What’s actually happening when your student flips their lid?
And more importantly… what should you be doing when it happens?
HEAD TO THE BLOG HERE FOR VISUALS + MORE 😁
In this episode, I’m giving you a front seat to one of the most game-changing concepts I've learned about behaviour and brain science: flipping your lid. You’ll hear me break down Dr. Dan Siegel’s hand model of the brain in all its gloriously awkward podcast-visual-form, but also how this little model changed everything about the way I responded to students in the middle of a meltdown.
Spoiler: trying to reason with a flipped-lid teenager is like handing them a trig worksheet in the middle of a panic attack. Not helpful. Probably going to make things worse.
We’re talking about:
- What actually happens in the brain when students dysregulate
- Why calm-down demands and consequences don’t work in those moments
- How this one model can change the way you respond (and how students see themselves)
- How to teach this concept to your students, even if you’re not a science-y person
It’s simple, powerful, and honestly... kind of magic when it clicks. Let’s roll the tape.
What you’ll learn:
- Why traditional responses to dysregulation often escalate the situation
- What “flipping your lid” means, and why it explains so much about student behaviour
- How to teach students what’s happening in their own brains (without the shame)
- Ways to embed the hand model of the brain into your class culture
- What it looks like to lead with emotional safety first - not compliance
Have a question, comment, or just want to say hello? Drop us a text!
RESOURCES AND MORE SUPPORT:
- Shop all resources
- Join The Behaviour Club
- My book! It’s Never Just About the Behaviour: A holistic approach to classroom behaviour management
- The Low-Level Behaviour Bootcamp
- Free guide: 'Chats that Create Change'
Connect with me:
- Follow on Instagram @the.unteachables
- Check out my website
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Oh, hi there, teachers, welcome to the
Unteachables podcast.
I'm your host, claire English,and I am just a fellow teacher,
a toddler mama and a big oldbehavior nerd on a mission to
demystify and simplify thatlittle thing called classroom
management.
The way we've all been taughtto manage behavior and classroom
manage has left us playingcrowd control, which is not
(00:22):
something I subscribe to,because we're not dancers, we're
teachers.
So listen in as I walk youthrough the game, changing
strategies and I mean the thingsthat we can actually do and
action in our classrooms thatwill allow you to lean into your
beautiful values as acompassionate educator and feel
empowered to run your room witha little more calm and, dare I
(00:43):
say it, a lot less chaos.
I will see you in the episode.
Hello and welcome back to theUnteachables podcast.
Lovely teachers, I hope you'regoing well.
In today's episode, I wanted togo back to just a concept that,
honestly, is just game changingwhen it comes to understanding
(01:03):
our own behaviors and thebehaviors of our students and
our students understanding theirbehaviors.
It is so empowering, it justwhen we can understand our
brains better, when we canunderstand why we're behaving in
certain ways, no matter how oldwe are, no matter what
circumstances we're in, it justchanges the game.
I remember when I learned aboutthis particular concept and it
was like this sigh of relief inmy whole, being just feeling, oh
(01:27):
my gosh, like it's not thatthere's something wrong with me,
it's just that my brain isresponding to things that I'm
going through, that I'mstruggling with, or that's in
the environment at the moment,and just that alone can be just
yeah, it's life-changing to beable to understand this and know
this and this is something thatwe can understand and, you know
, really help us in our ownlives.
(01:49):
But it's something that ourstudents can understand as well.
It can be really simplified forour students.
It can help them to understandtheir brains, and I am talking
about flipping our lid.
So if you are familiar withthis it is Dr Dan Siegel's
concept of you know, theflipping of the lid, the stress
response and the way that we canexplain that to our young
people.
If you do know about thisconcept, keep listening, because
(02:11):
it's really good to have arefresher and to remember why
it's powerful and to rememberhow we can embed this into our
day-to-day practice.
And if you haven't heard ofthis concept before, strap
yourself in, buckle yourself in,because it is going to be
awesome to be able to understandthis better for you and your
students Now.
I remember when I was firstteaching and I had this really
(02:31):
really tough year eight classand this one student, like, just
came in bounding in, kicked thedoor open, was flipping over
tables, was shouting, wasswearing, and I was doing all of
these things.
I was trying to reason with her.
I was saying you know, leaveand come back, try again.
Like everything I knew to do.
