Saturday July 7th, 2018
CONSCIOUS DISCIPLINE
Understanding of brain improving classrooms at city school
By MICHAEL FRETT
Messenger Staff Writer
ST. ALBANS – Last Thursday afternoon at St. Albans City School (SACS), over 100 teachers, mostly but not exclusively from Vermont, found themselves gathered in the school’s library. Instructor Kim Hughes stood at the front of the room, with a set of placards identifying structures of the brain on one side and a PowerPoint with the lyrics of “Itsy, Bitsy Spider” on the other.
“You must have that download of dopamine,” Hughes called, pointing to the top of her head. Dopamine is a neurotransmitter, a chemical released by braincells, that’s usually associated with anticipation of rewards. Hughes was instructing the teachers in conscious discipline, a relatively young method of classroom discipline and coaching recently adopted by SACS as an alternative to the traditional system of rewards and punishments.
The method is heavily rooted in neuroscience and psychology, hence placards identifying the prefrontal lobes, references to neurotransmitters and an outline of mental states enforced by all of the above. Teachers from across the country had come to SACS to participate in a weeklong workshop dedicated to the practice.
Hughes asked the audience to recite three major neurotransmitters – dopamine, norepinephrine and serotonin – and their corresponding emotions. “This is not like rocket science. We know these things.”
“What they’re born into is what their body knows, so for some of those kids who are born into situations where they’re over aroused or under aroused, we need to re-regulate their ‘clacker,’” Hughes told the audience. With that, Hughes asked the 100 or so teachers in the room to stand and find a partner. She cued the music and a room of professionals, who teach classes from preschool to senior high, began the tandem dance required of the “Itsy, Bitsy Spider’s” rock and roll cousin.
Conscious discipline
Conscious discipline is a “brain-based, trauma-informed, self-regulation program,” Hughes told the Messenger in between classes. Devised a little over 25 years ago by Dr. Becky Bailey, the system is built around training teachers in a more distilled discipline of neuroscience so that they better understand a child’s brain, making them more capable of building a better environment to foster social-emotional growth in children.
“Our knowledge about the brain is always growing, so Dr. Bailey takes that information from neuroscience… and puts that together so classroom teachers, administrators, parents – adults that work with children – understand the brain so that… we can better respond and help people rather than react,” Hughes, whose official title is Conscious Discipline Master Instructor, explained.
Hence the three placards that stood at Hughes’s back as she spoke to the class of teachers at SACS. Representing the Brain State Model currently guiding the discipline, the placards each painted individual brain states and linked them with specific brain structures and needs.
The first card highlighted the prefrontal lobe of the brain, associating it with an “executive state” primed for learning. This state was pitched as the ideal state for a classroom, where students would be able to process what they were taught.
The second highlighted the limbic system, a collection of brain structures sitting just below the cerebrum that regulate, among other things, emotion and motivation. Conscious discipline anchors the limbic system to an “emotional state” in need of connections.
Finally, the third state was the “survival state,” a mental state conducting fight-orflight responses pinned to the brainstem. This state might be more prevalent among children raised in more difficult situations according to Hughes, such as poverty or children with anxieties.
Hughes summarized the three states with questions, respectfully: “What can I learn from this?”, “Am I loved?” and “Am I safe?”
At the core of conscious discipline is the ability of the adult to help foster connections and teach self-regulation that can help students navigate between the different brain states, whether it involves more encouragement at the high school level or simple breathing exercises and songs at the kindergarten level.
The conscious discipline system also relies on fostering relationships between students and teachers. The discipline aims for the construction of a “school family,” with social skills like empathy, assertiveness and impulse control targeted for development in some pieces of conscious discipline literature.“We know from research that the way to get to the heart of moving from trauma to success is relationships,” Hughes said. “Connection is important because the brain is a social organ.” Conscious discipline was aimed primarily at adults in these relationships, though.
“It’s really about the adult,” said Professional Development Specialist Mandy Lloyd, who helped organize the week-long workshop at SACS. “The biggest challenge is how do I, as a teacher, stay in my executive state when I’m constantly being triggered by children’s states.” Her sentiment was echoed earlier by Hughes, who, at the time, was conducting a 100-teacher orchestra of Boomwhackers – plastic toys that, when clapped, make a bonk noise corresponding to a musical note. After a final applause of bonks that echoed around SACS’s first floor, Hughes underscored the need for teachers’ self control. “If you don’t have self-regulation, you can’t teach your kids self-regulation.”
“We’re getting there.”
St. Albans City School (SACS) took up conscious discipline as an alternative to the Positive Behavioral Intervention and Support, better known as PBIS among educators. According to Stacie Rouleau, SACS’s Dean of Students, the school made the shift about three years ago, when teachers started attending special classes on conscious discipline and meeting to discuss a transition at SACS itself.
“Our school was functioning under the PBIS model, and we were finding that there were parts of PBIS that worked really well, like the structures,” Rouleau said. “But there were also pieces of PBIS that were difficult to implement, because if you’re not a person who believes in rewards and punishments… it wasn’t enough for that small percentage of kids that needed something different and needed something more.” Since that time, the school’s gradually adopted conscious discipline in tandem with some of the more structured pieces of PBIS while phasing out the “rewards and consequences” in favor of something that, according to Rouleau, “helped us to reach more kids in a different way.”
