Simon Currigan: 0:44

Under stress, our brains literally stop listening to the prefrontal cortex. Right. The bit that's all about making decisions based on the long term on moving towards our goal. It's like it's been taken offline. So let's imagine we've got a child who has been in this situation several times keeps walking out of class. We've sat down with them separately out of the writing lesson, and then we send them back into the room. But because of that high level of stress, they're not able to access they're thinking about their targets. They've stopped thinking about the consequences of their actions. They've stopped even processing language particularly well. Welcome to the school behaviour secrets podcast. I'm your host, Simon Currigan. My co host is Emma Shackleton and we're obsessed with helping teachers, school leaders, parents, and of course, students. When classroom behaviour gets in the way of success. We're going to share the tried and tested secrets to classroom management, behavioural Special Needs, whole school strategy and more all with the aim of helping your students reach their true potential. Plus, we'll be letting you eavesdrop on our conversations with thought leaders from around the world. So you'll get to hear the latest evidence based strategies before anyone else. This is the school behaviour secrets podcast. Hi there. My name is Simon Currigan. And welcome to the school behaviour secrets podcast. Whenever I tell my friends and family about how long it takes to research and script these episodes, they always say the same thing. They raise one eyebrow and say REALLY?, I'm joined today as ever by my co host, Emma Shackleton. Hi, Emma.

Emma Shackleton: 2:17

Hi, Simon.

Simon Currigan: 2:19

Emma, I've got a quick question for you before we get in today's episode.

Emma Shackleton: 2:23

Oh, what a surprise. Go on then.

Simon Currigan: 2:25

According to a 2018 survey in the UK? What were the biggest causes of stress in adults?

Emma Shackleton: 2:32

Okay. 2018. So that's before the pandemic quite broadly, I would guess money worries, health worries, relationship issues. That's pretty broad. I know, I've probably covered everything.

Simon Currigan: 2:46

Theyre not that bad. Actually, the answers that came back were money, work, health concerns, lack of sleep, which I thought was an interesting one. And the pressure of keeping up with household chores. With women reporting their stress more often than men. I don't think we should dig into that any further. We'll get into lots of trouble.

Emma Shackleton: 3:08

So how does stress link with what we're going to talk about today?

Simon Currigan: 3:12

Well, today we're going to look at the four main types of behaviour and they're all related to stress. These behaviour types explain why some kids make negative behaviour choices or get dysregulated which is find it difficult to cope with school life in general, knowing these behaviour types is crucial. If you're working with individual pupils, because they inform how we need to speak, act and respond to them productively in class, we have to pick the right response for the right moment for the right stress level.

Emma Shackleton: 3:41

That sounds really interesting. But before we get to that, I've got a quick request to make. If you're listening to this podcast right now, please can you open up your app and use the Share button to share this episode with three friends or colleagues who you think will find this information useful. That means that they and the children in their care can get the help and support they need to make progress in their classrooms too.

Simon Currigan: 4:04

With that, let's grab a herring leaned over the side of the boat and gently toss that fishy goodness towards the majestic penguin we call behaviour.

Emma Shackleton: 4:14

Okay, so the thing to be aware of is that there are four main behaviour types, we've got emotional, automatic, survival, and logical and the amount of stress that we're under influences which kind of behaviour our brains can choose from that explains why sometimes the same child can make positive behaviour decisions one day and negative behaviour decisions the next so they might be unpredictable. First of all, though, let's explore the four behaviour types. And then we'll see what happens to them under stress. And why this is important.

Simon Currigan: 4:51

So let's start with the emotional behaviour type. So one key question we need to ask is what are emotions actually for? And when we sit down and think about it and work out from an evolutionary perspective, our emotions are a very powerful way of keeping us alive because they're a way of assessing the world and our bodies are making decisions about what to do. They're a decision making mechanism. Emotions are strong, and they're reasonably fast in our brain. So when we feel an emotion, we feel it very, very strongly. It carries a lot of weight in our brain about what actions we're going to take our emotions are certainly a much faster way of assessing our current situation and making decisions and say, logical thinking where we reason things out.

Emma Shackleton: 5:35

And that's because emotions sit in a different part of our brain to where we process language, so they're nonverbal, and that's why they're so quick, we don't have the language slowing down the process. And that's why it can be difficult to express how our emotions feel with words. Often we'll use metaphors, such as we'll say we're feeling under the weather, or they're feeling blue. So we use descriptive language to try to pinpoint and describe the emotions that we're feeling.

