According to Education Week, it’s too early for definitive data on how many K-12 teachers will resign during this school year. However, the National Education Association (NEA) released a nationwide survey of teachers in which 55 percent said that the pandemic is pushing them to leave the profession sooner than they’d initially planned. Why the attrition? More than low pay, stress is why most public school teachers are leaving in droves. And the pandemic just upped the ante.
But one organization feels it doesn’t have to be this way. The Polyvagal Institute, whose mission is to raise awareness on the understanding of the mind-body system, believes that by developing self-awareness around our nervous system states, we can create communities that feel less stressed and more resilient. In the classroom, this is known as educational neuroscience. Join us as we discuss the origins of the Polyvagal Institute and share an exclusive interview with the executive director about how their certificate program is helping teachers build a culture of safety, collaboration, and connection in today’s classrooms.
The Polyvagal Theory
Dr. Stephen W. Porges, a professor of psychiatry at the University of North Carolina, Distinguished University Scientist at Indiana University, and the founding director of the Traumatic Stress Research Consortium in the Kinsey Institute, first presented the Polyvagal Theory (PVT) in 1994. The theory links the evolution of the mammalian autonomic nervous system (ANS) to social behavior. It highlights the importance of the physiological state in expressing behavioral problems and psychiatric disorders. It explains the interplay between the sympathetic and parasympathetic branches of the ANS when dealing with trauma and pain. The Polyvagal Theory consists of three components of the ANS and their responses, including:
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Immobilization – parasympathetic system
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Fight or flight system – sympathetic system
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Social engagement system – the ventral vagal complex within the parasympathetic system
Once the Polyvagal Theory was presented, it was gradually adopted by a new wave of leading trauma therapists. For these professionals, PVT opened up the ‘black box’ that is the nervous system and connected, for the first time, a sense of safety with behavior and communication patterns. In the past few years, this perspective has spread far beyond the field of trauma to other disciplines as well as wellness and healthcare communities. As a result, the Polyvagal Institute was established to further this movement. Its mission is to advance social communication and connectivity by raising awareness, building community, facilitating research, and offering education on this new understanding of the mind-body system.
Polyvagal-Informed Certification
So how can PVT help teachers and students? It begins with them learning how to recognize their autonomic states during volatile situations and knowing what to do during these moments. One of the Polyvagal Institute’s courses, the Polyvagal-Informed Certificate Program, is created for this exact purpose. It is designed to help organizations develop an awareness of the need for safety and to assist with creating healthy cultures of connection and belonging. According to the certification description, “The program is built around the core understanding that physiological state drives our behavior (rather than conscious intention). By developing self-awareness around our nervous system states and learning to shift into states that promote social engagement, we can create an upward spiral resulting in an organizational culture that feels healthier, resilient, inclusive, and collaborative.”
Endominance spoke with Randall Redfield, the Polyvagal Institute’s Executive Director and co-founder of Integrated Listening Systems (now Unyte.ILS), to better understand the significance of the certificate program.
Victoria Sambursky: How do you feel developing awareness around the nervous system for teachers and administrators is even more crucial in the post-Covid landscape?
Randall Redfield: “Educators are traditionally taught in a cognitive-centric way. You could say it’s a top-down system of looking at the student. And it doesn’t take into account the underlying physiological state that an individual might be going through throughout the day. Polyvagal Institute’s training for teachers helps complement their cognitive-based knowledge with an understanding of the underlying mechanisms that are happening with the student, but that’s also happening with themselves (the teachers) as well.” Redfield gives examples of the underlying stress of teachers and school administrators, “School administrators are dealing with behavioral issues, which have been exacerbated throughout the pandemic. You also have administration and teachers who are completely maxed out and exhausted. There seems to be a significant sense of lack of safety among educators and administrators, which can lead to a fight or flight sort of behavior or, at the other extreme, a kind of shut down or exhaustion. This mix of factors – fear of Covid, overworking, chronic stress – have caused individuals, and the culture in general, at schools to become emotionally dysregulated. Through polyvagal training, educators and administrators can learn what’s behind those feelings; it can engender a sense of safety and ultimately lead to improved self-regulation.”
VS: Why is it important for teachers/administrators to learn how to self-regulate, and can you give examples of how they achieve this during the workday?
RR: “The reason self-regulation is essential is that it’s tough to be a regulating influence on your students if you are entirely dysregulated, right? For example, let’s say a teacher comes into a classroom anxious; they will come across as nervous, or on edge, to their students. We tend to mirror the emotional state of people we’re interacting with, so if I’m a teacher in front of a class and I’m completely stressed out, and my heart’s thumping away, what effect do you think it will have on the kids? Many of them will come into that same state. So the first step is to help teachers and administrators understand how to keep themselves regulated. And I’m not talking about taking an hour out during the day to go to a quiet room to do yoga. I’m just talking about simple techniques like taking two or three minutes through breathing techniques to help your body and mind relax. As a teacher’s body language, tone of voice, and movements become more relaxed and regulated, it will have a calming effect on the students they communicate with, a process Dr. Porges refers to as ‘co-regulation.’ The challenge is to listen to our bodies and be aware of the sensory and regulatory practices that help us become balanced and find a safe place internally. Polyvagal Theory provides a neurobiological framework for understanding human behavior so that teachers can better interpret the underlying causes of the actions and behavior of students.”
The certification training occurs over a few weeks; however, ongoing education is provided to ensure the PV Principles are firmly embedded in both individuals and the organization’s culture. In addition, continued education is delivered to the organization via an app customized for the client and for future communication with other PV-Informed organizations.
