The Re-Set Process

Trauma-Informed Behavior Strategies

Dyane Lewis Carrere, Wynne Kinder

• Publisher: Brookes Publishing
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN: 9781681254197
• eBook ISBN: 9781681254203
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Behavioural Management

When students with histories of trauma struggle with self-regulation and challenging behaviors, traditional interventions often fall short. The educators on your staff need a clear and consistent trauma-informed process to help students re-regulate and return to learning—and that's what they'll find in this reader-friendly guide to the revolutionary Re-Set Process.

Developed by two seasoned educators who specialize in trauma-informed teaching, the Re-Set Process is a neuroscience-based approach to improving behavioral success in children from Grades K–8. This four-step process is structured yet flexible, refined through nearly a decade of field testing, and easy to integrate into any individual teacher's classroom or an entire school's student support system. Blending best practices from behavioral approaches, mindfulness practices, and trauma-informed care, the Re-Set Process not only addresses behavior, but also guides schools in meeting the neurological and attachment needs of dysregulated students, reducing barriers to social and academic success. This book is a vital resource for classroom teachers, school counselors, administrators, and other professional support personnel.

With this comprehensive guide to the Re-Set Process and its continuum of practice—from whole-class proactive approaches to individual student reactive approaches—educators will be able to:

• Understand the science of trauma, including its physiological and emotional impacts on children
• Interpret students' behavior through a trauma-informed lens
• Successfully implement all forms of the Re-Set Process with clear and specific step-by-step instructions
• See the Re-Set Process in action with case studies and insightful Notes from the Field
• Integrate the Re-Set Process with other behavior support efforts, including Multi-Tiered Systems of Support
• Address challenging behavior proactively and reactively
• Design classrooms effectively by creating predictability, protecting emotional safety, and nurturing relationships
• Build students' regulation skills with a wealth of activities and exercises
• Provide timely, specific behavioral feedback that promotes a positive classroom culture
• Integrate essential self-care strategies into the school day

PRACTICAL MATERIALS: Educators will have access to a complete package of more than 30 online downloads to help them implement the Re-Set Process, including planning forms, blank templates, activity sheets, and a book study guide suitable for individuals and groups.

WEBINAR: How Trauma Affects a Student's Psyche: What Educators Need to Know and Do

Section III

Trauma-Informed Behavior Practices

Section III addresses trauma-informed behavioral practices that support the Re-Set Process and that are appropriate for any trauma-informed school environment.

Section III Online Companion Materials

Help Flip Sign (blank template of Figure 8.1)

Basic Regulation Plan (blank template of Figure 9.5)

Intermediate Regulation Plan (blank template, online only)

Advanced Regulation Plan (blank template, online only)

HELPS Self-Care Plan (Figure 11.1)

Section III Resources Appendix A: Team Collaboration Survey

Appendix B: Seating Positions

Appendix C: Spotlight Strategies: Simple Ways to Create Predictability

Appendix D: Spotlight Strategies: Simple Ways to Protect Emotional Safety

Appendix E: Spotlight Strategies: Simple Ways for Nurturing Adult-to-Student Relationships

Appendix F: Spotlight Strategies: Simple Ways for Nurturing Student-to-Student Relationships

Appendix G: Cooperative Learning Structures

Appendix H: Modulation Exercises

Appendix I: Behavior Management Systems: Risk Assessment

Appendix J: Ticket and Pocket System

Appendix K: Playing Card Reinforcement System: Delivering Specific Positive Feedback to Students

Chapter 8

Classroom Culture

When you hear the words classroom management, what are the first couple of things that come to mind? Some people will immediately think about point systems, charts, reinforcements, and consequences, which is quite understandable because these often are labeled behavior management techniques. Although these techniques are part of classroom management, they are far from the whole of it.

Classroom management is a much larger entity than explicit behavior management techniques. It is comprised of the classroom’s physical arrangement and materials, instructional practices, social structures, relationships, procedures, and routines. Together, these items reflect the culture of the classroom.

Although these cultural elements of classroom management typically are not labeled behavioral techniques, their effect on how students perform behaviorally is significant. In fact, the culture frequently is what dictates what kinds of behavioral techniques are selected for use for the other part of classroom management—furthering the techniques’ influence on behavior.

Managing a class is a complex task that involves both off-stage and on-stage work (Danielson, 2007), relationship and structural skills, and short- and long-term considerations. It affects the feel of each lesson, each transition, each day, and each school year. It touches every single student in the classroom.

