A Brownsville Collaborative Middle School (BCMS) teacher was at a breaking point, struggling with personal issues that added to her daily classroom challenges.
Fortunately, she had a breakthrough, thanks to a series of workshops at BCMS organized by a local foundation in January.
“It was a stressful week because things that happened at school triggered other things in my life,” the teacher recalled. “I was just bottling up and going and going and going.”
Teacher Reset Week
The D.R.E.A.M. (Developing, Restoring, Enriching, Advancing, Many) Foundation, a Brooklyn-based nonprofit, presented Teacher Reset Week in January to help educators release stress and their sense of isolation.
Clinical psychologist Dr. Kirsten Callesen led 45-minute sessions over three days. They included Body & Mind Connection, Identifying Emotions and Letting Go, and Introduction to Havening.
According to D.R.E.A.M. Foundation board member Patricia Fraser, the idea for Teacher Reset Week developed organically from workshops launched in Spring 2023 for Brownsville families.
Brownsville has pockets of deep poverty, and many residents suffer the devastating consequences. To address those needs, the foundation presented families with resources and tools to improve their physical and mental health.
The workshops covered topics like discipline, suicide, healthy nutrition for kids, internet safety, and trauma relief. Parents also learned to improve communication skills when interacting with the school staff.
The foundation followed that initial offering with Wellness Day in October 2023. It was a one-day event for the entire Brownsville community. That led to Teacher Reset Week in January.
Teachers lack tools to manage stress and trauma
Another BCMS educator who attended the Teacher Reset Week workshops emphasized that teaching demands a level of commitment that goes above and beyond the requirements of most jobs.
To be an effective educator often forces teachers to erase the boundaries between work and personal time.
“Balancing professional and home life is difficult,” she said. “I’m still trying to figure that out. I have limited time for myself and my family. My version of self-care would be taking a moment away from my laptop to play a game on my phone.”
Neither of the two BCMS teachers had an effective stress management strategy before taking the workshops. They are far from alone.
According to a RAND Corporation study, teachers and principals nationwide experience job-related stress at twice the rate of the general population.
Dr. Kirsten explained that tolerance for dealing with stress varies.
“The same incident can elicit different experiences depending on your capacity to endure stress or traumatic events,” she explained. “If you are already stressed, then you’re more vulnerable. The next teacher might have more inner strength and a nervous system that can better process the stress that comes from adversity.”
In addition to stress, some teachers also struggle with unresolved trauma. Dr. Kirsten, who practices in Denmark, specializes in neuro-developmental conditions, including autism, and started specializing in stress disorders and trauma about 10 years ago.
She recalled that a teacher at the workshops had a breakthrough in an unresolved traumatic experience from a police encounter.
Officers stopped the teacher’s car over a registration and auto insurance issue. Her documents were in order, but the mix-up prompted the police to place her in handcuffs and take her to jail. Consequently, that police encounter caused her to feel anxiety whenever she saw police officers.
During the Havening workshop, the teacher learned to see the experience differently and release the painful memory. She is now able to manage her anxiety whenever she sees the police.
Impactful workshops and breakthroughs
Dr. Kirsten led the Body and Mind Connection workshop on the first day of Teacher Reset Week. Participants learned to use the body-mind connection to relieve stress through the nervous system, particularly the vagus nerve network. These are the primary nerves of the parasympathetic nervous system. They play essential roles in involuntary sensory and motor functions, including heart rate, blood pressure, and mood.
The teachers participated in the Identifying Emotions and Letting Go workshop on the second day. That session helped release inner pressure through the Cognitive Affective Training (C.A.T.)-kit, an effective tool for getting straight to the core of the thoughts and emotions behind our behavior.
On the final day, Dr. Kirsten introduced Havening, which involves techniques for releasing traumatic events. The methods include placing palms on opposite shoulders and rubbing them down the arms to the elbows. Many of the teachers called Havening one of the most effective tools they learned to deal with trauma.
“Their stories were amazing and sad—very, very sad—because they brought up traumatic stories, and some of them were horrible,” stated BCMS social worker James Rusk, who attended the sessions to affirm and give emotional support to the teachers as they shared uncomfortable experiences that made them feel vulnerable.
Rusk added that the Havening techniques helped the teachers to change their memory of events and set them on the path of healing.
In addition to dramatic breakthroughs, Nora De Arco, the project manager who worked with Dr. Kirsten, observed that the teachers had “aha moments.”
The day-one and day-two sessions helped them understand – for the first time – how stress impacted other parts of their lives.
“There were those kinds of aha moments in which they said, ‘I didn’t know that this had a name, and I see that I’m not coming down from my stress levels,’” De Arco said, adding, “There were a lot of aha moments of just people finding the vocabulary for their own experiences.”
The D.R.E.A.M. Foundation is planning more events for spring 2024 and, ultimately, expanding the workshops to other communities and schools.
Photos Courtesy of the D.R.E.A.M. Foundation