According to Rouleau, with the program only being three years young at SACS, the impact is easier to measure allegorically than it is through data. Still, some data released recently by the Maple Run Unified School District noted that more than half of the district’s students between three- and five-years old were showing improvements in “protective factors” related to social emotional health, like initiative and self-regulation.
Lloyd also noted that while conscious discipline may be young at SACS, there were schools elsewhere in the country, like in Indiana and Florida, that reported fewer referrals and improved test scores since adopting a model based on conscious discipline.
Allegorically, though, Rouleau and one of SACS’s teachers, Geoff Pac, both had plenty to share about the impact conscious discipline had in their school. “It’s a lot like a shift… in the way I perceive things,” Pac, who teaches students from first, second and third grade at SACS, said. “I find that I’m not super stressed out like I might have been when I first started teaching. There’s a lot more structure in my classroom, a lot more predictability and the kids feel safer from that.” “Their willingness to learn… shot through the roof,” he added.
Rouleau and Pac both spoke highly of the school environment, stating that relationships between teachers had improved as much as the students’ had. Rouleau also had a personal story she wanted to share following the transition to conscious discipline. “My son is autistic… and he went on a camping trip with his class, something the four-five-six grade kids do,” Rouleau said. “They were playing something in the woods and one of the kids said, ‘I’m not sure he’s going to be able to do this, I’m kind of worried.’ “One of the other kids said ‘It’s fine, he’s part of my school family. I’ll be your partner,’ and he kind of just grabbed him and they went off. “I didn’t get to see that but someone came back and told me,” Rouleau finished. “There’s no SBAC (Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium, annual state tests) score for that. That’s not something you can quantify in a score or in a test.”
There’s still some growing to do for SACS, however. According to Rouleau, full implementation is still a “work in progress” – challenges like turnover and traditional methods mean that transitions are “never fully implemented,” Lloyd warned – but the school is pushing forward with the hope that they can start bringing more parents in to learn the discipline and encourage more teachers to adopt it.
She also said that they hoped that, by hosting a conscious discipline workshop in northern Vermont, other schools could start seeing the benefits of conscious discipline and make it more of a norm in the region. Schools from Fairfield, Georgia and St. Johnsbury were in attendance, and Rouleau added that there was some interest at Bellows Free Academy – St. Albans as well. “It’s a huge mind shift for people to go away from ‘something happens and they need a punishment,’” Rouleau said. “But people are looking for something.
“We’re getting there.”
Understanding of brain improving classrooms at city school
By MICHAEL FRETT
Messenger Staff Writer
ST. ALBANS – Last Thursday afternoon at St. Albans City School (SACS), over 100 teachers, mostly but not exclusively from Vermont, found themselves gathered in the school’s library. Instructor Kim Hughes stood at the front of the room, with a set of placards identifying structures of the brain on one side and a PowerPoint with the lyrics of “Itsy, Bitsy Spider” on the other.
“You must have that download of dopamine,” Hughes called, pointing to the top of her head. Dopamine is a neurotransmitter, a chemical released by braincells, that’s usually associated with anticipation of rewards. Hughes was instructing the teachers in conscious discipline, a relatively young method of classroom discipline and coaching recently adopted by SACS as an alternative to the traditional system of rewards and punishments.
The method is heavily rooted in neuroscience and psychology, hence placards identifying the prefrontal lobes, references to neurotransmitters and an outline of mental states enforced by all of the above. Teachers from across the country had come to SACS to participate in a weeklong workshop dedicated to the practice.
Hughes asked the audience to recite three major neurotransmitters – dopamine, norepinephrine and serotonin – and their corresponding emotions. “This is not like rocket science. We know these things.”
“What they’re born into is what their body knows, so for some of those kids who are born into situations where they’re over aroused or under aroused, we need to re-regulate their ‘clacker,’” Hughes told the audience. With that, Hughes asked the 100 or so teachers in the room to stand and find a partner. She cued the music and a room of professionals, who teach classes from preschool to senior high, began the tandem dance required of the “Itsy, Bitsy Spider’s” rock and roll cousin.
Conscious discipline
Conscious discipline is a “brain-based, trauma-informed, self-regulation program,” Hughes told the Messenger in between classes. Devised a little over 25 years ago by Dr. Becky Bailey, the system is built around training teachers in a more distilled discipline of neuroscience so that they better understand a child’s brain, making them more capable of building a better environment to foster social-emotional growth in children.
“Our knowledge about the brain is always growing, so Dr. Bailey takes that information from neuroscience… and puts that together so classroom teachers, administrators, parents – adults that work with children – understand the brain so that… we can better respond and help people rather than react,” Hughes, whose official title is Conscious Discipline Master Instructor, explained.
Hence the three placards that stood at Hughes’s back as she spoke to the class of teachers at SACS. Representing the Brain State Model currently guiding the discipline, the placards each painted individual brain states and linked them with specific brain structures and needs.
