According to Sonia Mastrangelo, Assistant Dean for the Faculty of Education at Lakehead University Orillia and Director of Research at the Applied Self-Regulation Knowledge Research Network, a body of peer-reviewed research suggests positive relationships between teachers and students are critical to student success rates. Moreover, she thinks teachers need to manage their stress across five different domains and serve their students best. Although she admits this is sometimes a tall order, this evidence-based perspective is the crux of helping students feel calm and supported by their teachers, encouraging them to get off social media and enabling them to have meaningful cognitive, emotional and social development. Furthermore, Mastrangelo discusses the distinct sense of fulfillment found in this perspective and underscores the importance of finding meaning in the classroom and beyond.
“When we think of the student, teacher relationship, what the research tells us time and time again is that most relationships are at the heart [of student achievement,]” said Mastrangelo. “When we feel safe and secure with the person who’s teaching us, we’ll be able to put our best foot forward.”
Mastrangelo describes the scientific research backing up her perspective.
“On a neurological level, when you feel calm, focused and alert because of the person teaching you, there’s this wonderful reciprocity that happens that allows you to take risks, it allows you to ask questions, it allows you to make mistakes and not feel bad about them, and to truly flourish,” Mastrangelo said. “It’s the person that looks out for you, even outside the curriculum, the individual, who’s not just there to say, ‘Okay, I’m here. I’m your math teacher,’ but teach you concepts. Checks in and says, ‘How are things at home?'”
For Mastrangelo, the student-teacher relationship is paramount to student success.
“I always say that that relationship comes first, and that’s what helps our learning brain, which is the prefrontal cortex, get online,” said Mastrangelo. “Let’s face it, education isn’t always smooth sailing, and there will be hiccups along the way. But it is those teachers that I always say they serve as a cushion or a buffer, that they make the fall that much softer.” Adding, “They’re there to catch you and say, ‘It’s okay. Yes, this was an error, but you pick up again, you pull up your socks, and you try again.”
Moreover, this willingness to be wrong is related to a concept Mastrangelo refers to as “co-regulation.”
“The essence of feeling safe and secure in a classroom has everything to do with the concept of what we call co-regulation, and that is, in a definitive way, the ability for the adult working with the students to make them feel calm, to make them feel recognized, and also honour their voices,” said Mastrangelo. “You kind of want to work and perform for them, while also meeting your own internal goals.”
This student’s desire to meet their own goals and perform well for their teacher hinges on the teacher’s ability to self-regulate, ensuring their own stress doesn’t leak into the classroom.
“It always begins with an individual’s own self-regulatory capacity, which means our own individual capacity to moderate our own stress levels across five domains,” said Mastrangelo. “I think it’s really important that educators understand the important role they have in terms of shaping lives and impacting students, but also changing trajectories. Oftentimes, you’ll talk to students who perhaps may have been involved with substance abuse or were on the verge of dropping out of school, but then they’ll say, ‘You know, it was that one teacher who really made a difference, who stayed after school with me, encouraged me, always checked in with how I was doing, not just academically, but also in terms of my mental health.'”
Mastrangelo said these domains are biological, emotional, social, pro-social, and cognitive.
“There are five domains,” said Mastrangelo, “As adults working with young children, Middle School students, High School students, and young adults, it’s that teacher, educator, or professor’s role to check in with themselves and stay as self-regulated as possible, managing their stress levels so that they can serve as that wonderful mentor, leader, and instructor by supporting students during their times of stress.”
However, Mastrangelo acknowledges this is a tall order for anyone to agree to, especially in a “post-pandemic period of mental health crises.”
“Let’s face it, in this post-pandemic period, we know our mental health challenges across all systems have gone up. We can use the word crisis. We are in this post-pandemic period of mental health crises for our young people, for a variety of reasons,” said Mastrangelo. “It goes back to building relationships and ensuring that teachers fully understand that when they enter this profession, it’s not a nine-to-five job. It’s not as though you’re working with products in a building. You are working with people, and therefore you’re working with emotions, you’re working with personalities, you’re working with culture, you’re working with that disposition. It’s a very different lifelong calling, is what I like to say.”
But, this lifelong calling also competes with the isolating effect of social media.
“We also know of the infiltration of social media and the detrimental effects that has had on the developing brain, and it has further exacerbated our students in terms of their inability to socially relate and to make those important connections,” said Mastrangelo. “Our brains grow when we’re connected three-dimensionally with people in three-dimensional spaces. If we’re spending a lot of time on a two-dimensional screen alone, without someone beside us talking to us about what we’re watching or what we’re engaged in, it only further exacerbates feelings of loneliness and isolation.”
These feelings of loneliness and isolation, often brought on by social media, suggest teachers need to not only be aware of themselves but the environment they are teaching in.
“It does tell us that teachers have to pay attention to themselves and they have to pay attention to the curriculum, but they also have to pay attention to the environment,” said Mastrangelo “We know in classes where teachers in particular are not paying attention to the social, emotional connections they’re making with students, there are students that will fall off those side margins. They will struggle because if they can’t turn to their teacher and they’re struggling at home, who do they have? Who can they turn to?”
Mastrangelo refers to this period of development as “precarious years.”
“There are different times in the child’s development, what we call some of those precarious years, the teenage years come to mind. We think about gender identity and, you know, understanding perhaps their own culture, trying to conform to perhaps a family’s wishes, whether it’s cultural, their orientation, whatever that may be. Sometimes the teacher is the only safe person.”
“So, if that person is not exuding these signs of safety, an open door policy, and the guidance counsellor is unavailable, what we see is a system where students will turn to screens, and they’ll spend a lot of time on video games and social media, looking for those dopamine hits. You know, ‘How many likes did I get on my post?’ But there aren’t real solid, three-dimensional connections with people. So, we can see when teachers are not paying attention to the mental health needs of their students, it starts with anxiety. Anxiety untreated could lead to depression. Depression untreated could lead to suicide. You get this sort of ricochet effect, and the mental health system is overloaded.”
“Our local counsellors at Lakehead will say, ‘Our wait lists are quite long.’ So, all the counsellors I speak to are inundated with referrals these days. Many of them will say to me, ‘Yes, it’s a post-pandemic climate, but we also think people have closed themselves off from forming real connections with people because they’re relying on their screens.'”
For Mastrangelo, this serves as a reminder that a frenetic learning pace is detrimental to students and teachers alike in the classroom and beyond.
“It reminds us that, having this frenetic go, go, go, go pace is not good for us because we don’t notice things. We don’t stop and notice, ‘Hey, look at that neat bird on the branch.’ We kind of go through the motions and we miss the beauty of nature.”
Additionally, this isn’t something Mastrangelo leaves at the office, but brings with her in her personal life.
“One thing I try to practice which has helped me bring inner awareness to my life, is practicing yoga. So, there are things we can do that we know can rewire the brain to promote this sense of awareness and calm. Yoga is one of them, spending time with a pet is one of them, spending time in nature – forest bathing … we know spending time in nature is quite magical.”
With all these ways to bring awareness to oneself, Mastrangelo still emphasizes the importance of co-regulation.
“We always need someone in our lives, whether we are professors, teachers – whatever field – everyone needs that one go-to person in their life.”