Simon Currigan: 6:08

Although we can experience a wide palette of emotions, there are four key basic ones, and their happiness, sadness, fear or surprise, and anger or disgust. You'll notice the three out of four, those are negative emotions. And that's because they've evolved to help us spot and manage dangers in the wild to tell us something that's wrong. And in the wild, it's more important to survive negative events than to enjoy positive ones. That's why we experience negativity bias as human beings, that's really important, because in our environments, we need to spot and identify those dangers very quickly. So our brains pay lots of attention to negative things, we look for negative things in the environment. Because in evolutionary terms, things that make us happy, we can generally put off until tomorrow.

Emma Shackleton: 6:56

And we do of course, experience many more emotions than that. What's really interesting is that studies show that dementia patients, over time, their range of emotions actually narrows down, and it comes back down to those four key emotions that Simon spoke about. So happiness, sadness, fear, or surprise, and anger and disgust.

Simon Currigan: 7:20

What I find really interesting is when you look at how the brain makes decisions in real time, when you place people in fMRI scanners, and look at which parts of the brains become active, in which order, when we're faced with a decision, what our brain does is it makes an emotional decision First. The emotional part of the brain lights up with an immediate suggestion. And then, and only then does the logical part of our brain rush in, it's almost as if we make an emotional decision about what to do. And then our brain rushes in with logical reasons about why that's the right action to take, which all goes to prove that we're emotional creatures first, and logical creatures, second, whatever we would like to think.

Emma Shackleton: 8:01

So to give a bit of a picture of how this works, then I want you to imagine that you've got an elephant and on top of the elephant, you've got a man who's riding the elephant. So the man represents the logical part of the brain, and he thinks that he's in charge, but the elephant who represents the emotions, is really the one who's deciding where the two of them are going. So at any time, if the elephant wants to change course, the man is unlikely to be able to steer the elephant, he's just going to have to go where that elephant leads him. Although we think that our logical brain dominates actually, in many instances, the emotional brain takes over and is the dominant force.

Simon Currigan: 8:43

Okay, so that's covered emotional behaviours. Now let's think about automatic behaviours. We said that emotional behaviours were strong and fast, but automatic behaviours, the fastest of all our behaviours, and I'm talking about automatic behaviours, people often think about things like habit, but automatic behaviours can be quite complex, it could be something like driving a car, what happens is, once our brains been in a situation two or three times, what it doesn't do is it doesn't sit there and figure out what to do in each situation from fresh every time once you've been in a situation a few times, and you've come up with what your brain considers to be a successful solution. It creates an automatic behaviour, so we have a trigger. And for kids in class, this might be being in a writing lesson. I've been in a writing lesson in the past, that's the trigger, I experienced anxiety and frustration. Well, my automatic behaviour in a writing lesson is to walk out the door, our brain isn't figuring out what to do in that situation from fresh, because it's just too expensive in terms of calories. So it reaches for these fast automatic behaviours. It just thinks I know what to do here. I've got a script already. I'm just going to go and do that.

Emma Shackleton: 9:50

It's really interesting, actually, that brains burn up to 20% of the energy that we consume. So thinking literally burns calories. So somebody weighing 11 Stone, for example, will burn 65 calories every half an hour, just sitting and studying at a desk. I'm sure there's a diet plan in there somewhere, you know, think yourself to weight loss. You heard it here first,

