The Courageous Classroom. Jed Dearybury

deep grief for you. You may cry, you may cuss. You may even get mad at me because I didn't handle the situation like I should have. I admit, I wish I could have a rerun with some of these students as I have learned more now than I knew then. Some of the stories may be triggers for you as you process and navigate the waters of your own childhood trauma. Lord knows I have had my fair share: sexually, physically, mentally abused by my father; being gay in the Bible Belt South; and attending a Southern Baptist college while being gay and enduring two years of conversion therapy so I'd “turn straight” and Jesus would love me. These are just a few of the details of my own traumatic past. They alone could be a whole book. I digress.

      Through research and relationships, this book will answer the question of how teachers can thrive and learn in spaces where, at times, both parties may experience stress, distress, fear, and anxiety from both internal and external sources. There are moments when the work may read like a college lecture and others where a therapist is talking to a client on the couch in the consulting room. The hope is that we provide advice about how to harness our neurobiological understanding of fear, and help educators and students realize how to push fear aside both inside and outside classrooms. We believe it will show you how to tap into your own potential for healthy psychological functioning and intellectual growth as an individual, and within your institutional culture, by learning how to establish and maintain Courageous Classrooms and promote a growth mindset. Fear and adversity can disrupt the environment of optimal learning. Classrooms and schools that promote a culture of safety, creativity, resilience, and mindfulness will serve as a needed intervention strategy for students and teachers.

Today's teachers are “in the arena,” the words that President Theodore Roosevelt used in his 1910 speech (Sweeney 2020, p. 32), stating:

      It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasm, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.

      Our teachers have to make decisions every day in the face of fear, whether it's their own past history and experience of trauma or the events that emerge from within the classroom. As Sir Edmund Hillary stated, “Fear can help you extend what you believed your capacity was.” That happens when instead of acting out of fear, one acts from a place of opportunity, a chance to stretch and learn while utilizing courage.

      No one – outside immediate family – has greater impact on students than a teacher. Who doesn't remember the one teacher who pushed them, challenged them, held them accountable, or triggered a fierce and terrific feeling within their being, ready to be unleashed?

As a community psychiatrist, Dr. Janet is asked to assess and treat students who may have mental health issues. As an educator, I (Jed) frequently find myself being asked to do the job of a community psychiatrist – Janet's job – yet the professional training I have received to assess and treat students that have mental health issues is minimal at best. As you will read, instead, I draw on my own traumatic childhood experiences to help students who have experienced trauma. I know that I am not alone in my lack of access to appropriate training and resources. Every day overtaxed and under-supported administrators and educators across the country wake up trying to maximize their own potential, live their calling, and serve their communities. Who is helping them? What training do they receive? What are college EDU programs doing to ready their students for classrooms full of the effects of fear and trauma? They are the ones who can lift our students up – or allow them to slip out of reach. With the odds stacked against them, the latter is more common than the former.

      This book argues that we can meet the fears of our time with courage. Fear and courage have a relationship. Whether fear manifests itself as caution, apprehension, or flat-out terror; whether we feel fear internally or exhibit outward symptoms (trembling, sweating, or a shaky voice), courage allows us to meet those fears. The word “courage” has its root in the Latin word cor meaning heart, as “the seat of feeling.” Author Brené Brown writes “Courage is a heart word … In its earliest forms, the word courage meant ‘to speak one's mind by telling all one's heart’” (Brown 2007, p. x).

      Educators enter the teaching profession with great hope, empathy, and the determination to make a difference. Each teacher has a theory about learning and how children develop, learn, and manage their academic achievements. Lev Vygotsky was no exception. As a Russian psychologist and educator, whose brilliant theories about the process of children's learning and development were lost for almost a half a century after he was banned by an oppressive Russia in 1934, his ideas are applicable to Courageous Classrooms.

      Vygotsky did not believe that how children learn was based on their genetic history, ethnicity, or socioeconomic class. He believed in the critical role of adults as mediators, “that is, the engagement of children in age-appropriate activities, in the context of which adults promote the development in children of new motives and teach them new tools of thinking, problems solving and self-regulation” (Karpov 2014, p. 9). Good teachers know this and reach across stereotypes and bias to connect to their students. Parents know this and try to model and teach accordingly.

Zaretta Hammond, a former English teacher and sought-after speaker on issues of equity, literacy, and culturally responsive teaching writes of Vygotsky and his sociocultural nature of learning that students develop agency and independence when they're in spaces that promote connecting with others through conversation and have the freedom to give voice to the narration of their own lives. Courageous Classrooms endorse that theory because we argue for classrooms that promote psychological safety, openness, an awareness of children's developmental stages, the importance of building educational capacity through emotional regulation, and the management of emotions in the service of safety, listening, and shared empathy.

      To live courageously, we must build our inner resources. We must adopt a mindset based on our own self-awareness of what's happening in our lives at every moment, one focused on thriving not just surviving and rooted in successful adaptation to challenges instead of impulsive reactions. Our brain is wired for a courageous mindset, but it must be initiated by flipping on the switch of creative, curious thought.

What to Expect in This Book

      The goal of Courageous Classrooms is to help both students and teachers interact in ways that promote a courage-based mindset, develop a positive adaptation to trauma and fear, and realize that courage in the face of fear within classrooms is a necessary choice. This book will utilize three principles to illustrate three truths for students and teachers:

      1 the power of story and narrative for self-awareness;

      2 the role of educators as encouragers of students; and

      3 the importance of a courageous mindset.

      The framework for the book is:

       Teachers and students have stress, fearful experiences, and trauma.

       Fear and trauma inhibit learning and contribute to anxiety-linked conditions.

       Courageous classrooms promote healthy learning related to resolving conflict, eliminating bullying, and maximizing potential.

       A fear response can be modified by fear extinction, fear reversal, and cognitive regulation of fear by attending to it (thoughts), regulating it (visual imagery), and choosing courage (persevering through fear).

      Teachers who are encouragers (embodying and instilling more courage) provide appropriate encouragement to their students as an important mechanism in response to pain and to facilitate their growth and learning. They provide value in the interaction with their acceptance, attention, and affirmations;