by Michela Nordmann-Netherlands
Teachers are exhausted. Sitting among them in the staff room, one can hear a choir of sighs: long inhales and breathy exhales. I am very familiar with this soundtrack because I am also a teacher in the Foundation phase at an all-boys private school in Johannesburg.
As we sit together, we exchange a raised eyebrow and a shake of the head. If you know, you know. Then the staff room fills with more teachers and the conversation turns to their shared concerns about the ‘naughty’, disruptive, and impulsive children in their class. Yes – children – plural. Their dysregulation is no longer the exception, but the rule. Each child brings their own needs, yes. However, with the events of recent years it is imperative that one considers children’s behaviour in the classroom as a symptom of greater issues.
My Masters research enquiry began in response to the social and emotional behaviour of my students as they returned to school following the Covid – 19 lockdowns. I witnessed extreme feelings of nervousness, sadness, isolation, aggression, disengagement, unfocus, attention-seeking behaviour, impulsivity, and difficulties communicating, sharing and relating in groups. Some or all of which you may still be seeing in the children in your class almost four years after the time of closed schools and social distancing regulations.
Take a moment to think back to your experience of lockdown. Perhaps you can think of five words to capture this experience. I am sure that the word stress makes the top three – especially if you had to attempt to teach a class of five year olds over Zoom. Stress and trauma is fundamental to understanding the behaviour and experience of children in our South African classrooms.
After a traumatic or stressful event, our nervous system attempts to keep us safe by activating different brain-body responses. One of these is the sympathetic nervous system, which you may have heard of as the “fight, flight or freeze” (FFF) response. For this system to settle, a person needs a feeling of safety and some protective factors. Without these, we stay dysregulated (this FFF system stays activated, and on hyper-alert). Think of the developmental and concentration challenges a child might have when their cognitive energy is spent on assessing the safety of their environment.
On top of these Covid-related challenges, one just has to leave home and drive to school to witness the many challenges that illustrate the South African experience (or sit at home in the dark with no water). We live in a highly stressful, unstable and unpredictable environment even before we were met with the challenges that the Covid-19 lockdowns presented. South African children were already vulnerable and many have had one or more Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) (Wyatt et al., 2017).
As they returned to school children needed support to learn the social and emotional skills that they had missed out on. They needed a facilitated space to play and others to play with. They needed to be taught to share, negotiate, resolve conflict and self-regulate. They needed emotionally safe classrooms and regulated teachers, prepared to meet them where they were at.
A drama therapist based in the school environment curating psycho-educational workshops and interventions can be a helpful partner for class teachers navigating tricky behaviour. My Masters case study research captured the implementation and results of six drama therapy-informed drama lessons over six weeks. The sessions drew on play, six-piece-story-making (6PSM), role theory, puppets, story, therapeutic performance process, yoga, mindfulness, imagination and embodiment. These sessions resulted in growth in areas of social skills, emotional skills and behaviour of all twenty-four students in the class.
I discovered two valuable outcomes of integrating drama therapeutic work into drama lessons: Firstly, that we can encourage social growth and skills; and secondly, that we can enhance the emotional potential of learners for self-discovery, mindfulness and respecting others.
At the end of the six weeks, the group was still loud, boisterous and energetic, although no longer in a dysregulated and overwhelming way. There was still room for improvement in their ability to concentrate or focus, but great gains had been made in their self-awareness.
When I observed or interacted with the boys individually I could recognise small but valuable changes in their behaviour. Boys who would previously react to frustrating situations with aggression, would now take a deep breath and then respond. Other learners who were previously disinterested in playing with others, now shared and worked together with confidence. Even learners who were so quiet they were barely noticeable in group situations had discovered their voices.
With a longer intervention, perhaps over several months, their window of tolerance could be expanded, and there may be an increased integration of skills such as adaptability, flexibility and independence.
What began as a personal investigation into a problem facing my students (and giving me grey hairs) has developed into a passion project. The purpose is to enhance all children’s social and emotional skills while also alleviating the demands on teachers. I now have a better understanding of South African children’s behaviour and the context in which they are rooted as I continue to develop a model of drama therapy and drama therapeutic work in schools and classrooms. I believe that every child deserves a therapeutic encounter and can benefit from developing their interpersonal skills and coping strategies to prepare them for inevitable adversity.
MICHELA NORDMANN-NETHERLANDS
Michela is a registered Arts Therapist (Drama Therapy) with the HPCSA, based in Johannesburg, South Africa. She holds an M.A. from the University of the Witwatersrand and focuses on trauma recovery and interpersonal skills development. With a broad range of experience working with a diverse clientele—from young children to adults—Michela provides support in both individual and group settings. Her hybrid practice offers clients the flexibility to attend sessions either online or face-to-face. In addition to her private practice, Michela teaches Speech and Drama part-time at an all-boys private pre-preparatory school in Houghton. In her spare time, she enjoys reading, exercising, and writing children’s stories.
REFERENCES
Wyatt, G.E., Thames, A., Simbayi, L., Stein, D.J., Burns, J. & Maselesele, M. (2017). Trauma and mental health in South Africa: Overview. Psychological Trauma: Theory, Research, Practice, and Policy, [online] 9(3), pp.249–251. Available at: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5492952/ [Accessed 10 Aug. 2021].