10.1 Introduction
This chapter offers two sets of reflections in response to the vision for a more integrated approach to supporting children who experience toxic stress. In the first, Aimee describes the reflective ‘standing back’ needed when thinking about a child’s needs and how they might be catered for in a mainstream school. The second is from Elena, who runs projects with children from traumatic backgrounds in Sicily, using arts, stories and yoga to help children explore the stresses they experience. Both examples illustrate the importance of starting conversations about the biology of stress, facing up to emotionally challenging circumstances, and making adjustments to a child’s school day when we notice signs of toxic stress. The manifesto argues that knowledge of stress can transform our classrooms because the starting point for all education is the emotional health of the child – before we get to reading, writing and maths!
10.2 Practitioner Wisdom from Cambridge, UK (by Aimee Durning)
The University of Cambridge Primary School (UCPS) has the development of compassionate citizens at the heart of its curriculum design. Our aim is to nurture the whole child by considering their mental wellness, physical being and their academic knowledge (and where necessary we aim to nurture the child’s family also). As educators, we look to research to support our pedagogical thinking. However, we can only learn so much from a textbook, webinar or an in-person training session. Sometimes knowledge and understanding comes through observation and empathetical attunement; that is, practitioner wisdom. As Sarah Temple and Isabelle Butcher state in their manifesto, there can be no separation of people’s emotional stories from their academic or social lives.
In most classrooms, there is usually a student who poses a conundrum: Why do they react in this or that way? Why is writing so difficult for them? How can I help their speech and language development? As we near the holidays why is their behaviour escalating? All of these questions require moments of reflection, as well as conversations with previous teachers or special educational needs coordinators. Together we must think about the child’s lived experience; whether they have secure or insecure attachments, any potential adverse childhood experiences (ACEs), and their physical and mental wellness. The list goes on. So, why do Temple and Butcher advocate a focused understanding on stress and the biological impacts of stress? And why is it a teacher’s responsibility? Maybe these are obvious questions to the reader. But in a 6-hour school day, teachers face numerous, sometimes competing, claims on their time! Educators need to become behaviour detectives. Detectives trained in the scientific knowledge of toxic stress and stress responses. These behaviour detectives require a kind and loving heart and deep understanding that ‘Kids do well when they can’ (Greene, Reference Greene1999).
How do we go about developing these detective qualities at the University of Cambridge Primary School? Firstly, we work to promote the power of relationships and non-violent communication (Rosenberg, Reference Rosenberg2002). To achieve this, we work with an educational coach to understand how teachers can coach children through difficult times whilst simultaneously nurturing the child’s self-regulation (skills which promote autonomy and an understanding of the child’s unique behavioural responses). Second, we choose the language we use very carefully. For example we prefer to think about self-regulation as co-regulation. We try and resist naming children’s behaviour in negative terms (e.g. a meltdown, or being naughty or rude), but rather as an expression of particular needs. Third, we work as collaborators: we support one another (child and adult/adult and child) to find ways through when our stress responses become too much. We take the time to sit alongside the child and wait until the time is right to unpick their feelings and needs. Fourth, we embed knowledge about emotional health in the curriculum. The biology of stress is a teachable body of knowledge, and we teach students about emotions and the mind, as well as the body’s reaction to stress. For example we use Daniel Siegel’s (Reference Siegel2012) hand model to demonstrate to children that when their emotions get very big, they sometimes ‘flip their lid’, and we help them to recognise these feelings in their own bodies before an episode of ‘lid flipping’. For our younger children we use Lambie’s (Reference Lambie2022) resources from Skylark, as mentioned in the manifesto. In our nursery and reception classes, we use accessible and developmentally appropriate books to explain emotions and the feelings children experience. This openness, curiosity and teaching of emotions has created a culture of care and understanding between staff, pupils and parents/caregivers, which over time has fostered a community of reciprocal care and compassion. For educators, it is important we link this understanding to academic and/or specialist knowledge, providing a research-informed platform to share our work with others and exploit the benefit of those who have developed supportive strategies in other schools.
Finally, for the team at the UCPS, practitioner knowledge has been built over several years of professional development (PD). For example our team was given an in-person PD session from Cambridgeshire Virtual Schools. The role of the virtual school is to support educational settings for children who have experienced or are experiencing the care system. The work of virtual schools – in keeping with Temple and Butcher’s manifesto – focuses on listening and being attuned to children’s behaviour, on pausing, noticing and describing children’s manifestations of stress during moments of crisis. As a school, this session strengthened our work as ‘emotions detectives’ – tapping into children’s emotional rhythms each day and noticing patterns and triggers for explosive behaviours. We were encouraged to consider the child’s so-called window of tolerance. To understanding emotional rhythms (e.g. a child’s heightened emotions when they are hungry or if someone touches their belongings), children and educators must work together to notice these challenging moments and find strategies to manage them – say, through strongly formed, emotionally validating relationships.
