Every time I spoke to Mary, she looked scared. Whites-of-the-eyes, stunned-in-the-headlights petrified. Asking her a question in class was totally out of the question. It took me a while to realise that Mary was in constant fight or flight mode. Had she the courage, she’d have jumped up and run from the class.

In a different class was Martin. Every time I spoke to him, it was as if I had insulted his mother. If I challenged him, he looked just as likely to attack me as to answer me. It took me longer with him to work out that he was also in fight or flight mode. And I found it harder with him because his fight reflex was triggering my own fight or flight reaction. Cultural and gender stereotypes can blind us to the common root when the behaviours are so divergent, but, if we want to educate, we have to be aware of the barriers there may be in our classrooms and sometimes the barrier is a student’s own past life experience. Sooner or later, we will all encounter the hypervigilance of the hurt. 

To the terms “fight” and “flight”, some psychologists now add “freeze”. When I asked Mary a question, I was only trying to start a lesson, but, for her, I was opening up the possibility of making a mistake, of humiliation, punishment and pain. I was putting her back into shame. Best, then, just to freeze, to make herself invisible, unassailable. When I challenged Martin on why he hadn’t done his homework, I was simply trying to reinforce reasonable expectations I had. But, to him, I was making him feel small and about to make him suffer. For all he knew, a punch could be next. Best for him to start the fight, then, before any fists hit him first.

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It is a sad fact that many of our students have experienced inordinate levels of stress already in their short lives. It would break the hardest heart to hear the stories some of our students have to tell. And the natural physiological and psychological response to the situations they have survived has put these young people into a constantly over-alert state where everything could be a threat. In terms of education, one of the key things about the fight, flight or freeze response is that the cortisol involved shuts down the rational thinking brain. That is an obvious and enormous hindrance to learning. Think about your own response to extreme stress: the first thing to go is usually the ability to think calmly.

The ‘fight, flight or freeze’ response in the classroom

Last month, the pastoral team at my college won the Sixth Form Colleges Association health and wellbeing award for 2021, especially impressive when it’s been such a challenging year pastorally. Kirsty Cooper is the counselling service manager at the college, and one of the named winners of this award. She has worked with many young people like Mary and Martin over the years. When it comes to helping these students to learn, she has three main suggestions. 

Firstly, Cooper says, teachers must improve their own self-awareness. Teachers are communicators. We communicate all the time but sometimes we can communicate in ways we might not even realise. So we must become consciously aware of how we come across. We should try to be aware of how our language, tone and body language may be decoded, being aware that we might unwittingly be triggering stress responses in vulnerable students. 

Secondly, teachers need to be quick to de-escalate stressful situations. We need to show empathy, be calm and always avoid confrontation, which may be as simple as sitting, kneeling or crouching beside a seated, stressed-out student rather than towering over them. If a triggering incident happens, move on quickly, returning to deal with it only after a cooling-down period has passed. For instance, if a student reacts badly to questioning, we should be aware that we might be reviving past trauma in them. An easy way out would then be to ask that student a simpler question, one that we know they can answer easily. Lower stakes and easy successes can build confidence and trust.  

Thirdly, teachers shouldn’t take any reaction personally. This can be tricky when student behaviour can sometimes challenge us but we should obviously never lose our temper with a student; better to walk away if it ever comes to that. We also need to be aware that our own issues can easily be triggered and students who are defending themselves can be quick to tap into this as a form of self-defence. But their reaction isn’t actually about us, so we shouldn’t make it about us either. They must remain the focus of our concern here.

The good news is that although teachers are not counsellors, ultimately we can model positive and healthy relationships to our students. We can create safe spaces where questions are normal and have no negative consequences hidden behind them, and where challenges are an everyday part of getting along with other human beings and don’t need to lead to trouble.   

I never got beyond the resistant, aggressive fight response with Martin. Maybe the fact I was a man didn’t help since he felt he had to square up to me. But Mary no longer freezes. A lot of people have worked with her and helped her; a whole team is behind her at college. As one of her teachers, I am deliberately and consciously gentle with her - she is wary of men, who are the group she is most on guard against - and I give her the choice to either answer questions or not. I catch her eye and have learned to read the signs.

Sometimes she responds and sometimes she clams up. If she needs a minute to herself, I let her “go to the toilet”. So sometimes now, just sometimes, she smiles in lessons. And when Mary smiles it means something quite profound. It means she feels safe. And she’s learning more easily now, too. She’s able to think. Mary still isn’t yet where she could be, or where she should be, but she’s progressing. And I believe she will get there. I hope her cortisol days of excessive stress are done. Maybe now Mary can start to learn that it’s safe at college, and so it’s safe to learn there. And then the whole team behind her will raise a silent cheer at her resilience and success. After all, that’s what we’re here for.

David Murray is an English teacher at City of Stoke-on-Trent Sixth Form College