This issue features a short conversation with Shepha Schneirsohn Vainstein MA LMFT, co-founder and president of reGeneration Education, exploring the organization’s vision to protect the spirit of childhood and support children whose learning has been impacted by toxic stress.
reGeneration Education speaks about “protecting the spirit of childhood.” In a world where many children are growing up amid instability, conflict, or chronic stress, what does protecting the spirit of childhood mean in practical terms for schools and teachers?
First, let’s describe a little bit what is meant by the spirit of childhood. Seeing young children’s zest for life and love continually fills me with awe. Children can run up and jubilantly greet their family members as returning long-lost loved ones after only a few hours of separation. Along with children’s natural capacity for bonding and love, children are naturally curious, imaginative, and playful. This innate curiosity about life and ease in expressing love for others are what we see when a child’s spirited essence has been protected and nurtured.
On a practical level, it has been said that play is the work of the child. Young children love to imitate the activities of adults around them, using their hands to touch things and move their bodies. They love listening to stories and free drawing. For schools and teachers, this means engaging children’s imagination and motivation for learning at a level that meets them where they are in their development and maturation. Particularly for children impacted by toxic stress, it also means creating a holistic classroom learning structure that cultivates the child’s imagination while providing a solid weekly and daily schedule that offers stability, consistency, and security.
If toxic stress changes how children learn, what must change in how we teach?
Changing teaching methods is way behind the scientific research that has documented the pervasive long-term impact of toxic stress on children’s social, mental, and physical health. The more adverse experiences in childhood, the greater the likelihood of developmental delays and later health problems, including heart disease, diabetes, substance abuse, and depression. Because toxic stress blocks children’s capacity to focus, problem solve, and learn, we need to take the idea of a holistic education very seriously to remedy this.
Science is recognizing that beyond the brain in our heads, we also have a second brain – in our guts. The gut contains the largest number of neurons outside the brain of any structure in the body — more than 100 million line the human digestive tract. There is constant feedback between these two brains, known as the “gut-brain axis”. First, we need to recognize that stress is a physical response, not just an emotional one. We need to understand that with stress, there is a strong interplay between the brain and the gut. What cues can the teacher provide in their lessons that help a child feel at ease down to their tummy? Providing a sense of calm and coherence in the classroom through the day’s schedule and lessons can provide key cues to the child’s system that they feel, down to their gut, that they are out of chaos and safe.
Additionally, often children impacted by toxic stress regress in seen and unseen ways. So if the teacher can get a window into the child and understand to what level the child has regressed, then the teacher can modify their lessons to educationally meet the child at the level where the child has regressed. Often, this can mean modifying teaching methods to attune to early developmental levels through the senses and movement. I liken it to when a child is really enjoying their day at camp. They’ve got a sense of adventure, ease, and a sense of belonging. If the teacher can activate that sense of ease and play in a calm, stable environment while delivering content, then the teacher is very successful.
Why are movement, rhythm, and creativity often more powerful than words when children are carrying toxic stress?
Instead of the stress of constant chaos, rhythm offers a sense of being carried along. It provides a sense that things happen in an orderly and predictable fashion, which is so important for children. I referred to one perspective of rhythm when I talked about the consistency of a stable weekly and daily schedule, but we can also have rhythm in verse and song. Let’s take, for example, the circle game Ring Around the Rosey, as I think most people might remember that one from their own childhoods. Earlier, I spoke about providing cues to the child’s gut brain so that the child can read the environment as safe. Imagine a teacher leading the circle of children in something like Ring Around the Rosy, and then on “ashes, ashes, they all fall,” everyone falls. And then “The cow is in the meadow eating buttercups. Ashes, ashes, we all stand up,” and everyone stands up and continues in the circle with more verses. Here, the young child practices language skills, physically coordinating their body while also using their mirror neurons to calibrate their movements with the teacher and the class. Generally, there is a sense of belonging, ease, and coherence in such a circle. Such morning circles integrate large and small movements while engaging the imagination through song and story. They bring the class together into a feeling of a whole group while resetting and recalibrating the child’s entire nervous system. The child can relax into the present. In the field of early childhood education, a significant amount of healing work for children can take place during the morning circle as learning materials are presented.
Why do you believe the most powerful intervention for children facing adversity is not a program, but a teacher?
Protecting the spirit of childhood includes nurturing a connection to our own and others’ humanity. We all need the human touch. Research has demonstrated that supportive, responsive relationships with caring adults as early in life as possible can help prevent or reverse the damaging effects of toxic stress response. This is where, along with parents, teachers can make a huge difference for these children. As well as teachers being one of the key adults to buffer or reverse the damaging effects of toxic stress on young children, teachers can learn to create healing classroom environments that settle the young child’s nervous system while at the same time preparing them for first grade – and ultimately for the future!
The peace mediator John Paul Lederach writes that violent acts occur when individuals are incapable of imagining other solutions to the problems at hand. Furthermore, he states that we can transcend violence by forging the capacity to generate, mobilize, and build the moral imagination. When we protect the humanity of the child and honor the spirit of childhood, we are seeding children’s moral imagination. We are helping lay the foundation for the kind of human connection and creative problem-solving that these children will need as adults.
Looking ahead, what is your vision for how schools around the world could evolve to better support children so that, even in the face of adversity, their capability, curiosity, and eagerness to learn can thrive?
While there are wonderful high-quality schools in affluent countries throughout the world, the needs of children in crisis zones – areas of violence, poverty, natural disaster, and food scarcity are vast. And the most vulnerable of these populations – the young children – are most at risk since there is very little awareness and resources to support early childhood education. Right now, reGeneration Education is working to support scaling up a trauma-informed teacher training program called Essence of Learning. Selected by the United Nations as a sustainable educational method that can have a big impact in crisis zones, it has been field-tested as a successful trauma-informed education that can produce long-term results. We are in the midst of writing a case study on how Essence of Learning kindergartens have had a significant impact in Kosovo over the past 25 years, following the country’s destruction after its civil war. Fabulous work with Essence of Learning has also been carried out in 100 day care centers and numerous kindergartens in Bangladesh. Currently, with the Palestinian organization Women of the Sun, we sponsored a parents program in the West Bank for Palestinian parents based on the Essence of Learning methods, empowering them with tools to help their children learn despite the violence they live under.
There is such a huge need for a holistic education for crisis zones that helps children learn while also helping them heal. We’d like to work with universities to establish Essence of Learning kindergartens for research and training to help propel a further scaling up of these holistic educational methods. Although trainings have occurred around the world, none have taken place in the United States. We would like to plan the first United States Essence of Learning training soon.
Much of what is used in Essence of Learning classrooms can be applied to general education. Children everywhere are feeling the impact of toxic stress. There is a lot we could all learn to help the methods of educating children evolve to reflect what we have come to know from scientific research. We just need to apply it. And we can!