Through the Local Authority in Cambridgeshire, members of the school team, including senior leaders, teachers and teaching assistants, have attended the STEPS (Cambridgeshire Therapeutic Thinking Framework) training. This added another layer of understanding about the behaviours teachers are confronted with in school. The STEPS philosophy reminds us that all children should be given an equal opportunity to develop socially. This training provided the school with a script to use when supporting a child during a moment of crisis. The script removes all judgemental language, questions the child about their needs and requires the adult remain calm and offer the child time to respond. The script is part of the emotions detective toolkit. It helped me engage with an autistic Year 6 child who was suffering a crisis – the child felt ignored and wanted his teacher to accompany him during the daily mile (a global initiative to run/walk a mile each day). The STEPS philosophy enabled me to carefully and reassuringly assist but not judge. How often have we as educators spared the time to sit alongside a child whilst they are volubly expressing their dissatisfaction? When do we ever stop and think about whether a child is developing socially and enjoying life? Have we come to the point where the curriculum dictates everything? Where there is only enough time in the school day to rattle through the timetable as we reduce the amount of play our young people experience?
Along with other local schools, the UCPS takes the time to attend to children’s mental wellness. Some children are provided with school-based emotional support sessions. These sessions are run by our learning coaches, who are trained as emotional literacy support assistants. Coaches provide afternoon sessions in a nurturing environment where children are listened to and their emotions are validated. By helping children understand their emotions, the sessions support them to manage their anger. Several children attend weekly sessions, and some attendees are neurodivergent. Some children display overwhelming behaviours, and for some, toxic stress causes them to shut down, preventing them from coping with the demands of the school day (and as some parents report, unable to cope with the demands of home).
When attempting to understand the science of stress, but also practitioner experiences, educators can engage with external knowledge exerts. Studio 3 is an organisation that proposes an approach to managing challenging behaviour known as the low-arousal approach – appropriate for dealing with children and young people suffering from toxic stress. Its director Professor Andrew McDonnell’s (Reference McDonnell2020) ‘The Reflective Journey: A Practitioner’s Guide to the Low Arousal’ offers insight into the science behind challenging behaviour due to traumatic experiences (understanding about cortisol and adrenaline). McDonnell acknowledges that the playfulness, acceptance, curiosity and empathy (PACE) approach is a close fit to the low-arousal approach. He discusses the low-arousal approach as non-confrontational and person centred, as opposed to a strict zero-tolerance behaviour strategy that does not take individual experiences into consideration. I would also recommend, for anyone who wishes to develop their behaviour management strategies, the work of Louise Bomber, Gerry Diamond, Jarlath O’Brien and Gareth Morewood (Studio 3).
To implement the low-arousal approach, practitioners must show bravery, courage, calmness and empathy. These attributes point towards the values and culture embodied at the UCPS:
Nurturing the vulnerable
Taking the time to discover the triggers that cause emotional outbursts
Finding ways to ensure children can flourish and learn alongside others, free from labels such as ‘nightmare child’, ‘naughty’ or ‘bad’
Sensitively unravelling particular stories so that new ones of success and hope can be spun
In Boxes 10.1 and 10.2 are two stories associated with understanding toxic stress and meeting individual needs (and family needs). Billy and Jonny (both pseudonyms) represent typical experiences working with children living with toxic stress. Both stories contain insights into the ways of overcoming it.
Billy joined our school at the beginning of Year 2 (ages six to seven). We had been briefed by virtual schools and his social worker about his difficulties in his previous school. Billy was trapped in a cycle of toxic stress. His previous school had attempted to educate him in isolation. Mostly he was supervised by a teaching assistant and a member of the local authority specialist teaching team. He was on a part-time timetable which meant he attended school for only two and a half hours a day. We were also told that Billy was a child with experience of the care system.
As a team we set in motion a plan to support Billy as he transitioned from part-time to full-time education. The plan included our most experienced team members who were required to support him. While the external professionals pushed for a support plan of rapid academic catch up, we pushed back and promoted a timetable of play and friendships. We knew that Billy had to learn to like himself and understand that he had many qualities hidden underneath the years of abuse and multiple layers of stress-inducing cortisol and adrenaline.
