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In this episode, Lindsay talks with Emily Read Daniels, an internationally-recognized trauma specialist and trainer in the trauma-informed schools movement.
Together, we discuss the vital concept of polyvagal theory and co-regulation in educational settings. Emily highlights the importance of focusing on the educator's wellbeing first, arguing that teachers' emotional states significantly impact classroom dynamics. She introduces her framework, "The Regulated Classroom," which integrates practices that help synchronize educators' and students' nervous systems to ensure a calm, balanced learning environment. The Big Dream Emily envisions an educational setting where both educators and students feel understood and supported. She is passionate about her work and loves being able to focus, specifically, on educators, showing that they matter and they are important. Through her work, she aims to address injustices observed in education systems, where both parties often feel overwhelmed and misunderstood. Her goal is to bring about a shift that makes regulation a priority, facilitating a safe and inclusive atmosphere that nurtures genuine learning and connection. Mindset Shifts Required A significant mindset shift involves recognizing the importance of both cognitive and physical states in teaching and learning. While the mindset is important, Emily wants educators to really feel better, safe and secure in their bodies and in the environment. This starts with educators acknowledging that they are whole beings and that honoring the body's role in emotional experiences is essential for fostering a supportive classroom environment. Action Steps To begin the body state shift that Emily talks about — feeling calm and safe in an environment — there are things that educators and students can do to co-regulate. Emily’s framework includes four types of practices: connectors, activators, settlers, and affirmations. To get started, educators can begin to notice how you feel as you enter the classroom. Tracking your nervous system state is an important first step to see if you are feeling regulated or dysregulated, particularly in moments of stress over overwhelm in the classroom. Pay attention to your physical and emotional states to become more aware of your body's reactions. This helps educators know which of the three states in polyvagal theory they are experiencing:
From here, it’s important to engage in co-regulation practices with your students, such as sensory stimulations and rhythm-making, to create a sense of oneness and safety in the environment. Emily unpacks these practices and her complete framework, the Regulated Classroom, in resources available on her website. Challenges? Educators often face time constraints and overwhelming workloads, making it challenging to incorporate these practices into their routine. Emily acknowledges that the feeling of being too busy is often a symptom of dysregulation. It’s not necessarily about getting rid of dysregulation altogether. Instead, recognizing when you’re dysregulated — because you will be at some point! — and learning how to reset is the important thing to focus on. One Step to Get Started Begin by simply noticing your inner experience. As you walk into your school or classroom, observe your feelings and physical sensations. Awareness is the first step toward cultivating a more conscious and resilient presence, which is the foundation for deeper personal change and classroom transformation. Stay Connected You can find this week’s guest on Instagram and website. To help you implement today’s takeaways, our guest is sharing Letter to Families with you for free. And, if you’re looking for more details on the ideas in this blog post, listen to episode 274 of the Time for Teachership podcast. If you’re unable to listen or you prefer to read the full episode, you can find the transcript below. Quotes:
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TRANSCRIPT
Lindsay Lyons: Emily, welcome to the Time for Teachership podcast. Emily Daniels: Oh, thanks so much for having me, Lindsay. I look forward to this conversation. Lindsay Lyons: Same. I am really excited to jump in and, and learn from and with you, and I was just saying before we hit record, I'm really excited to dive into, like, just the concept of co-regulation and, like, polyvagal theory, something that a lot of educators do not ever encounter. And so really excited, particularly as this will be dropping at the beginning of the school year- Emily Daniels: Mm ... Lindsay Lyons: for educators to just think about, and I mean families too, but, like, everyone to really think about how we are in spaces with children of all ages, and this is just gonna be good. Oh, it's so good. Is there anything on your mind that you want people to think about as we have the conversation today? Emily Daniels: I just, I love this so much because, so first of all, polyvagal is, like, my