I was trying to tell her tocalm down, otherwise, you know
there'd be consequences, becauseyou can't be tipping tables
(02:53):
over, you can't be, you know,shouting and screaming and
swearing at me.
How dare you Can't be doingthis Like there's going to be
consequences.
So if you don't calm down now,this is going to happen.
And guess what happened?
She just told me to F off more.
I told her that she'd be in bigtrouble and she did say F off.
I don't care, because sometimeswhen we have a student who
(03:13):
displays these big, bigbehaviors, we talk to them and
we try to resolve it and we tryto get them to reflect on it and
we do whatever we can in themoment to gain control back of
that situation, because for usit is scary and you know, we
feel like we need to resolve itright then and there.
However, when we are expectingthis of our students, I might as
(03:33):
well have been telling thisstudent to solve some kind of
complex trigonometry in thatmoment, because what was
happening is that she had herlid flipped, she was
dysregulated and although Iunderstood this as a thing I
kind of understood yes,dysregulation and regulation and
all of that kind of stuff Ididn't truly understand what
(03:53):
that looked like in the brainand what that actually meant for
how I needed to respond to thatstudent in front of me.
I didn't understand that, thefact that she was dysregulated
and really struggling in thatmoment, I didn't understand that
that meant that me telling herto leave and calm down was going
to escalate things further.
I didn't realize that you knowthreatening consequences or I
(04:14):
was just trying to do whatever Icould in the moment and I was
doing the best that I could, butI didn't understand what that
actually meant for dysregulationand how I could really impact
things positively by doingthings differently and really
thinking about what was going onin the brain.
When I did understand what washappening in the brain and how
that looked in the brain.
It honestly changed everythingabout how I responded to
(04:37):
behavior, even before I knewde-escalation strategies
specifically, even though Ididn't really know.
Okay, here is what you can doif that happens, because
intuitively as a human being,I'm like okay, if somebody is
feeling like this, then, yes,they need more of that rather
than what I'm going to be doing.
So it became more intuitive theway that I was responding to
(04:58):
these students when I understoodwhat it meant to flip their lid
.
So that's what I'm going to begoing through in this podcast
episode.
I wanted to talk you through theflipping your lid model and it
really is just such a simplebrain-based way of explaining
what happens when students'emotional brain takes over the
amygdala, when their fight,flight or freeze response is
triggered.
(05:18):
So what is flipping your lid?
It is coined by Dr Dan Siegel,definitely not my creation.
I wish that it was, I wish thatI had that many accolades and I
knew psychology that well.
But it is coined by Dr DanSiegel and this hand brain model
gives us and our students atangible, visual and relatable
understanding of their emotionalresponses and what's happening
(05:40):
in their brains.
So this is how you can teach itand this is literally with your
hand.
So I know you can't see meright now on a podcast, but hold
your hand up.
By the way, if you really doneed something visual to have a
look at, then head to my shownotes and I'll pop something
there for you to click on andhave a look at.
So hold your hand out, your palmout, and there, in the kind of
(06:01):
base of your palm, that is oursurvival brain, that is where
the brain stem is and thecerebellum is and your reptilian
brain is responsible for thosebasic functions like breathing,
and it's also where you willfind the hippocampus, the
brain's memory center.
And then, with your palm out, Iwant you to fold your thumb
into the middle of your handsand that is your feeling brain.
That thumb is representing theamygdala, the brain's guard dog,
(06:24):
which is in charge of soundingthe alarm when there's danger
and triggering fight, flight orfreeze.
The amygdala does an incrediblejob of keeping us safe.
And then I want you to foldyour fingers over and that kind
of looks like a fist now, and Iwant you to kind of rest your
fingers on top of that thumb andthat is your thinking brain.
Those four fingers represent theprefrontal cortex and that's in
(06:47):
charge of thinking and planningand rationalizing.
When you are calm and regulated, this is what's in control.
The prefrontal cortex iscalling the shots.
This is called your wise owl.
It's the one that can think andrationalize and when we know,
when we're engaged in somethingthat is your prefrontal cortex
engaged.
So that is like a nice littlerepresentation of your brain.
(07:10):
Open up your palm.
You know you've got the basethere.
You've got all of the um, thebreathing, the reptilian brain.
Then you've got your thumb inthe middle, which is the
amygdala, your brain's guard dog, and then the wise hour, the
thinking and feeling prefrontalcortex then connects nicely to
the top of that.
They're always talking, youknow.
They're always kind of feedingback to each other.