Slowly and lovingly, we nurtured his spirit. We arranged numerous playtimes for Billy – playtime with a peer in which the adults stepped back. We observed that Billy lacked basic play skills, but also that he was struggling with expressive language and that he had trust issues. On reflection, and after an informal chat with Gerry Diamond (trauma practitioner), we realised that Billy was not ready to access any sort of formal learning in the classroom. The classroom environment is a step too far for a child who is suffering from toxic stress. Instead, Billy would pop into class for a few minutes each day, to build and foster a sense of belonging.
To begin with, Billy was mostly unhappy and would spend his time in school either swearing at the adults or hitting them. With each occurrence, we offered love, patience and reassurance, explaining that it was Billy’s behaviour we did not like, not Billy himself, who we liked very much, and who would always be welcome at our school. We reinforced this with messages of trust, compassion and belonging. At the end of every day, we would tell him that we looked forward to seeing him in the morning or that we hoped he had a nice weekend and we would see him on Monday.
Gradually (over one academic year), his friendships and confidence grew. The team had helped to tackle and dismantle his toxic stress and Billy had learnt to recognise the signs of his stress and had developed strategies to help himself manage. At this point we knew that academic learning could begin.
Jonny joined us halfway through Year 1 (ages five to six). He came to us with very little spoken language and little knowledge of appropriate classroom behaviours. Once again, the team had to spend time observing him to understand Jonny and his quirky behaviours.
Jonny lives with his father and younger sister. His father had fought hard for his Educational, Health, Care Plan (EHCP) – a legal document outlining a plan for a child who has educational special needs and/or health needs – and is fully invested in his education. On occasion, Jonny’s father could become extremely cross and aggressive with the school team, shouting and swearing and ringing the school office several times during the day. His behaviour became impossible to manage and weighed heavily on the team. We noticed that Jonny’s behaviour often mirrored his father’s. At this point, our headteacher reminded us of toxic stress and fight, flight or freeze responses. Jonny’s father was in constant fight mode. The headteacher told us that there was only one way we could manage this volatile situation – by responding with kindness and understanding. We needed to be emotionally validating rather than judging, well aware that his father was not only in ‘flight/fight mode’ in individual moments but also fighting the wider system. Because by meeting Jonny’s father’s needs, we would inadvertently meet his. Following this conversation, there was a shift in mindset and the team set about cloaking Jonny’s father with compassion and empathy. For example, if there was a scheduled school event, we would make sure that we personally invited him. We would go out of our way to invite him into the school and make him feel welcome by fostering a sense of belonging. It was not always easy – sometimes it was very hard and our headteacher had to be tough and set new boundaries – always with kindness and not with the ego of his status of headteacher. Sometimes tough love was needed but always the father returned, this time less angry and ready to listen and also to express himself without the emotion.
The more we learn about toxic stress and trauma – from personal study or experience, or through external professionals, like virtual schools – the greater our empathic understanding and our ability to form strong, supportive relationships with children and their families. The previous examples have sketched out fairly conventional approaches. However, in the following case study, Elena Natale explains how the use of yoga, the provision of spaces for creative expression and an awareness of emotional stress in the lives of refugees were able to improve the emotional experiences children.
10.3 Practitioner Wisdom from Sicily, Italy (by Elena Natale)
Context
The Yoga Story Time project took place over one month during the summer holidays with Grade 1 children (ages six to seven) at the Goretti school – part of the Istituto Comprensivo Rita Atria in Catania. The Istituto Comprensivo is made up of seven school complexes ranging from nursery to middle school, totalling about 850 pupils. The Istituto is located in an ‘at risk’ area – with volumes of social housing, not enough green spaces and limited social infrastructure. Families differ in social background, culture and work activity, but the area is characterised by illiteracy, high migration, unemployment, disintegration and criminality. The Goretti school is in the village of Santa Maria Goretti.
Children in this area often suffer from economic, social and cultural deprivation and have fewer opportunities to participate in educational experiences outside school. The school therefore organises summer projects to keep the children engaged, to develop basic competencies and support the well-being of children and the wider community. The project was part of a three-year plan undertaken by the school to prevent early school dropouts and educational poverty.
