Trauma and How it Has Affected Teaching During the COVID-19 Pandemic
Teaching students under normal circumstances is challenging. Teachers juggle many roles as they motivate, engage and develop personal connections with their students to keep their students’ minds open to learning and developing. But what happens when the students and teachers alike are going through an overwhelming stressor as with the current pandemic? How does the situation affect student behavior, motivation and academic achievement? Here is a brief explanation of the mechanisms of stressors leading to trauma, as well as strategies to navigate the road ahead.
Trauma: A Definition
Throughout the day, we experience stressors and adverse experiences. However, when an experience rises to an intensity or duration that overwhelms an individual’s capacity to deal with the situation, it is identified as traumatic. It is important to recognize that each individual will react to a situation in a different way, leading some to become traumatized and others not. There is a classic example of a person who is hiking in the woods and comes across a bear on the trail. In the scenario, a person experiences fear as they are alerted to danger. In the immediacy of the situation the person goes through the adaptive process of shutting down higher level cognitive functions which would take too long to access. Instead the limbic system, or the reptilian part of the brain, is activated to increase the heart rate, provide extra oxygen to the body, shut down digestive processes, and release adrenaline.
The process of activating the limbic system and shutting down the higher level cognitive processes primes the body to fight, flee or freeze from the danger. Typically a body will return to resting state about 20 minutes after the threat is removed and the individual experiences a sense of safety. However, when someone is faced with a chronic threat, the reptilian part of the brain goes into overdrive and detects threats that are not there. The person will be easily and chronically triggered and will react from a dysregulated state of fear, anxiety and stress. Over time, people in this state may develop emotional symptoms such as anxiety, depression or low motivation. They may also experience physical symptoms such as increased headaches, stomach aches, fatigue and muscle pain.
What does that mean for the students and teachers?
When a person experiences chronic, overwhelming stressors as in a pandemic, they may become traumatized. As with other experienced traumas, the body works to adaptively shut down or reduce the higher level critical thinking process to respond to the perceived immediate threat. While this process serves to protect the person from danger, it also serves to prevent students from learning new material the way they have in the past. The shutting down of higher level processes also leads students to react from their reptilian, reactive states of irritability, defiance and dysregulation, and presents as overall behavioral issues.
For students to become fully available to learn again, they must be able to reconnect to their higher level thinking and regulation states. This is accomplished by helping the students experience a feeling of safety and helping them calm down their nervous systems. To do so, teaching and learning goals may need to be slowed down, and more calming activities and physical outlets integrated. Once their nervous systems reach a calmer state, their higher level cognitive function will slowly return.
Here are some strategies when teaching stressed
and traumatized children.
Reduce learning and curriculum expectations while student cognitive processes are “offline”
Increase recess and gym times as outlets for their traumatic energy
Incorporate breathing exercises to calm their nervous systems
Take mask breaks by learning outdoors when feasible (if permitted)
Encourage journaling and writing
Integrate imagery
Engage their imagination
Create time throughout the day for reduced stimulation or quieter activities (i.e. dim lights, quiet time, or reading books quietly etc.)
Incorporate nature based activities to help with grounding
Identify exciting challenges and prize systems to encourage overall motivation
Integrating multi sensory activities and movement throughout class
Incorporate drama, humor, and laughter
Foster support, compassion and collaboration between teachers and students
Know that it may be a slow process for students to return to baseline learning and functioning. Allow yourself to reduce your expectations and be OK with slower progress. Permit yourself to notice and reflect on the small progress that is made. These seemingly small steps forward are actually larger gains toward a mentally healthier tomorrow.
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Written by: Rivky Steen, LGPC
Photo Credit: Max Fischer, cottonbro, Kindel Media, and SHVETS Production
Date of Download: 10/21/2021