jam. I love teaching educators about it. But what I love so much about the work that I get to do now with the Regulated Classroom is that I get to make it about the teacher first, about the educator first. And having been a former school counselor for many years myself, that was never my experience. Nothing was ever about the adult. It was always about what we're gonna do with kids or what we're gonna do to kids or how we're gonna deal with kids, you know? So it was always very student-focused, I think with good intention, but it's really delightful when we get to talk about the adults. Lindsay Lyons: What a beautiful human framing. Educators have to go through a lot, so I'm glad we're focused on them. Emily Daniels: And I say all the time, "You matter so much." Like, I, maybe nobody's ever told you that, but you matter. You matter, and it's really important Lindsay Lyons: That is beautiful. And, and kind of touching on my next question a bit, although you can take this in any direction, but I'm always curious what guests' kind of big dream is, and I like grounding it in Dr. Bettina Love's quote on freedom dreaming. So she says, "Dreams grounded in the critique of injustice." Mm-hmm. And so thinking about that, what is that big dream you hold? Emily Daniels: So when I was a school counselor, I saw so much how much students were impacted by the adults that were in their lives daily. Um, I mean, I saw it firsthand, and I, I felt and witnessed the struggle for the adults, meaning the teachers in the classroom. And I also saw it in my students that I supported, um, and just really recognized the incredible sacredness of the relationship that is shared between educators and students. And I felt like the educators were trying, but they were so overwhelmed and so stressed about the expectations that were placed upon them. Um, and the students felt like oftentimes just failures, frankly, uh, 'cause they were unable to meet those expectations. And so that, to me, that just showed up as, like, a lot of injustice. Like, I just felt like both, both parties were misunderstood, if you will. And so I really-- It's funny you, you kind of, you know, you orient in this way because it really is about trying to get to the place of, like, we're all human, all of us, and therefore, there are vulnerabilities and fragilities as a result of being human, and we have built-in biologically based ways to protect ourselves. And so, um, I guess I feel like in some ways my work is related to trying to right what feels like I've seen a lot of wrongs. You know what I mean? Like, whether that's the way students have been treated or adults have been treated in the, in the educational setting, uh, even how teachers are treated today by the public. You know, there's a lot of injustice there. So yeah, I, I try to bring regulation as the way in which to tip that scale. Lindsay Lyons: Great points all around. I am, I'm thinking that this usually, I'm from multiple standpoints here. I'm thinking of educators, but I'm also thinking of leaders who often dictate kind of what teachers are focused on, right? And so I'm thinking about what needs to shift in our kind of mental model or conceptualization of what's important in schooling so that we can actually focus on this. 'Cause it's important, yet rarely-- I mean, the most I've ever seen is in, during the COVID-19 pandemic. It was very much like, "Wellness is important," but it was often lip service. It often wasn't the deep work you, you seem to be talking about. Emily Daniels: Yeah. Lindsay Lyons: What needs to shift in people's minds? Emily Daniels: Great question. So, and the interesting thing is it is a, it is a cognitive shift, it is a mindset shift, but the irony of it is, is that it's actually a body state shift that we're looking for there. And up to this point, like in all my training and all my years, um, everything was ori- oriented to trying to get us, the adults, and our children to think differently, to think better, to know better, to do better. You know what I mean? It's that idea that like if you know better, you do better. Uh, I really wish that were true. Um, because oftentimes what we weren't able to see is that we need to feel better to do better, right? And those feel- that feeling better comes from feeling safe, and feeling safe in the context of those that we share our space with, and feeling safe in the environment, the actual features of the environment and that sort of thing that inspires a sense of like, um, "Oh, I'm at home here," or, "I belong here," you know? So I think that the, the big shift in mindset is to recognize that we are a whole person, and that that starts with recognizing and honoring the role that the body plays in, in our, um, in, in our expression of human, of humanity. Lindsay Lyons: Oh, that's so good. I really needed that, like, body state shift language. That was great. And I, I'm thinking about, you know, there's so many things that I'm sure that