Classroom toxicity is not a new concept to anyone who remembers school. When a fight broke out. When we were asked to read out loud. When the teacher lost control. For a few of us, the classroom was the first time we really experienced fear.
Part of our work at Adenydd is to stop that toxicity in its tracks. We’re here to help teachers figure out what is going on emotionally in the classroom, and how a few simple changes can mean the difference between an unsafe school and one where all children thrive.
What creates an unsafe classroom?
Many factors can make a child feel unsafe at school – from home dynamics to playground politics. At the centre of every classroom is the relationship between teacher and student, and it can easily become toxic when it breaks down.
A trauma-informed perspective can give us insight into why this happens. A child who experiences an early trauma often struggles to regulate strong emotions and impulses. Tasks other kids may find simple, they respond to with anything from hypervigilance and alarm to full-on dissociation.
This can lead the child to feel unsafe in environments where they should feel secure. This impacts their ability to learn and create positive relationships with others. Crucially, it can also lead to children disrupting the classroom, creating conflict and making the space unsafe themselves.
Learning about trauma
In Wales (where Adenydd is based) 47% of adults have experienced at least one ACE (adverse childhood experience), and 14% have experienced four or more. An ACE could be abuse, neglect or household disruption - the impact of which cannot be understated. For a more detailed look at ACEs please read Adenydd’s guide What are ACEs?.
ACEs are times of extreme stress when a child is supposed to be supported by a reliable and trusted adult, but is left to fend for themselves. The result is they do not build up emotional resilience or trust in adults in the same way other children do.
Without this resilience and positive relationship with adults, children struggle to control or regulate strong emotions (e.g. anger). When faced with stress, they go straight into a reaction without thinking about the consequences. This is called poor affect regulation. It is easy to see how a child with poor affect regulation could easily react badly to getting an answer wrong, for example, and then massively disrupt the class, causing distress to the other students.
Related to emotional regulation, ACEs also affect the child’s attachment. Attachment theory is an understanding of how we relate to our early carers. If a child is neglected they find it hard to build strong trusting relationships with others, leading to a dysfunctional attachment.
Simply put, the child that cannot let go of a playground argument in the classroom or the child who dreads going to school, are in all likelihood trying to deal with the aftermath of a trauma which has deeply affected them.
(source: calmer classroom guide)
Strategies for creating a safer, inclusive classroom
Healing trauma and dealing with our ACEs takes a long time and requires the building of trusting and supportive relationships, not least with our teachers. Every child needs to be helped and supported as an individual, and it can look like a daunting task to give everyone the support they need. To help, we’ve created a list of strategies you can try in your classroom to help those children on their journey towards building those relationships.
1. Structure is everything
This might feel a little obvious, but the importance of structure can’t be overstated. Neglected children often have very little internal structure and the easiest and quickest way to help them with regulating their emotions in the classroom is to enforce consistency. It’s logical, if a child knows what is going to happen every day, they will be less anxious about it.
This could include:
- Begin every lesson or day with the same routine
- Enforce a strict seating plan
- Set clear limits on what behaviour is expected so the children know when they are breaking rules
Whilst structure is vital, maintaining clarity on when the routine will be disrupted is equally important. Warn all children in advance if normality is going to be disrupted by a new person in the classroom. Often, children with ACEs struggle with a change of location (maybe for an art class or PE), so give extra care and attention to explaining the area change and what is expected, even if it feels irrelevant.
2. Time in, not time out
Sending a disruptive child out of the classroom is a classic response when the priority is completing the lesson for the other students.
However, for the child removed from the class, this replicates the experience of rejection they may have already had from a parent or carer. It can simply reconfirm that they are in some way broken and undeserving of care.
A way to reframe that narrative for the disruptive child could be to try moving them to sit closer to you whilst the class does an exercise or task. This gives the child the message that they deserve and require extra focus and attention, not less. In this way the behaviour is controlled, but the child isn’t rejected.
3. Warnings and threats don’t always work
For a child with poor emotional regulation and a dysfunctional attachment, telling them that next time they will be punished or there will be consequences will likely not have the desired effect.
If abuse has prevented them from developing a desire to build strong relationships or please a parent (an established pattern of attachment) then the threat of relationships being damaged carries little weight.
4. Give choices they can control
A lot of behaviour from children dealing with the after effects of trauma is from a desire to maintain control. If a student stands when you tell them to sit, for example, they are picking a fight because this is an interaction they understand and know how to perform easily.
As an alternative to warnings and threats of action, you could offer the child a binary choice where both options resolve the situation and give them the chance to have control over their actions.
For example:
- “You can finish the work now, or at lunchtime.”
- “So long as you finish the work, you can stand or sit.”
- “You can apologise to your classmate now with words or in writing.”
5. Stretch breaks
The emotional, mental and physical are very much connected – giving all students, not just those dealing with ACEs, short breaks has been proven to improve concentration and help students reset. For students with ACEs, who are much more likely to struggle with stress in the classroom and therefore much more likely to disrupt, short breaks are an opportunity to connect with their body and reduce anxiety.
A simple structured break every hour or so, so everyone can stretch and move their bodies can do wonders to regenerate a class. It also has the added benefit of adding more structure to a lesson.
(SOURCE: https://www.coordikids.com/movement-breaks-in-the-classroom/ )
6. Praise their actions, not their character
This may sound harsh, but telling a child with trauma they are “a good kid” isn’t always the best way to help them. If a child has already established within themselves that they are a “bad child” and unloveable, it can feel like a contradiction and be disregarded as an untruth.
A better option is to regularly praise them for specific actions you have noticed.
For example:
“Good job on finishing the work before the break”
“I noticed you didn’t talk when I was talking today. Thank you, and keep up the good work”
“I saw you were angry with Amy today, but you didn’t start a fight. That must have been hard, but that was good behaviour”
The child can then build up a library of evidence of good things they have done, which will encourage them to do it more. More crucially, it will become a resource for them as they slowly develop a more positive view of themselves, changing that belief that they are bad and unlovable.
7. Look after yourself
None of these actions are possible if they are expressed with anger or frustration. Strong feelings are contagious, so it is vital to make sure you have ways to calm down when you get frustrated or stressed. Here is an article with some de-stressing tips for teachers.
Prioritising your self-care will mean you are strong enough to help your students with whatever nightmares school throws at them. It’s easy to forget, but you are the most important part of the puzzle. So please take care of yourself.
To learn more about Adenydd and to keep up with our work supporting the teachers, parents and carers of children with ACEs, please subscribe to our newsletter.
