that face you, it is possible to identify how you react and under what circumstances those reactions occur. This review takes the first step of identifying how you are responding to typical stressors in your life and the different ways in which your body or mind is coping with those challenges. Keep in mind that each person’s response to stress is unique and may vary over time. The exercise here is designed to capture a snapshot of your functioning within the last month.

Review the statements below and reflect on whether each statement is accurate regarding your experience of stress in either your personal or professional world within the last month. You may not necessarily connect the following experiences with stress or with particular events, but recognizing that you experience them is the first step in managing their impact on your wellness and vitality.

Within the last month,

• I experienced tension in my head, shoulders or other body part.
• I felt tired most of the time.
• I often felt as if I hadn’t slept well.
• I experienced some problems related to eating.
• I felt tense and wound up.
• I noticed that I don’t seem to enjoy things as I used to.
• My self-care suffered because of other responsibilities.
• I noticed that my attitude is not as positive as it once was.
• It seemed to take me longer to complete even easy tasks.
• I wondered if I am competent in my role.
• I felt there was not enough time in the day to complete all the tasks on my “to-do” list.
• I relied on alcohol or other drugs such as aspirin to relieve tension.
• I observed that I was short-tempered or expressed frustration.
• I noted that my eating habits had changed.
• I attempted to avoid any stress-related issues or situations.
• I wanted to be left alone.

Having identified the ways in which you typically respond to stressors, keep these in mind as you move through the various activities of this course. Work to implement strategies when you notice that tension headache or feel tense when you face challenging behavior in the classroom. While no one can live a stress-free life (and as you learned, that would not be very adaptive), we can minimize the impact of stressors that are essentially psychological in nature and disruptive to positive functioning and self-enjoyment.

Completing this Course

For more information on what to expect in this course, and a list of the accompanying Learn, Explore, and Apply resources and activities offered throughout the lessons, visit the Focused Topics Social Emotional Learning for Teachers Course Guide.

Please note the References & Resources section at the end of each lesson outlines reference sources and resources to find additional information on the topics covered. As you complete lessons, you are not expected to review all the online references available. However, you are welcome to explore the resources further if you have interest, or at the request of your trainer, coach, or administrator.