(07:31):
However, what happens is if youare, you know, under stress, if
something happens, when you feellike you're in danger,
sometimes we flip our lids andwhen that happens, I want you to
imagine those four fingers justflipping up and now, all of a
sudden, our thinking brain isnot connected and we are being
led by our feeling brain, ouramygdala.
You can see that thumb there,it's out there, it's leading the
(07:54):
charge, so that amygdala iscalling the shots.
What we need to be doing isreturning to calm and putting
those lids back on.
We can be flipping our lids allthe time in smaller ways.
Those lids back on.
We can be flipping our lids allthe time in smaller ways.
Some of us are really great atreconnecting our amygdala and
our prefrontal cortex.
Some of our students areconstantly walking around with
their lids flipped.
(08:14):
So that is kind of like thebasic way to explain the hand
model of the brain and I'm sorryif I absolutely butchered that,
but it is such a great way forus to understand that if a
student walks in so let's goback to that year eight student
she walks in, she is tipping atable over, she's telling me to
F off.
In that moment her amygdala isin charge.
Her rational thinking brain isnot there, it's not connected.
(08:36):
She's not going to access that.
So when I'm saying to her, hey,like how about we just go
outside and try again?
Like, think about theconsequences or anything that
requires her to rationally thinkabout what's happening, when I
try to reason with her sayingyou know, leave and come back,
or like it's not going to workbecause she is not led by her
(08:57):
rational brain, she is being ledby her amygdala.
So what we need to be doing inthat situation is reconnecting
the thinking brain with thatfeeling brain, because otherwise
we can't work with them.
So it needs to be the firstport of call for us to be able
to support our students toregulate.
That's why regulation is soimportant and that's what I
didn't understand years ago whenI was trying my very best, with
(09:20):
whatever tools I had toregulate and, as I said before,
like even without having theexplicit strategies to
understand how to approach mystudents, after learning about
flipping the lid and afterlearning about what the brain is
doing in response to stress orwhen big behaviors are happening
intuitively, I was like, okay,now I get it.
(09:42):
What I'm doing right now isn'tgoing to work because
neurologically it's not going towork.
Like the brain is not going torespond to that.
That student is acting withoutthinking.
It's pure adrenaline, it'scortisol.
You know, if they're shoutingand crying and running and
shutting down their logicalreasoning, brain is not in
(10:02):
control.
So I can't try to reason withthem, I can't try to have those
conversations.
Like it's not going to learn,their brain is not online.
So once you understand that, yourealize in those moments when
they're in crisis and it is it'stheir brain in crisis, it's
their brain feeling unsafe andthank gosh, our brains do this,
even though it might be a littlebit of a hindrance in our
(10:23):
modern society because we getflipped by everything, like you
know, getting caught in trafficor the photocopy are not working
.
All those kinds of things canhelp, you know, make us flip our
lids, if you're like me, andI've got a very short thread for
that.
But you realize then that it'snot about them being defiant,
it's about their biology andit's about their brains keeping
(10:43):
them safe.
And if students have been wiredin a way where they are
flipping more frequently, itactually makes them, you know,
like their amygdala is just thissuperpower that has helped them
stay safe their whole lives.
So why teach it to our students?
I want you to think about itthrough the lens of yourself and
your experiences first.
(11:03):
So what times in your day-to-daydo you get the most
dysregulated, the most angry,the most overwhelmed?
You know like is it when you'retrying to get out of the house
in the morning and you feel likeyou just can't speaking from
experience with a toddler at themoment you just can't get out
of the house in the morning andyou feel like you just can't.
Speaking from experience with atoddler, at the moment you just
can't get out of the house andthey don't want to put their
pants on, they want to put theirshirt on and you know
everything is really hard.
Is it in those moments?
Is it when you're going to workin the morning and you have to
(11:26):
drive and you feel anxious aboutdriving?
Is it when your principal sendsyou an email saying, hey, can
you come in and have a chat thisafternoon?
It's still only 8am, so you'vegot the whole day to kind of sit
there and stew on it.
Like in the day to day, whatkind of things get you the most
dysregulated?
And in those moments your lidis flipped, your rational brain
is disconnected from youramygdala.
(11:47):
You're feeling that adrenaline.
Are there times where you'vebeen told to calm down before
and you became angrier?
These are the kind of thingsthat help us to understand how
important it is to be aware ofthe stress response.
