This is Your Brain on Stress

Outline

Stress is a function of survival, we'll explore why it's important, and how it impacts the brain

Recognizing what happens physically when you feel stress?

Acknowledge the long term impacts of stress when it's ignored - including impacts on learning, interactions, and overall health and longevity

Learn how to move from a survival state (protection) to a safety state (performance) and why you need to create safety for yourself to show up the way you need to at school.

We'll discover several easy and fun self-regulation strategies you can use yourself or teach your students.

Then we'll shift the focus to how you want to feel (instead of how you don't want to feel) and talk about emotional bypass vs resilience

We'll look at the role of focus and attention and how you get to decide what your brain focuses on. We will also cover the power of language and its influence on attention (hello, negative impacts of complaining!)

I'll explain the role of dopamine in the brain and create a "dopa-menu" of activities that will sustain a healthy level of dopamine, and identify activities that are quick dopamine hits that might feel good in the moment but ultimately cause more stress.

And while questions are welcome throughout the session, there will be time for additional questions to be answered at the end of the our time together.

Supporting research

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YTE_y6GSwqM

State, T. M., Ouellette, R. R., Zaheer, I., & Zahn, M. R. (2023). Healthy educators need healthy schools: Supporting educator work-related well-being through multitiered systems of support. School Psychology, http://dx.doi.org.library.capella.edu/10.1037/spq0000567

Tebben, E, Lang, S. N., Sproat, E, Tyree Owens, J. & Helms, S. (2021). Identifying primary and secondary stressors, buffers, and supports that impact ECE teacher wellbeing: Implications for teacher education. Journal of Early Childhood Teacher Education, 42(2), 143-161.

Wendt, S., Tuckey, M. R., & Prosser, B. (2011). Thriving, not just surviving, in emotionally demanding fields of practice. Health & Social Care in the Community, 19(3), 317-325.

Oberle, E., Gist, A., Cooray, M. S., & Pinto, J. (2020). Do students notice stress in teachers? Associations between classroom teacher burnout and students’ perceptions of teacher social-emotional competence. Psychology in the Schools, 57(11). 1741-1756.

Klusmann, U., Aldrup, K., Roloff, J., Lüdtke, O., & Hamre, B. K. (2022). Does instructional quality mediate the link between teachers’ emotional exhaustion and student outcomes? A large-scale study using teacher and student reports. Journal of Educational Psychology, 114(6), 1442-1460. https://10.1037/edu0000703