y- you all talk about in terms of what we can learn and embody and do and, and all the things. W- what comes to mind first? Like, where should we go first in terms of, like, what does this look like in practice? Mm. Um, whether it's internal, whether it's, like, i- i- interactive. Yeah. What do we think? Emily Daniels: So it's, it's very much, uh ... So in my framework, the model that I've developed called the regulated classroom, these are practices that are practices of co-regulation. So the vast majority of things I teach people are, are things that they do, that they actually physically do um, with their students, uh, that they lead with their students and they engage in with their students. So, um, many of them include, um, certain kinds of sensory stimulation like, for example, thymus thumping, which is thumping on, you know, some acupressure points in the chest to try to signal to the body to calm and to, to de-stress. Uh, but yeah, for me in my model, the primary, the primary resource that we are, uh, leveraging is the, the, the y- wisdom and the design of the body and the brain and the connection there, and how much it plays into what we experience relationally, uh, with those that we're, we share space with. Um, so yeah, these are, these are simple, easy to do, very short practices of co-regulation. That's what I teach. Lindsay Lyons: Okay. I love that. Two questions. One, it sounds like you have a framework or a model that you, that you draw on. Could you walk us through that a little bit? Sure. And then could you maybe share one or two of those practices? Emily Daniels: Sure, totally. So the framework is, um, it consists of two educator capacities. Notice that I don't say skills. And then four core practices: connectors, activators, settlers, affirmations. Those four core practices actually represent, um, the body of a lot of different fields of research that help us understand what are the specific qualities of experience that help us reset our nervous system. So for example, um, can you do this with me? Okay. See when we do that together, I don't know if you can feel that or not, but this is a gesture. In the regulated classroom, this is a connector practice. I teach educators how to u- use gesture and mirroring on purpose in the classroom to get a sense of oneness and togetherness. So my connector practices are practices that build and repair relationships primarily through play, but not always. Um, and so that's, you know, that's what I teach them. Then you could do, um, like this one here, the thymus thumping is actually an activator practice in the regulated classroom. So if you wanna try this with me here, where we're just alternating in synchrony, pounding on our chest with our fist. If you continue this for about 60 seconds and then drop your hands down by your side and let your ar- your hands be open, you will notice a warmth, a tingling sensation, a kind of calming and centering, grounding sensation. Um, activators are forms of collective rhythm making, and they help to organize the nervous system in the collective. So it's a really powerful way to bring about, um, just organized states in the nervous system collectively. So, like, we need that in the classroom because there's so much... You know, when I was a counselor, we would joke about, it was like a game of Whac-A-Mole, right? You, you help one student over here, and then another one pops up over here with a behavior that's kind of difficult, and then another one over here is shutting down and crawling under the desk, you know? So there isn't a lot of, like, collective synchrony, and what I'm trying to do is shift that, um, and help the teacher understand how to shift that so that they can feel that profound sense of oneness and groundedness, like, and reset regulation. Lindsay Lyons: My brain is going so many places to just connect to, to what I'm thinking about. But I love this idea, and also have done, like very n- not as good. But we've done like a group clap at the end- Yeah ... of our circles sometimes. We're all trying to clap- Yes ... at the same time. Emily Daniels: Yes. Yep. Lindsay Lyons: And I would say practically to teachers, "Oh, we're doing this 'cause the bell just rang and we need to wrap up this conversation, but we can't just walk away. We need to like end it somehow." But I also am now hearing that maybe that was actually a nice like moment of collective like, "Ha," at the end of maybe a heated conversation or something- Yes ... that we just needed. Emily Daniels: Exactly. So you didn't maybe know it cognitively, but you were bringing about a state of collective synchrony, and that is a very important experience to have, especially in community, like school community, to help us feel safe with one another, right? To help us feel connected to one another. And so that's very regulating for our nervous systems, to know that we're not alone, and to know that there's a sense of cohesion among those we share space