So when you teach this to yourstudents, you're giving them
this beautiful gift ofself-awareness and language for
(12:09):
what's happening inside them andit kind of takes away the shame
around behaviors.
It helps them then to takeaccountability without that
shame.
Like you know, like we, ourgoal with our students is to
help them take accountability,to help them create change in
their lives and in the classroom.
Having this model to supportthem with those behaviors they
go okay, like these are thebehaviors that I'm exhibiting.
(12:31):
There's no shame around this.
It's just how my brain and mybody is responding.
So how can I do something tochange this?
What strategies do I need?
It builds empathy across yourclass, like you know hey, their
lids flipped.
Like I get it.
And having that as a culturalpart of your class, like that is
just so beautiful.
(12:52):
It creates a lovely sharedlanguage for when you have
discussions with your studentsabout their behaviors and it
really does support arestorative and trauma-informed
response to behavior because,like it's just shouting from the
rooftops that you are not yourbehaviors and you need
strategies to be able to managethis better.
Like it's not your fault.
(13:13):
Like you know, there's choicesto make and we can work on those
choices, but we need to alsowork on strategies to help you
make those choices.
It's just so empowering andthis really isn't like just
something fluffy.
It really is a foundation toany classroom where we want
relationships and regulation andrespect to be central to
learning and to get the mostdisengaged and vulnerable
(13:36):
students on board and get thembuying into what we're doing on
the day-to-day.
How you can teach this it can besuper informal, like in this
podcast.
I took you through the handmodel of the brain in about five
clumsy minutes.
I don't know if I did a verygood job of explaining it.
As I said, head to the shownotes.
There's a visual there for you.
It can be really informal.
You can just talk to yourstudents in class about it.
(13:57):
You can demonstrate with thehand model.
You can talk to studentsone-on-one about it.
If there are students who arestruggling the most, you can get
really good at using the handmodel yourself and you know kind
of pulling it out at a moment'snotice.
There are also heaps of videoson YouTube that take you through
the hand model of the brain, soyou can also show them that.
(14:17):
A couple of them are quiteboring for students, though, and
they're quite science-y, so Ifind it most powerful for us to
be able to so maybe watch theYouTube videos and then kind of
get to know how to do ityourself.
I find it really much morepowerful for us to be able to
(14:38):
show them just with our handsand get them to follow along
with you and then really embedthis into everything, like
embedded into you know, thediscussions you're having.
When you notice someone's youknow not feeling great to say
like is your lip, lip to themoment, like embed that language
and hardwire that language.
So students start to embodythat and recognize that because
it's all about dysregulation.
So when they're able to, youknow, be reflective on that and
(14:59):
be aware of that, then they'remore likely to have the buy-in
they need to implement thatregulation strategy.
Or use your calm corner or likewhatever it might be in your
classroom you're trying to getstudents to do this is going to
give them the buy-in to do it,and I really hope that it's
(15:21):
helped you as well to kind of go, oh, okay, like when I'm having
a moment at home or like whenI'm feeling.
By the way, the most I feeloverwhelmed is after school,
because we are always kind ofabsorbing things and you know
like our window of tolerancegets more narrow and more narrow
as the day goes on and I findmy lid is most flipped when I
get home and I just need todecompress, like being able to
recognize that in ourselves,when we are just not feeling
(15:44):
good and we just need somethingto reconnect our thinking brain
and our emotional brain.
It's just so powerful, andmaybe even having the language
to explain that to your kids orto your partner or to your
parents or whatever it might bein your situation.
But I just find this soempowering.
When we can understand what'shappening in our brain, we can
be empowered to change it inways that actually work.
(16:07):
So actually, if you head overto my blog, I have all of this
stuff there so you can put itinto practice.
I'll put the links there.
I'll put everything there foryou.
So head over to the blog.
I'll pop the link to the blogin the show notes as well.
That way you can kind ofimplement this in the best way
you can.
If you're in the behavior clubas well, by the way, I've got
lots.
Like I said, I've got a lessonon flipping your lid.
(16:27):
I've got heaps of stuff thatyou can use to explicitly teach
your class this stuff.
But you don't need anythinglike fancy If you just want to
get started by doing the handmodel of the brain with your
students.
Like that is brilliant.
And just remember that we don'tknow what we don't know Like I
didn't know how self-destructivemy behaviors were when I was
flipped.
It was my brain and my bodytrying to keep me safe.
