self-regulation

1. Transforming Communities: A “Vision to Action” Self-Regulation Initiative www.self-regulation.ca and Education Meet; Supporting Safe and Caring Schools and Community Mental Health

2. Values/Beliefs and our Leadership Work • There are no throw-away kids and no throw-away schools • The overwhelming majority of the adults in our system come to work wanting to do the best job they can do • We need to work smarter together rather than harder alone • “Skill and Will” are not fixed assets. They can be influenced and increased by strategic action • Each school is in a different place in its development, level of success and sense of efficacy. Leadership is about taking the school from where it is to where it needs to be.

3. Self Regulation: A Working Definition “Different groups talk about the importance of the concept of self-regulationas it relates to their field. So we encounter everything from ‘emotion-regulation’ to ‘self-control’ to ‘self-regulated learning’. But the underlying or core concept of self-regulation refers to “the manner in which the brain maintains physiological stability through complex feedback mechanisms.” Dr. Stuart Shanker

4. What is Self-Regulation? • How effectively and efficiently a child deals with a stressor and then recovers from the effort • Ever time a child has a stressor the brain responds with processes that consume energy • This is followed by restorative processes to recover from this energy expenditure

5. The Difference between Self-Control and Self-Regulation • Two distinct concepts, with different conceptual histories: self-control and self-regulation • Self-control: Plato’s view of resisting temptation • Develop self-control in the same way as any muscle • Child who lacks self-control is somehow weak • Self-regulation seeks to understand the causes of problematic behaviors, not suppress them!

6. Coping with Complexity: The Self-Regulation Wheel Back Problems

7. Stress-Response Systems • Three core systems for responding to stress: • Social Engagement • Fight-or-Flight • Freeze There is a fourth, very worrying stage, dissociation, which is a last-ditch mechanism for dealing with excessive stress

8. Self-Regulation and Trauma • Working on self-regulation is especially important for children that have been traumatized, or raised by caregivers that have been traumatized • Shift from the Learning Brain to the Survival Brain • Chronic state of fight-or-flight, freeze, or even dissociation • Chronic fight-or-flight is extremely energy expensive, reducing child’s ability to pay attention, inhibit impulses, regulate mood, co-regulate

10. The Self-Regulation Matrix Calm Focused Alert

11. Driving Analogy helpful for understanding the subtle adjustments in energy expenditure involved in regulating attention • To maintain a speed of 100 km/hr we are constantly pressing and easing up on the gas depending on the state of the road, incline, wind speed etc. • Learning how to drive involves learning how to smoothly adjust the amount of gas or braking required for the current conditions

12. HYPER-ALERT/SOCIAL • Withdrawn from other students during parts or all of the day: during class, recess, lunch • Silliness, argumentative, difficulty with personal space • difficulty co-regulating • highly impulsive • poor assessment of, risk, consequences

13. FLOODED/COGNITIVE • Incoherent thoughts and communication • difficulty processing what someone else is saying • impaired short-term memory • impaired perception

14. Signs of Excessive Stress • Chronic hyper-arousal • Chronic hypo-arousal • Heightened stress reactivity • Increased sensitivity to pain (physical and emotional) • Reduced ability to regulate negative emotions • negative bias • reduced ability to read affect cues, show emotions • Reduced ability to hear human voice • Blunted reward system • Increased immune system problems

15. The Effects of Excessive Stress • heightened stress means child has to work much harder to pay attention • negative effects caused by falling further behind, being yelled at, having greater social problems, etc., exacerbate the drain on nervous system • leads to a chronic state of heightened anxiety

16. The Three Stages of Self-Regulation • Identify and reduce Stressors • Develop Self-Awareness (interoception and exteroception) • Develop self-regulating techniques, learning what to do to mitigate a stress response and what to avoid

17. Self-Regulation and Adolescents • Why do increasing numbers of teens have low frustration tolerance or heightened impulsivity? • These kids are often withdrawn and apathetic, what we refer to as hypo-alert. What is at the root of that demonstrated disengagement? • What strategies can educators use with such students “beyond behaviourism”?

18. Self-Regulation and Adolescents • What is the basic difference between teaching kids coping strategies and helping them learn how to self-regulate? • What can we as teachers do to change these teens’ trajectories?

19. Self-Regulation and Adolescents • Adolescents and trauma: How do we understand trauma versus life’s other challenges? • Is there a difference between direct and intergenerational trauma? • What can a teacher’s understanding of Secondary Altriciality mean for our work with secondary-age students

20. Lake Kathlyn video 11:53 – 14:53

21. A community of “learning detectives” (kids and adults) • Parent awareness and engagement • Influencing the shape of the day and the shape of the learning spaces • Progressive relationship with the medical profession and other agencies • Sharing the stories, celebrating the successes, one discovery and one self-regulating moment at a time Where to From Here? CSRI: Committing to a productive nexus between neuroscience and education

22. Join us on this learning journey via • The website: www.self-regulation.ca • The on-line book club coming this fall • A staff study/action research group • Recommending articles for colleagues via the website • Watching for the launch of the on-line “Matrix” tool Catch the Wave www.self-regulation.ca Again, and again I was amazed at students’ positive response to having input/control in their own learning/behaviour – this inquiry changed this dramatically for my students.