with. Um, going back for a second though, just, so the two essential educator capacities that I teach educators about is tracking their nervous system state. So it's called tracking state. So it's like the first things that I invite them to do is just notice what they can notice in their body experience, especially when they're in a moment of stress in the classroom. Like, do you notice that your heart rate increased? Do you notice that your palms are sweating or clenching? Do you notice a tense, tense, tension or a tightness anywhere? So helping them to, to actually track whether or not they're feeling regulated or dysregulated, because once they are able to do that, they are able to then determine, "Hmm, I think I might need to dose in a core practice of the regulated classroom to reset myself with my students." Because a lot of times when we start to feel and experience dysregulation, it's because of something that's happening with our students in the classroom. You know, somebody's doing something, saying something, acting in some way that's triggering our nervous system into like, "Oh, what's that kid doing?" type of thing, or, "What are those children doing?" type of thing. So, uh, tracking state is the first essential educator capacity, and recruiting the realm of social engagement means helping to, um, bring online our students' realm of social engagement, which is a whole polyvagal concept Lindsay Lyons: Okay, there's so much going on in my brain. So now I'm remembering, Dr. Bridges, Patrick will be mad at me 'cause I can't remember these, the three, but there's like the three, like r- there's like a regulated state, right? And then like a two- there's a dysregulated, there's like the I'm completely like- Emily Daniels: Okay, Lindsay Lyons: yeah ... I'm shut down. There's that, right? Yes. Can you talk us through those? Yeah, Emily Daniels: yeah, yeah. So in polyvagal theory, which is a theory about, you know, how the nervous system functions, and in particular, how the nervous system shifts into states of defense when we don't feel safe. So when something happens in our experience, and I'm talking about us, the adults, let's say a student, um, has a tone of voice they're using with another student, and all of a sudden we know that that's a clue, like, ooh, that kid might be getting ready to be argumentative or even fight with that kid, 'cause we can hear it in the tone. Our nervous system will shift into a defensive state to protect ourselves. So we might start getting anxious, we might start getting agitated, or conversely, we can shut down. We can, we can drop into a dorsal state, which is a state of numbness and disconnection, dissociation, which is also a protective state. So maybe it's that kind of thing where you hear a tone of voice happening from a student and you're like, "Whatever. He's gonna always do that. Whatever. I don't care." So the person you mentioned, what they might be referencing is sort of these three primary states that are, um, identified in polyvagal theory. There's a ventral vagal state, which is a regulated state. There is a state of mobilization called sympathetic charge or sympathetic, um, activation, and then there's a dorsal vagal state, which is a state of shutdown. So those are the three primary nervous system states in the regula- in the polyvagal theory. Um, and those are, those, that, that theory and those principles of how the nervous system functions is embedded in my model Lindsay Lyons: Cool. 'Cause yeah, I mean, the language is very... Thank you for breaking that down, 'cause the language is kind of, uh, intense. Mm-hmm. But the, the feeling everyone can connect, I think kids included, right, to, to the feelings in your body that connect to those three terms. Exactly. Emily Daniels: Exactly. And when you feel dysregulated, you really can feel it. Like, when you, you can even notice numbness, right? Even if you can't feel, that's a feeling. So you can know you're shut down in a protective state, a, a dorsal state, and you can feel when your heart is racing. You can feel when your face is getting hot. Like, you can feel these things. They're sensations that are powerful. And so the sensations tell you, "Oh, my nervous system is functioning or shifting right now to protect me," versus when you feel at ease, when you feel safe, when you feel, um, regulated, you feel good in your body. You know? You feel like, "Woo!" Like, "Let's do this," you know? And you're able to access all of your conscious capacity, so you're able to be empathic, and you're able to be creative, and you're able to be curious and have really good ideas for how to solve complex problems. Like, all those things happen when you experience a ventral vagal state or a regulated state in your body. Lindsay Lyons: I love that you just explained that, because I also am now thinking about a, a lot of work I do is about student discourse, and discourse about current events or political topics in social