(16:48):
I'm thinking about me and myteams and my early twenties and
just how beautiful andliberating and validating it was
to understand that.
And it will be for yourstudents too, because it's it's
so damn human, like it's justsuch a human thing that we all
experience.
So, taking away the shame,increasing accountability,
increasing that buy-in, it isjust magic for us to be able to
(17:11):
do that Students can't regulatewhat they don't understand, to
be able to do that Studentscan't regulate what they don't
understand.
So when we give them insight,we can see so many things shift.
And that is it for this week'sepisode.
I hope that it was reallyhelpful.
If it was, feel free to send me, as always, a message on
Instagram I love to hear it oran email if you're more of an
email person.
And, yeah, even leave me a nicereview.
(17:33):
That would mean the absoluteworld and it helps me reach
other educators with this freeresource, which is the goal.
Big love for the week ahead andI will see you next time.
Oh, hi there, teachers, welcome to the
Unteachables podcast.
I'm your host, claire English,and I am just a fellow teacher,
a toddler mama and a big oldbehavior nerd on a mission to
demystify and simplify thatlittle thing called classroom
management.
The way we've all been taughtto manage behavior and classroom
manage has left us playingcrowd control, which is not
(00:22):
something I subscribe to,because we're not dancers, we're
teachers.
So listen in as I walk youthrough the game, changing
strategies and I mean the thingsthat we can actually do and
action in our classrooms thatwill allow you to lean into your
beautiful values as acompassionate educator and feel
empowered to run your room witha little more calm and, dare I
(00:43):
say it, a lot less chaos.
I will see you in the episode.
Hello and welcome back to theUnteachables podcast.
Lovely teachers, I hope you'regoing well.
In today's episode, I wanted togo back to just a concept that,
honestly, is just game changingwhen it comes to understanding
(01:03):
our own behaviors and thebehaviors of our students and
our students understanding theirbehaviors.
It is so empowering, it justwhen we can understand our
brains better, when we canunderstand why we're behaving in
certain ways, no matter how oldwe are, no matter what
circumstances we're in, it justchanges the game.
I remember when I learned aboutthis particular concept and it
was like this sigh of relief inmy whole, being just feeling, oh
(01:27):
my gosh, like it's not thatthere's something wrong with me,
it's just that my brain isresponding to things that I'm
going through, that I'mstruggling with, or that's in
the environment at the moment,and just that alone can be just
yeah, it's life-changing to beable to understand this and know
this and this is something thatwe can understand and, you know
, really help us in our ownlives.
(01:49):
But it's something that ourstudents can understand as well.
It can be really simplified forour students.
It can help them to understandtheir brains, and I am talking
about flipping our lid.
So if you are familiar withthis it is Dr Dan Siegel's
concept of you know, theflipping of the lid, the stress
response and the way that we canexplain that to our young
people.
If you do know about thisconcept, keep listening, because
(02:11):
it's really good to have arefresher and to remember why
it's powerful and to rememberhow we can embed this into our
day-to-day practice.
And if you haven't heard ofthis concept before, strap
yourself in, buckle yourself in,because it is going to be
awesome to be able to understandthis better for you and your
students Now.
I remember when I was firstteaching and I had this really
(02:31):
really tough year eight classand this one student, like, just
came in bounding in, kicked thedoor open, was flipping over
tables, was shouting, wasswearing, and I was doing all of
these things.
I was trying to reason with her.
I was saying you know, leaveand come back, try again.
Like everything I knew to do.
I was trying to tell her tocalm down, otherwise, you know
there'd be consequences, becauseyou can't be tipping tables
(02:53):
over, you can't be, you know,shouting and screaming and
swearing at me.
How dare you Can't be doingthis Like there's going to be
consequences.
So if you don't calm down now,this is going to happen.
And guess what happened?
She just told me to F off more.
I told her that she'd be in bigtrouble and she did say F off.
I don't care, because sometimeswhen we have a student who
(03:13):
displays these big, bigbehaviors, we talk to them and
we try to resolve it and we tryto get them to reflect on it and
we do whatever we can in themoment to gain control back of
that situation, because for usit is scary and you know, we
feel like we need to resolve itright then and there.
However, when we are expectingthis of our students, I might as
(03:33):
well have been telling thisstudent to solve some kind of
complex trigonometry in thatmoment, because what was
happening is that she had herlid flipped, she was
dysregulated and although Iunderstood this as a thing I
kind of understood yes,dysregulation and regulation and
all of that kind of stuff Ididn't truly understand what
(03:53):
that looked like in the brainand what that actually meant for
how I needed to respond to thatstudent in front of me.
