After the terrorist attack on September 11th, 2001, Dr. Pamela Cantor was asked to co-author a study about the traumatic effect the attack had on New York City’s students. She did groundbreaking research across the Five Boroughs but had an eye-opening experience when a drawing from a young student in the Bronx showed what that day meant to him. The subject matter he drew was not what she or other researchers expected.
Systems of Stress
The drawing shows the Twin Towers smoking in the background, but in the foreground are two stick-figure boys pointing guns at each other. It was an epiphany for Dr. Cantor and her team. They were studying the effects of acute trauma, and the signs of chronic trauma were everywhere they looked. Dr. Cantor explains, ”When you look at what that picture meant, and you actually look at what showed up in the data, we found that these symptoms of stress associated with 9/11 were much more prevalent in our high-poverty communities and schools. And the reason for that was that there were clear and present dangers and risks that kids confront daily in their communities.”
Impacting the Learning Environment
The results show that while some of the anxiety symptoms were set off or re-triggered by the 9/11 attacks, poverty, and many other daily adversities are a stronger and more prevalent source of stress in children’s everyday lives. They are significant factors in the types of issues kids bring into the classroom. Everyday stresses seriously impact the learning environment and prevent students from feeling safe and secure. They feel alienated and alone, unable to learn while coping with multiple distractions outside the classroom.
How Adults Can Help With Stress Factors
But Dr. Cantor cautions that children’s brains are very malleable. She discusses the malleability and resilience side of the equation in overcoming stress factors and says there is a lot that adults can do both in the classroom and at home to help kids cope. “From enabling kids to know why they should feel safe, why they should feel protected, it’s important that parents and school staff need to be embedded in powerful relationships with their children,” she says.
She has learned that the human relationship is the most robust buffer against the effects of stress. Just as stress produces cortisol that courses through children’s systems, the experience of a connected and robust relationship actually releases another hormone that opposes cortisol. So, kids’ connection with their families, whether or not it’s just one parent, is the key ingredient of a child’s healthy development.
“There is a lot that parents, that one parent, can do or just one teacher can do to make a child feel protected and safe in the school classroom to foster a healthy learning environment,” Dr. Cantor says. Just being present and providing a sense of security, continuity, and acceptance in the child’s life can make all the difference in the world.
Subscribe to edCircuit to stay up to date on all of our shows, podcasts, news, and thought leadership articles.