studies, or just things- Oh, man ... that are like... Emily Daniels: Right? Oh, man. Like, Lindsay Lyons: this is such a good- Oh, Emily Daniels: you s- you need p- Yeah. You... This, this concept that I'm explaining here has so much application in what you're just describing. Because when you have... Let's see if we can talk about, like, political conversations. Part of the reason why those oftentimes don't result in fruitful discussion is because people get h- hijacked into defensive states. Then they're not able to access their empathy, their compassion. They're not able to access other, you know, uh, turn-taking or perspective-taking. They can't think through rationally what's being said. They can't access that part of their neocortex that helps them be reasonable and rational. Like, so there's a lot. Uh, the nervous system is incredibly powerful, and the shifting that can occur happens unconsciously. So it's not like you're telling yourself, "Okay, I'm gonna become defensive." It just happens. Somebody says something, now you're triggered, and now if you don't recognize that you're triggered, you could then say and do things that are gonna make less safety in that experience than more safety. Lindsay Lyons: And so I'm thinking of peer-to-peer in that, what you're describing, and I'm also thinking of peer-to-peer for adults in like a staff meeting- Yes ... Emily Daniels: right? Oh, girlfriend, this is why the, the regulated classroom, we have like, um, in the, in the guidebook that I, that I have, y- when people open it up and they look at like activators and they're looking at practices, they'll see like a little icon next to the practice and it says staff. And that's because when I train people in the model, I'm like, "This is not just to use with your students." We, the adults, desperately need this. And a lot of schools that I've worked with actually start with the adults first, and they bring the f- the framework into staff meetings, and they dose in these specific practices, these connectors, activators, settlers, and affirmations to shift the climate and the culture of how the staff is feeling with one another. Because when staff have a toxic pattern of interaction, it's gonna be really hard to do much of ... It's gonna be hard to do good work because you don't feel safe with each other, right? And that's a really common struggle that sch- a lot of schools and districts experience, especially in the wake of COVID. Even though that's so six years ago, it's so not. You know what I mean? Lindsay Lyons: Definitely. And yeah, I ... Oh my gosh, there's so many directions we could go. I do want to circle back to like you were saying- Good ... there's a whole thing about the social. Mm-hmm. And then I think you motioned near your face. Is that it? Can you tell us more about that piece? Emily Daniels: Yeah. So the realm of social engagement, in polyvagal terms what that is re- referring to is ... And, and Porges is, is ... Okay, so Dr. Stephen Porges is the author of polyvagal theory. He's the creator of it, and he's done extensive research since he first proposed the theory in 1994. But he is so brilliant in being able to really articulate that we have these very specific features of the head that include the eyes and the capacity for eye contact, brief eye contact, um, the, the striatiated muscles around the eyes, which are directly connected to the nerves that regulate the heart. So when your heart rate changes because you become defense mobilized, it actually can be projected through the m- micro movement of the muscles in the eyes. This is why the eyes are such an important, uh, feature, social feature in, in sophisticated mammals. Um, it's why like, you know, I know eye contact is a co- has become a controversial topic. Um, but in polyvagal terms it really shouldn't be because it, there is so much biological basis for why you can see state through the eyes. You can see someone's state through their eyes, right? And so you can s- you can, you can convey cue of safety through the eyes, and you can convey cue of threat through the eyes. So you know, they're, they're powerful. They're powerful, um- They're powerful social features. I don't know how else to describe it. There's a couple other things too. So like our voice, um, and the tone of our voice, and the prosody of our voice is also sending a c- a signal to you whether or not I am safe. So if I had an agitated tone of voice like, "Lindsay," you know, you can hear that, versus, "Lindsay, I'm so excited for this conversation." Like, you can hear that, right? So that's part of the realm of social engagement. Um, he talks about the middle ear because that's where you process, um, auditory frequency and auditory, uh, stimuli. And again, that's a really quick trigger for defensiveness. It's a quick trigger to... It's a quick, um, it's a short route to the amygdala from the middle ear. Um, so these, these things that are here, like facial expression, vocal