I didn't understand that, thefact that she was dysregulated
and really struggling in thatmoment, I didn't understand that
that meant that me telling herto leave and calm down was going
to escalate things further.
I didn't realize that you knowthreatening consequences or I
(04:14):
was just trying to do whatever Icould in the moment and I was
doing the best that I could, butI didn't understand what that
actually meant for dysregulationand how I could really impact
things positively by doingthings differently and really
thinking about what was going onin the brain.
When I did understand what washappening in the brain and how
that looked in the brain.
It honestly changed everythingabout how I responded to
(04:37):
behavior, even before I knewde-escalation strategies
specifically, even though Ididn't really know.
Okay, here is what you can doif that happens, because
intuitively as a human being,I'm like okay, if somebody is
feeling like this, then, yes,they need more of that rather
than what I'm going to be doing.
So it became more intuitive theway that I was responding to
(04:58):
these students when I understoodwhat it meant to flip their lid
.
So that's what I'm going to begoing through in this podcast
episode.
I wanted to talk you through theflipping your lid model and it
really is just such a simplebrain-based way of explaining
what happens when students'emotional brain takes over the
amygdala, when their fight,flight or freeze response is
triggered.
(05:18):
So what is flipping your lid?
It is coined by Dr Dan Siegel,definitely not my creation.
I wish that it was, I wish thatI had that many accolades and I
knew psychology that well.
But it is coined by Dr DanSiegel and this hand brain model
gives us and our students atangible, visual and relatable
understanding of their emotionalresponses and what's happening
(05:40):
in their brains.
So this is how you can teach itand this is literally with your
hand.
So I know you can't see meright now on a podcast, but hold
your hand up.
By the way, if you really doneed something visual to have a
look at, then head to my shownotes and I'll pop something
there for you to click on andhave a look at.
So hold your hand out, your palmout, and there, in the kind of
(06:01):
base of your palm, that is oursurvival brain, that is where
the brain stem is and thecerebellum is and your reptilian
brain is responsible for thosebasic functions like breathing,
and it's also where you willfind the hippocampus, the
brain's memory center.
And then, with your palm out, Iwant you to fold your thumb
into the middle of your handsand that is your feeling brain.
That thumb is representing theamygdala, the brain's guard dog,
(06:24):
which is in charge of soundingthe alarm when there's danger
and triggering fight, flight orfreeze.
The amygdala does an incrediblejob of keeping us safe.
And then I want you to foldyour fingers over and that kind
of looks like a fist now, and Iwant you to kind of rest your
fingers on top of that thumb andthat is your thinking brain.
Those four fingers represent theprefrontal cortex and that's in
(06:47):
charge of thinking and planningand rationalizing.
When you are calm and regulated, this is what's in control.
The prefrontal cortex iscalling the shots.
This is called your wise owl.
It's the one that can think andrationalize and when we know,
when we're engaged in somethingthat is your prefrontal cortex
engaged.
So that is like a nice littlerepresentation of your brain.
(07:10):
Open up your palm.
You know you've got the basethere.
You've got all of the um, thebreathing, the reptilian brain.
Then you've got your thumb inthe middle, which is the
amygdala, your brain's guard dog, and then the wise hour, the
thinking and feeling prefrontalcortex then connects nicely to
the top of that.
They're always talking, youknow.
They're always kind of feedingback to each other.
(07:31):
However, what happens is if youare, you know, under stress, if
something happens, when you feellike you're in danger,
sometimes we flip our lids andwhen that happens, I want you to
imagine those four fingers justflipping up and now, all of a
sudden, our thinking brain isnot connected and we are being
led by our feeling brain, ouramygdala.
You can see that thumb there,it's out there, it's leading the
(07:54):
charge, so that amygdala iscalling the shots.
What we need to be doing isreturning to calm and putting
those lids back on.
We can be flipping our lids allthe time in smaller ways.
Those lids back on.
We can be flipping our lids allthe time in smaller ways.
Some of us are really great atreconnecting our amygdala and
our prefrontal cortex.
Some of our students areconstantly walking around with
their lids flipped.