The first card highlighted the prefrontal lobe of the brain, associating it with an “executive state” primed for learning. This state was pitched as the ideal state for a classroom, where students would be able to process what they were taught.
The second highlighted the limbic system, a collection of brain structures sitting just below the cerebrum that regulate, among other things, emotion and motivation. Conscious discipline anchors the limbic system to an “emotional state” in need of connections.
Finally, the third state was the “survival state,” a mental state conducting fight-orflight responses pinned to the brainstem. This state might be more prevalent among children raised in more difficult situations according to Hughes, such as poverty or children with anxieties.
Hughes summarized the three states with questions, respectfully: “What can I learn from this?”, “Am I loved?” and “Am I safe?”
At the core of conscious discipline is the ability of the adult to help foster connections and teach self-regulation that can help students navigate between the different brain states, whether it involves more encouragement at the high school level or simple breathing exercises and songs at the kindergarten level.
The conscious discipline system also relies on fostering relationships between students and teachers. The discipline aims for the construction of a “school family,” with social skills like empathy, assertiveness and impulse control targeted for development in some pieces of conscious discipline literature.“We know from research that the way to get to the heart of moving from trauma to success is relationships,” Hughes said. “Connection is important because the brain is a social organ.” Conscious discipline was aimed primarily at adults in these relationships, though.
“It’s really about the adult,” said Professional Development Specialist Mandy Lloyd, who helped organize the week-long workshop at SACS. “The biggest challenge is how do I, as a teacher, stay in my executive state when I’m constantly being triggered by children’s states.” Her sentiment was echoed earlier by Hughes, who, at the time, was conducting a 100-teacher orchestra of Boomwhackers – plastic toys that, when clapped, make a bonk noise corresponding to a musical note. After a final applause of bonks that echoed around SACS’s first floor, Hughes underscored the need for teachers’ self control. “If you don’t have self-regulation, you can’t teach your kids self-regulation.”
“We’re getting there.”
St. Albans City School (SACS) took up conscious discipline as an alternative to the Positive Behavioral Intervention and Support, better known as PBIS among educators. According to Stacie Rouleau, SACS’s Dean of Students, the school made the shift about three years ago, when teachers started attending special classes on conscious discipline and meeting to discuss a transition at SACS itself.
“Our school was functioning under the PBIS model, and we were finding that there were parts of PBIS that worked really well, like the structures,” Rouleau said. “But there were also pieces of PBIS that were difficult to implement, because if you’re not a person who believes in rewards and punishments… it wasn’t enough for that small percentage of kids that needed something different and needed something more.” Since that time, the school’s gradually adopted conscious discipline in tandem with some of the more structured pieces of PBIS while phasing out the “rewards and consequences” in favor of something that, according to Rouleau, “helped us to reach more kids in a different way.”
According to Rouleau, with the program only being three years young at SACS, the impact is easier to measure allegorically than it is through data. Still, some data released recently by the Maple Run Unified School District noted that more than half of the district’s students between three- and five-years old were showing improvements in “protective factors” related to social emotional health, like initiative and self-regulation.
Lloyd also noted that while conscious discipline may be young at SACS, there were schools elsewhere in the country, like in Indiana and Florida, that reported fewer referrals and improved test scores since adopting a model based on conscious discipline.
Allegorically, though, Rouleau and one of SACS’s teachers, Geoff Pac, both had plenty to share about the impact conscious discipline had in their school. “It’s a lot like a shift… in the way I perceive things,” Pac, who teaches students from first, second and third grade at SACS, said. “I find that I’m not super stressed out like I might have been when I first started teaching. There’s a lot more structure in my classroom, a lot more predictability and the kids feel safer from that.” “Their willingness to learn… shot through the roof,” he added.
Rouleau and Pac both spoke highly of the school environment, stating that relationships between teachers had improved as much as the students’ had. Rouleau also had a personal story she wanted to share following the transition to conscious discipline. “My son is autistic… and he went on a camping trip with his class, something the four-five-six grade kids do,” Rouleau said. “They were playing something in the woods and one of the kids said, ‘I’m not sure he’s going to be able to do this, I’m kind of worried.’ “One of the other kids said ‘It’s fine, he’s part of my school family. I’ll be your partner,’ and he kind of just grabbed him and they went off. “I didn’t get to see that but someone came back and told me,” Rouleau finished. “There’s no SBAC (Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium, annual state tests) score for that. That’s not something you can quantify in a score or in a test.”
There’s still some growing to do for SACS, however. According to Rouleau, full implementation is still a “work in progress” – challenges like turnover and traditional methods mean that transitions are “never fully implemented,” Lloyd warned – but the school is pushing forward with the hope that they can start bringing more parents in to learn the discipline and encourage more teachers to adopt it.
She also said that they hoped that, by hosting a conscious discipline workshop in northern Vermont, other schools could start seeing the benefits of conscious discipline and make it more of a norm in the region. Schools from Fairfield, Georgia and St. Johnsbury were in attendance, and Rouleau added that there was some interest at Bellows Free Academy – St. Albans as well. “It’s a huge mind shift for people to go away from ‘something happens and they need a punishment,’” Rouleau said. “But people are looking for something.
“We’re getting there.”