prosody, eye contact, how the ear is functioning, all of these are the social features of the realm of social engagement. And when I am regulated, I can inspire in you and in your body and in your realm of social engagement, um, for it to become active and online through my conveying my state to you through these social features. Does that, does that make sense? Lindsay Lyons: Total sense. This is fascinating. Emily Daniels: Isn't it so? Oh my God, you have no idea. It's so fascinating. It's why I constantly am studying it and trying to, like, be like, "Okay, how do I say this in the simplest of terms?" Because it makes sense even with, I don't know about you, but, like, you probably saw in the video, I have my dog here with me, but even sophisticated mammals, this is a part of the reason why they can co-regulate with us so well because, like, when my dog comes over to me and she puts out her tongue and she gives me the softest, littlest, like, I can tell by how she's looking at me that she's regulated and feeling loving and wanting to comfort me versus you know what it's like when you approach a dog who doesn't know what to think of you, and they start to kind of back off, or they kind of have a weird looking face, and you're like, "That dog does not look quite safe." You know? Like, "That dog looks a little threatening," your body is picking up on all the cues projected from the realm of social engagement. And so that's the second educator capacity is do you know how to, uh, recruit the realm of social engagement in others that you share space with and with your students? Can you do that through your vocal prosody? Can you do that through your eye contact? Can you do that through your facial expression, through your gesture and physical proximity? Lindsay Lyons: It, which makes me think of this idea, um, that I, I, I don't like when we declare a space safe, and we're just like- Yeah ... "This is a safe space," right? Yeah. Emily Daniels: God, that's Lindsay Lyons: the worst. It's like... Thank Emily Daniels: you. It is. I know the intention is good, but it's, it's- Yeah ... it's not, it's not something you can declare. Lindsay Lyons: Right. Because everyone has to perceive their own safety, right? Correct. Is that... Am I good? Okay. Emily Daniels: And not only do they have to perceive their own safety, but the vast majority of your perception is at the unconscious level. So it's, it's rooted in your lived experiences. So what is a cue of safety for one person may not be for another, and so you can never say, "Well, this space is safe." I understand what the intention is on that, so I don't want anybody to feel scolded or shamed about it, but it's very much an individual, subjective experience. Felt safety, in, in fact, that concept of felt safety is synonymous with it being understood as it's a subjective experience. Do you feel safe? Um, does this space inspire you to feel safe, right? But, but with all of that, in my core practices, I am helping teachers understand, what are the experiences you wanna purposely bring into the classroom that would most likely inspire more experience of felt safety? So there are certain things we can do with each other, like collective rhythm making, that help us to feel in concert with one another, to help us feel synergy and to feel synchrony, and to, and to know that we can be cohesive and safe with each other. So yeah, safe- you don't get to declare a s- a space as safe. You get to bring about experiences in the c- in that space that may inspire felt safety. Lindsay Lyons: Love, love the way that you put that all together. Brilliant. Okay, now I'm imagining there are people who perhaps intellectually are like, "Yep, this sounds good. I know that I get dysregulated in my class. I want to try to do this." Like, what do you find is the biggest challenge for educators who want to make the shift, but there's just, like, a hurdle that they face, and, like, how, how do they overcome that hurdle? Emily Daniels: Yeah. It's a great question. So first off, I want everyone to know that you 100% get dysregulated 'cause you know what? You're normal, and you're human. Like, so this is something, like, even today we were having a conversation earlier with my team. Something came up that was really, really dysregulating for me, and I owned it. And I said, "Okay, if I'm, like, difficult right now, it's because that thing that we're talking about triggered me so bad. I feel my defensiveness." And it will change me. It will change my presentation. It will change my affect. It'll change my tone of voice. It'll change my movement. Like, it changes everything. And then others around me are like, "Oh my God, she's being such a..." You know, in the moment. They might... Not that I'm doing things overtly to be bitchy. I don't know if that's an okay word to say. Lindsay Lyons: It's fine. Emily Daniels: But it, I can't hide that I got defense mobilized, right? And anybody who knows me knows