(08:14):
So that is kind of like thebasic way to explain the hand
model of the brain and I'm sorryif I absolutely butchered that,
but it is such a great way forus to understand that if a
student walks in so let's goback to that year eight student
she walks in, she is tipping atable over, she's telling me to
F off.
In that moment her amygdala isin charge.
Her rational thinking brain isnot there, it's not connected.
(08:36):
She's not going to access that.
So when I'm saying to her, hey,like how about we just go
outside and try again?
Like, think about theconsequences or anything that
requires her to rationally thinkabout what's happening, when I
try to reason with her sayingyou know, leave and come back,
or like it's not going to workbecause she is not led by her
(08:57):
rational brain, she is being ledby her amygdala.
So what we need to be doing inthat situation is reconnecting
the thinking brain with thatfeeling brain, because otherwise
we can't work with them.
So it needs to be the firstport of call for us to be able
to support our students toregulate.
That's why regulation is soimportant and that's what I
didn't understand years ago whenI was trying my very best, with
(09:20):
whatever tools I had toregulate and, as I said before,
like even without having theexplicit strategies to
understand how to approach mystudents, after learning about
flipping the lid and afterlearning about what the brain is
doing in response to stress orwhen big behaviors are happening
intuitively, I was like, okay,now I get it.
(09:42):
What I'm doing right now isn'tgoing to work because
neurologically it's not going towork.
Like the brain is not going torespond to that.
That student is acting withoutthinking.
It's pure adrenaline, it'scortisol.
You know, if they're shoutingand crying and running and
shutting down their logicalreasoning, brain is not in
(10:02):
control.
So I can't try to reason withthem, I can't try to have those
conversations.
Like it's not going to learn,their brain is not online.
So once you understand that, yourealize in those moments when
they're in crisis and it is it'stheir brain in crisis, it's
their brain feeling unsafe andthank gosh, our brains do this,
even though it might be a littlebit of a hindrance in our
(10:23):
modern society because we getflipped by everything, like you
know, getting caught in trafficor the photocopy are not working
.
All those kinds of things canhelp, you know, make us flip our
lids, if you're like me, andI've got a very short thread for
that.
But you realize then that it'snot about them being defiant,
it's about their biology andit's about their brains keeping
(10:43):
them safe.
And if students have been wiredin a way where they are
flipping more frequently, itactually makes them, you know,
like their amygdala is just thissuperpower that has helped them
stay safe their whole lives.
So why teach it to our students?
I want you to think about itthrough the lens of yourself and
your experiences first.
(11:03):
So what times in your day-to-daydo you get the most
dysregulated, the most angry,the most overwhelmed?
You know like is it when you'retrying to get out of the house
in the morning and you feel likeyou just can't speaking from
experience with a toddler at themoment you just can't get out
of the house in the morning andyou feel like you just can't.
Speaking from experience with atoddler, at the moment you just
can't get out of the house andthey don't want to put their
pants on, they want to put theirshirt on and you know
everything is really hard.
Is it in those moments?
Is it when you're going to workin the morning and you have to
(11:26):
drive and you feel anxious aboutdriving?
Is it when your principal sendsyou an email saying, hey, can
you come in and have a chat thisafternoon?
It's still only 8am, so you'vegot the whole day to kind of sit
there and stew on it.
Like in the day to day, whatkind of things get you the most
dysregulated?
And in those moments your lidis flipped, your rational brain
is disconnected from youramygdala.
(11:47):
You're feeling that adrenaline.
Are there times where you'vebeen told to calm down before
and you became angrier?
These are the kind of thingsthat help us to understand how
important it is to be aware ofthe stress response.
So when you teach this to yourstudents, you're giving them
this beautiful gift ofself-awareness and language for
(12:09):
what's happening inside them andit kind of takes away the shame
around behaviors.
It helps them then to takeaccountability without that
shame.
Like you know, like we, ourgoal with our students is to
help them take accountability,to help them create change in
their lives and in the classroom.
Having this model to supportthem with those behaviors they
go okay, like these are thebehaviors that I'm exhibiting.
(12:31):
There's no shame around this.
It's just how my brain and mybody is responding.
So how can I do something tochange this?
What strategies do I need?
It builds empathy across yourclass, like you know hey, their
lids flipped.
Like I get it.
And having that as a culturalpart of your class, like that is
just so beautiful.
(12:52):
It creates a lovely sharedlanguage for when you have
discussions with your studentsabout their behaviors and it
really does support arestorative and trauma-informed
response to behavior because,like it's just shouting from the
rooftops that you are not yourbehaviors and you need
strategies to be able to managethis better.