Aims and Objectives
The Yoga Story Time project combined the power of picture book stories, the arts and the benefits derived from yoga to support the well-being of children and to develop collaboration and communication skills and competency in English. It encouraged children to express their emotions and, through knowledge of their own body, to communicate their personal needs and improve their physical, emotional and social well-being. Most of the children had had traumatic experiences or lived in unsafe situations that had led to toxic levels of stress, and therefore they found it very hard to interact with each other, to trust adults and to share anything about themselves. They also displayed challenging and violent behaviours, towards themselves and others.
The specific aims of the project were linked to the objectives and development of key competencies in the curriculum that can be found in the Italian Indicazioni Nazionali (Consiglio dell’Unione Europea, 2018; Ministero dell’Istruzione, dell’Università e della Ricerca, 2012). The focus was on developing the following skills:
Multilingual skills: to develop children’s ability to understand and communicate orally in the English language
Personal and social skills: to foster children’s emotional and mental well-being and improve their ability to relate to others and to take care of their emotions
Motor and physical skills: to learn to understand one’s body, to stay active and develop fundamental movement skills, to recognise and live according to principles that promote psycho-physical well-being
Structure
Through this project, children participated in creative activities, inspired by the following picture books:
Be Who You Are by Todd Parr
The Colour Monster by Anna Llenas
Here We Are by Oliver Jeffers
Same, Same but Different by Jenny Sue Kostecki-Shaw
The books were chosen because they all had similar themes, such as belonging, identity, care towards others and the environment, and the understanding and expression of feelings. To facilitate children’s engagement with the themes of the books I integrated interactive and creative activities, movement-based exploration and reflective discussion. The lessons usually began with dynamic reading sessions – interactive storytelling where children enacted scenes, mimed key events and embodied characters from the narrative. Following this, thematic exploration was facilitated through the use of educational aids such as flashcards, vocabulary games and creative crafts, aimed at deepening comprehension and fostering a closer connection with the text. At this point, children were ready to delve deeper into the meaning of the stories – not through words but rather through their bodies. I introduced students to yoga poses and breathwork that aligned with key story elements and emotions. This embodied exploration provided children with a sensory experience of the story’s themes in a safe and natural manner, creating opportunities for deeper understanding. Only after engaging with the narrative on a physical level did we move onto discussions. Here, children were encouraged to share their thoughts, draw connections to their personal experiences and derive meaningful insights from the story. To make them feel more at ease, I encouraged the children to communicate in their native language, fostering a sense of comfort and enabling more authentic expression. However, to encourage language development, I led all the activities in English, I repeated what they said in English and I encouraged them to use key vocabulary we had learnt.
Some of the questions we discussed were, What makes us happy? How should we react when we experience negative emotions? What are the different ways to express ourselves and our feelings? How are we similar and different to others? What makes us who we are? How can we respect ourselves and others?
After reading The Colour Monster, children created small ‘feeling monster’ puppets out of paper cups and pipe cleaners. By encouraging children to represent their emotions by drawing on the puppets, they were able to reflect on their feelings and talk about them with more distance. I then asked them to act out, using their puppets, situations where they feel those emotions, an activity that revealed how children need the space to process their stress and negative experiences. The puppet provided this space insofar as the children did not feel they were talking directly or entirely about themselves.
To explore the messages of the book Same, Same but Different, children were invited to explore the question, In what ways are we the same as one another, and in what ways are we different? The children were encouraged to think about their identity by representing their likes, dislikes and dreams on a puzzle piece. They then worked collaboratively to put the pieces together and reflected on how even though each piece was different and unique, they all fitted in to create the puzzle. Through this activity they realised they had much more in common than they thought, and this helped to establish a mutual acceptance. The children also painted their handprints. Getting them to compare their hands with one another illustrated that no matter where people are from – their family or social background – as humans, we are much more similar than we think.
In addition to creating physical pieces of art, the children engaged in physical activities to reflect the texts they read. For example the children enacted with their bodies through yoga the people and animals from the book Here We Are. This was followed by a discussion about how we can live in symbiosis with nature, other people and animals and how we can develop healthy habits that benefit us and our surroundings.
Link between Yoga and Well-Being
If we accept the manifesto pledge to reconnect the emotional health of children to the purpose of education, a case can be made for using and practising yoga in schools. All around the world, research illustrates the positive effects of yoga on children’s learning and cognition, physical and mental health, emotional development and behaviour (Khalsa and Butzer, Reference Khalsa and Butzer2016; Khunti et al., Reference Khunti2022). Many studies start by identifying the differences between yoga and physical education and explore the benefits yoga can have when integrated in the curriculum. This research is still developing in terms of its methodologies, sample sizes, assessments of long-term impact and systematic analysis. However, the results are promising and call for further explorations.