that in the moment. So that's part of the beauty of the regulated classroom is it's like we're not saying don't be dysregulated. We're not saying that that's, like, something to try to not be. You're gonna 100% get dysregulated more than once through the course of the day. And what you want is to be able to recognize that when that's happening, and then to know what to do to reset. That, that's the thing. Oftentimes the single biggest barrier that teachers will tell me is, "I don't have time for that. I can't do that. I've got so many things I gotta try to accomplish," da da da da da, you know, all that kind of thing. And I get that, and I think when that, when that question, when that, um- challenge comes about when they, when they, when they offer that challenge, you know, that's still the s- the overwhelm speaking, that's still the dysregulation speaking. Um, because if you really are able to get into a regulated place about it, you can come to see that regulation is foundational for everything we want to have happening in the classroom. It's not something you do as a reward. It's not something you do when you have extra time. It's something that if you are not doing regularly, if you're not resetting regularly, everything else about your day is gonna be difficult. You're gonna have more dysregulated kids. You yourself are gonna be just, over time, burning out because you're overwhelming your body's biological systems, your stress response systems, and not giving them opportunities to resource and recover. Um, you're gonna see that the kids are not performing at an academic level like you would hope they had because they need to be regulated in order to access the learning parts of the brain. So it's, it's really foundational work. And so my thing is, the way that I like to talk about it, though, is like I want you to love what you do. I want you to experience joy in what you do. I want you to have a good time. I want it to be freaking fun. Like, why do we have to make it so that school is, like, so not fun? Like, let's stop doing that. You know? Like, there's this, you know, myth I feel like that persists around if we're having fun, we're wasting time. No, you're not. If you're genuinely having fun, you're building felt safety, you're creating community in the classroom, and those are the ideal conditions for learning. That is, that is the fertile ground for learning, for real learning. Um, so yeah. Lindsay Lyons: This question may have already been answered, and feel free to just redirect us to your answer, but I, I always wanna, when I start to close these conversations, and we, we just talked about so many different things. I Emily Daniels: know, I know. Like, Lindsay Lyons: what is the one thing that someone who ends the episode, walks into school today, what could they do just a, a kind of like a first step to- Oh ... do things differently? Emily Daniels: It's a great question. I haven't already answered it, and it's the one that's common. And here's what I'm gonna say, and I'm gonna invite you. As the, as the teacher or the educator coming into a new school year or a new school day, I just want you to notice. That's literally what I want you to do. When it occurs to you, I want you to notice how you feel on the inside. Like, what's coming up for you in your body experience as you step over the threshold of the front door, or you step over the threshold of the classroom, and you enter. What's, what comes up for you? What comes up for you when your students arrive? What comes up for you when you see your colleagues again? Like, how do you feel on the inside? That's the first step, is just to notice. And if you notice that, like, noticing brings up a lot of ick, eh, notice that. You know, if noticing brings up a lot of like, "Oh, this is so good," like, "I love being here. This is so exciting," notice that. Like, it's all, all worth noticing 'cause it's all messages from your nervous system telling you how you feel in the space and with the others that you're with. You know what I mean? And that is really the beginning of, well, self-discovery and change, is you g- you gotta know yourself first. You gotta e- and the way to do that is to begin by noticing Lindsay Lyons: Great advice. Okay, this next question is just for fun. It could be related to anything we talked about or something totally different, but what is something you've been learning about lately? Emily Daniels: Mm. Mm-hmm. So one of the things that I've been rabbit holed on, like dig down deep, right? And I still, there's so much to dig into, is att- is attachment. So I just finished co-authoring a new book called The Early Years for early educators and early years educators, birth to age seven, and then also for parents. Very proud of this work, very proud of this work, and I'm co-authoring it with Chrissy D'Agostino, who's also in Massachusetts. And, um, one of the things that it's done is it's caused me to have to really dig into the