Like it's not your fault.
(13:13):
Like you know, there's choicesto make and we can work on those
choices, but we need to alsowork on strategies to help you
make those choices.
It's just so empowering andthis really isn't like just
something fluffy.
It really is a foundation toany classroom where we want
relationships and regulation andrespect to be central to
learning and to get the mostdisengaged and vulnerable
(13:36):
students on board and get thembuying into what we're doing on
the day-to-day.
How you can teach this it can besuper informal, like in this
podcast.
I took you through the handmodel of the brain in about five
clumsy minutes.
I don't know if I did a verygood job of explaining it.
As I said, head to the shownotes.
There's a visual there for you.
It can be really informal.
You can just talk to yourstudents in class about it.
(13:57):
You can demonstrate with thehand model.
You can talk to studentsone-on-one about it.
If there are students who arestruggling the most, you can get
really good at using the handmodel yourself and you know kind
of pulling it out at a moment'snotice.
There are also heaps of videoson YouTube that take you through
the hand model of the brain, soyou can also show them that.
(14:17):
A couple of them are quiteboring for students, though, and
they're quite science-y, so Ifind it most powerful for us to
be able to so maybe watch theYouTube videos and then kind of
get to know how to do ityourself.
I find it really much morepowerful for us to be able to
(14:38):
show them just with our handsand get them to follow along
with you and then really embedthis into everything, like
embedded into you know, thediscussions you're having.
When you notice someone's youknow not feeling great to say
like is your lip, lip to themoment, like embed that language
and hardwire that language.
So students start to embodythat and recognize that because
it's all about dysregulation.
So when they're able to, youknow, be reflective on that and
(14:59):
be aware of that, then they'remore likely to have the buy-in
they need to implement thatregulation strategy.
Or use your calm corner or likewhatever it might be in your
classroom you're trying to getstudents to do this is going to
give them the buy-in to do it,and I really hope that it's
(15:21):
helped you as well to kind of go, oh, okay, like when I'm having
a moment at home or like whenI'm feeling.
By the way, the most I feeloverwhelmed is after school,
because we are always kind ofabsorbing things and you know
like our window of tolerancegets more narrow and more narrow
as the day goes on and I findmy lid is most flipped when I
get home and I just need todecompress, like being able to
recognize that in ourselves,when we are just not feeling
(15:44):
good and we just need somethingto reconnect our thinking brain
and our emotional brain.
It's just so powerful, andmaybe even having the language
to explain that to your kids orto your partner or to your
parents or whatever it might bein your situation.
But I just find this soempowering.
When we can understand what'shappening in our brain, we can
be empowered to change it inways that actually work.
(16:07):
So actually, if you head overto my blog, I have all of this
stuff there so you can put itinto practice.
I'll put the links there.
I'll put everything there foryou.
So head over to the blog.
I'll pop the link to the blogin the show notes as well.
That way you can kind ofimplement this in the best way
you can.
If you're in the behavior clubas well, by the way, I've got
lots.
Like I said, I've got a lessonon flipping your lid.
(16:27):
I've got heaps of stuff thatyou can use to explicitly teach
your class this stuff.
But you don't need anythinglike fancy If you just want to
get started by doing the handmodel of the brain with your
students.
Like that is brilliant.
And just remember that we don'tknow what we don't know Like I
didn't know how self-destructivemy behaviors were when I was
flipped.
It was my brain and my bodytrying to keep me safe.
(16:48):
I'm thinking about me and myteams and my early twenties and
just how beautiful andliberating and validating it was
to understand that.
And it will be for yourstudents too, because it's it's
so damn human, like it's justsuch a human thing that we all
experience.
So, taking away the shame,increasing accountability,
increasing that buy-in, it isjust magic for us to be able to
(17:11):
do that Students can't regulatewhat they don't understand, to
be able to do that Studentscan't regulate what they don't
understand.
So when we give them insight,we can see so many things shift.
And that is it for this week'sepisode.
I hope that it was reallyhelpful.
If it was, feel free to send me, as always, a message on
Instagram I love to hear it oran email if you're more of an
email person.
And, yeah, even leave me a nicereview.
(17:33):
That would mean the absoluteworld and it helps me reach
other educators with this freeresource, which is the goal.
Big love for the week ahead andI will see you next time.
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