In Yoga Education for Children, Swami Satyananda Saraswati (Reference Saraswati1999) and others explore the value of yoga in education, explaining how it can be used as therapy, and give examples of practices suitable for use with children. They state, ‘Yoga is a form of complete education that can be used with all children, because it develops physical stamina, emotional stability and intellectual and creative talents. It is a unified system for developing the balanced, total personality of the child’ (p. 9). As an aspect of children’s education, yoga can have an impact on their physical, emotional, mental and creative development.
At the physical level, yoga can help children develop good posture and work on their motor skills, enhancing balance, agility and coordination. It can also support the development of muscular and skeletal structure. Yoga and breathing techniques aid in maintaining hormonal balance and equilibrium between the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems. Another advantage of yogic practices, particularly pranayama, is helping children learn to utilise their lungs to their full capacity. Yoga is fully inclusive and allows children with physical disabilities to participate as it does not require the same physical endurance, quick movements or strength as other forms of exercise.
At the emotional and behavioural level, yoga can help children develop a toolkit to balance their various energies. Yoga works on the brain and the endocrine system, thus facilitating emotional harmony and increasing concentration capacity. Yoga requires discipline and can help children regulate and channel their emotions.
At the mental level, yoga can stimulate both brain hemispheres, helping children develop various learning skills such as memory, creativity, concentration and reasoning. By helping children become more aware and conscious of what is happening in their minds, we can help them understand how to develop mental habits for learning. Through various asanas or nature-inspired positions and visualisation techniques, children are also encouraged to imagine, experiment and be creative.
Observed Impact on Children
The Yoga Story Time project is focused on addressing children’s needs, starting from their physiological needs and moving to the self-actualisation needs described in Maslow’s (Reference Maslow1943) hierarchy of needs. By observing children’s behaviours, I realised they needed to feel safe, to be loved and encouraged and to be listened to. The use of yoga and stories created the space for children’s needs to be met.
Using picture books helped to tap into children’s imagination and introduce new ideas in a creative and child-centred way – providing a stimulus to spark dialogue and to capture children’s attention with follow-up creative activities.
Being experiential in nature, yoga helped the children to be involved in their learning and explore key themes related to their lives at both physical and mental level. It proved to be a useful tool to help the children work on themselves, starting with their outermost aspect, the body, through physical postures and gradually moving inwards through breathing and meditation techniques to regulate their emotions. Through guided meditations and visualisations on the themes of the books, the children were encouraged to use their senses and their imagination to understand the themes and messages of the stories and make connections with their own lives.
On a practical level, the use of stories and yoga helped the children interact with each other more positively, take part in shared activities and games, use nicer language when communicating with each other, react less abruptly and violently to situations and respect each other and their personal spaces. By the end of the project, children had opened up and were communicating with more confidence: they could talk about themselves and their future hopes, they shared personal stories and they started describing themselves and their surroundings in more positive terms.
Conclusion
This project highlights the role that stories and yoga can have on children’s well-being. Integrating reading-for-pleasure opportunities, mindfulness, yoga and other creative practices into the curriculum could have multiple benefits for a child’s holistic development. By giving children the chance to practice yoga, we are developing the whole human being, empowering children to become more aware and balanced and helping them regulate their emotions and understand themselves, their body and their learning.
Over to You
In their manifesto, Temple and Butcher invite us to consider how the biology of stress is an essential component of the educational journey of children. They also explain how toxic stress can irrevocably destroy children’s life chances. The two preceding cases show the different ways practitioners have responded to these challenges. Both examples reveal the emotional intelligence and sensitivity of children and their families. However, neither provides complete answers. As we end this practitioners’ response section, we invite the reader to reflect on the following questions, drawing from their own wisdom and practices in their own classrooms, schools and social, cultural and educational contexts:
Which family in your education context could be experiencing stress? What type of stress? How do the behaviours suggest they are in stress? Could it be toxic stress?
Are there children in your class or school or youth group who seem to find social interactions really difficult? What do you know about their life stories? What do you know about their family’s life stories?
Where do children fit in and stick out? How has your school adapted to provide pathways for families that find school, formal contexts and social interactions particularly difficult?
What is your response to stress? Could you have lived through a period of toxic stress? If so, how could you get the support you need to evolve the ways you respond?
How do we start conversations about the biology of stress, and how do we incorporate what we know into lesson plans, curriculum and behaviour policy as well as into our communities? A culture of professional learning and understanding needs to be nurtured, maintained and constantly revisited.
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