research around the science of attachment. And it's a whole new lens for me through which to view teachers and students, because when we've had disorganized or insufficient attachment experiences early in life, those, ugh, lackings, for lack of a better word , they show up again. They show up, and they show up in the classroom big time. They show up with us with our students. They show up with us with our students i- in different ways. You know, a lot of times we like to talk about behavior as attention seeking. If you have kids who have not had secure attachment experiences, 100%, I don't even like to use the language of attachment, or ex- um, attention seeking, but they are seeking connection. They are 100% seeking connection. And they, and they, and they may need you to anchor in as, as an, as an attachment figure. Which frankly is not a new thing. That's something that, you know, many of us have done over the years, um, with our teachers over time. That's what, mm, that's why your role matters so much, because you get to be a part of a child's life in a profound way, because it's so much time, and they, they need adults that are present with them and, and wanna be with them. Um, so anyways, attachment is something that is, um, profoundly maybe reshaping some of my thinking around stuff we see happening in our schools today. Lindsay Lyons: Fascinating. Okay, I now need to get The Early Years. That sounds like a great book. Emily Daniels: Right? Lindsay Lyons: And I, I think the, the last kind of set of questions is around your work. I know you were just saying you, you came out with something like a guide for early childhood educators. Is that right? Can you tell us- Yes ... a little bit about this? Emily Daniels: Yes. So we have, so currently I have The Regulated Classroom guidebook, which is pre-K through grade 12. However, through demand, we created an early years version of that guidebook called The Early Years. It's called The Regulated Classroom: The Early Years, and it's to give those educators and parents the, the practices to use to build safe, secure connections, uh, safe, secure attachments. You know, it's- A lot of our, our, um, early years folks and young parents today, they don't, they just don't even know what to do with their kids, especially if their children seem to be a, have like vulnerable nervous systems or be a little bit, you know, have a more narrow window of tolerance. So this book is chock-full of practices to do. Um, and it also validates and acknowledges, like parents have never been more stressed than they are today. 41% of parents report not being able to function on a daily basis as a parent. 41%. That's from the US Surgeon General in 2024. And teachers have the second highest rate of occupation-related stress. Across all professions, teachers have the second highest reported rate of occupation stress. So we've got two groups of adults that are very stressed who are in the presence of children all day long. So the regulated classroom and the early years are resources to help shift the stress crisis that we have, the stress and trauma crisis that we have, um, today. Lindsay Lyons: Wow, okay. I need to get that. So we need to ... We will link to all the things in the show notes, but where should people go to get that? Is, do you have a website? Do you have a place people could reach out to you? Where should they go? Emily Daniels: Please, please, please. So our web- our website is regulatedclassroom.com, and our, um, socials are regulatedclassroom on Instagram and regulatedclassroom on Facebook as well. And we do a lot there on our socials, um, meaning we share very generously like ideas and affirmations and, um, practices to try. We also have monthly free webinars that are open to the public. Anybody can register the third Tuesday of every month. Sometimes I do them, and sometimes my trainer consultants do them, so you'll see other people there as well. But, um, we really wanna share this information and, and, um, help people become more educated about nervous system state regulation, what that means in the educational setting, and how important it is. Lindsay Lyons: That's incredible. Okay, thank you so much for all of the things you shared and all of the work that you do. Oh. Emily, this has been such a pleasure. Emily Daniels: Same. Same, Lindsay. Thanks so much for the opportunity. I really appreciate it.
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AuthorLindsay Lyons is an educational justice coach who helps schools and districts co-create feminist, antiracist civics-based curricula, discussion opportunities, and equitable policies that challenge, affirm, and inspire all students. A former NYC public school teacher, she holds a PhD in Leadership and Change, and is the founder of the blog and podcast, Time for Teachership. Lindsay believes all students deserve literacy, criticality, and leadership skills. Archives
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