Research shows that the reach of effective classroom management is not even limited to the year that the student is in a specific classroom; its effect extends well into a child’s future. Sheppard Kellam and his colleagues from Johns Hopkins University found that “highly aggressive six-year-old boys placed within well-managed first-grade classrooms run by effective teachers were three times less likely to be highly aggressive by the time they reached eighth grade than similarly aggressive boys who were placed in a chaotic class with ineffective teachers” (Garbarino, 1999, p. 66). This makes sense when we think about how the brain is shaped by experience, especially during certain critical periods.

As we consider classroom management for students of trauma, we will view these cultural elements through the concepts of predictability, emotional safety, and relationships. As you will notice, these three lenses are inextricably interwoven; it is difficult to pull one string without tugging on the other.

Predictability and clarity of expectations are critical; consistency is essential. Children from chaotic backgrounds often have no idea how people can effectively work together, and inconsistency only promotes further confusion.

—Bessel van der Kolk (2014, p. 355)

CREATING PREDICTABILITY

We know that children with trauma histories do best in environments that provide high amounts of predictability. In a life that has been characterized by chaos or one in which there has been a choiceless, chaotic event of significant proportions, predictability allows the child’s hyper-alert neurological system to experience a big, satisfying Ahhhhhh. Adults who behave in predictable, consistent ways provide core stability. Beyond that, when a classroom’s structures and procedures are clearly articulated and carefully taught, students know both what to expect from the adults and what is expected of them as students. Experiencing a highly predictable life lays the foundation for being able to tolerate novelty (and even come to enjoy it at times!) which is a key life skill.

Notes From the Field

Rehearsing and reinforcing predictable routines helped to decrease, and in some cases, eliminate, explosive episodes in my students.

Also, during morning meeting, we would talk about and role play how to respond to potentially triggering situations so that students were practiced and prepared when a triggering situation arose.

Elementary Educator

Being a Predictable Adult

Being a predictable adult is no small feat when the students who you are supporting are highly unpredictable. It is all too easy to slip into following the students’ chaos. Having clear expectations of how you will respond and having a compassionate understanding of what is driving students’ chaotic behaviors help educators stay in the trauma-informed lane. Tools for being a more predictable adult include 1) procedures for handling behavior issues, 2) whole-class settling procedures (in which the adults should also participate), 3) having self-talk that allows us to stay on track, and 4) offering genuine apologies when we model dysregulated behaviors.

The procedures we have for handling behavioral issues help us respond appropriately and predictably to our students at the most difficult times. Having a set of steps to follow not only is calming for the student because they know what to expect, but it is calming for us to know what it is we expect of ourselves. When we have a procedure that provides a built-in break from a challenging student, there is an additional benefit. For such a break to work for a student of trauma, they need to know that the break is a time to regain self-control rather than a pushing away or punishment. The Re-Set Process (Chapters 3–7) was designed to meet the needs of both student and adult by nurturing self-control and reregulation in a relational context. The process returns a student to both learning and positive interactions.

But what happens when there is no built-in break? What if the overwhelm is related to multiple students who need to settle? How do we find a short amount of time to reestablish our footing in the life of a classroom, and how do we attend to the needs of the students who are dysregulated and engaging in difficult behaviors? Where are those minutes? One answer is to develop whole-class settling procedures and implementing them as part of the classroom schedule. It also means that we as the adults need to fully participate in the process with our students. The procedure could be a few gross motor movements followed by a stretch and then a breath in and a long breath out. Settling procedures do not need to be lengthy, and a simple 1-minute series of activities may be sufficient to change the emotional temperature of the room and help you to recenter so that you can act in a predictable, healthy manner.

Another way to increase our predictability is to have a set of things to say to ourselves when we are becoming stressed. This self-talk or inner voice grounds us in our principles and anchors us to who we want to be as an educator. Self-talk does not always have to be super serious. It may be humorous and provide us with respite through our inner smile.

One of our favorite exercises to do with adults is to give them time to identify the self-talk that will work for them when they are feeling their self-control slip. We ask, What can you say to yourself about the student, about your circumstances that will let you li...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• About the Online Companion Materials
• About the Authors
• Foreword
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• Dedication
• Section I: Defining and Understanding Trauma
• Section II: The Re-Set Process
• Section III: Trauma-Informed Behavior Practices
• References
• Index