Simon Currigan: 10:17

And it's important for our bodies to conserve calories. You know, when we think back to our caveman days when food was scarce, how we allocate calories, the calorific budget we associate to different functions in our body. It's really important for our bodies It's almost like a different drawer in the filing cabinet, to minimise that for success. So our brain doesn't want to waste calories. So what it does is it creates automatic behaviours for common situations. It's almost like an actor reaching for a script. You can think of it like a library of successful behaviour. And when we talk about success here, we're talking about success from a short term point of view. Your brain thinks in the now, we're talking about a child who's in a writing lesson. And they find it stressful and anxious. And in the past, they've walked out, they've got this automatic script. So there's a trigger, I'm in writing, I'm just going to walk out the room. And we think about how is that successful, because the child's going to get into trouble. And they're not going to be able to do very well in their exams, because they haven't got the practice they needed. What their brain was concerned about, was escaping the anxiety of the moment. It's maladaptive. It's good for the brain in the short term, it's not thinking about the long term. Another interesting thing about automatic behaviours is despite the fact they're very, very fast, it's they're stored in a different part of the brain to other memories. And what's interesting is, you know, if you ever learned to play it on the piano, a piece of music. Very quickly, you stop thinking about the notes that you're playing, and it gets committed to almost like muscle memory. And then if someone interrupts you, in the middle of that piece of music, it's very difficult to get back on track, because you're not consciously thinking, or recalling what you were doing. That information, those patterns of pressing the keys in a certain order, it's stored in a isn't it? If you imagine that your brain is storing these different part of your memory, to where we keep things like facts, memories of present times, in the past, things in different drawers, automatic thoughts are in a separate drawer to those other memories that you've spoken about. There's a fascinating story in a book called The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg. And he talks about a guy who had some sort of brain injury, which meant he was unable to form any new memories. And what researchers found fascinating was when they went to visit him when he moved house, they thought he's gonna have all sorts of difficulties here. And he asked the researchers if they wanted a cup of tea, and he turned around, and he took out the tea bags, and he, you know, made a cup of tea. And they started asking themselves the question, well, how can you do that? How can you remember where the teabags are, because this is a new situation? And it turned out that kind of repetition over time, was storing the memories in a different part of the brain because it was becoming an automatic behaviour, the trigger was I'm making a cup of tea, and his body automatically knew what to do. Whereas new factual memories about the address of where he lived, he found impossible to commit to his memory banks.

Emma Shackleton: 12:57

So automatic behaviours can be as simple as habits, like you say, making a cup of tea, but they can also be very complex behaviours. So take reading, for example. That's a complex automatic behaviour triggered by the brain. So once you can read, if you see a word, you cannot, not read it. So I prefer the term automatic behaviour to habit, because the word habit kind of makes you think of very small things that are uncomplicated, but automatic behaviours can be a complicated sequence, Researchers estimate that at least 40% of all of our behaviours are actually automatic. Human brains love to slip into automatic thinking, it's just easier, it burns less calories, it's less effort, it's less energy. And let's face it, we all take the easy route to where we can.

Simon Currigan: 13:55

So we've looked at emotional behaviours, which are fast and strong, we've looked at automatic behaviours, which are very, very fast. Now we're going to quickly look at survival behaviours. And we're not going to talk much about these types of behaviours in this section, because they're not really relevant to the podcast. These are the behaviours our body has evolved to use to survive in dangerous situations, life or death situations. And there are three key ones, there's fight, flight, and freeze.

Emma Shackleton: 14:20

So really quickly, then the fight response is, I think, the most well known and the easiest to understand. So in that fight response, our body sends a threat, our amygdala fires up, pumps adrenaline and noradrenaline around our system, preparing us to stay and fight to the death.

Simon Currigan: 14:39

So imagine a situation with a lion, One approach is to get angry and fight the lion. The other approach to survival in that situation is to turn tail and run as quick as you possibly can. And that is the flight response.

Emma Shackleton: 14:52

We've also got the freeze response. So thinking about the lion analogy, some animals when they come across a lion will play dead, or be incredibly still. And you see this sometimes with children where they are just stuck. They might be quite wide eyed, they're a bit like rabbits in the headlights, but they're frozen, still hoping that they don't get noticed, hoping that the threats will pass them by. And that's the freeze response.

Simon Currigan: 15:19

Now when you see kids engaging survival behaviours in the classroom, it's very obvious these the kids who are melting down these the kids who are becoming aggressive, and those are not the kind of situations that we're thinking about today, about how we respond to kids to help them manage their behaviour and emotions in class. So because it's not relevant to most situations in our everyday lives, we're not going to do a deep dive on survival behaviours today.

Emma Shackleton: 15:42

Okay, so we've talked about it Emotional behaviours, we've talked about automatic behaviours, we've touched briefly on survival behaviours, what we're going to think about finally now then, is logical behaviours. So these behaviours are governed by and grouped together in the prefrontal cortex. So that's the most advanced, most complex, most high tech part of our human brains.

Simon Currigan: 16:10

The prefrontal cortex deals with what we call the executive functions. So it's not executive like it's got a suit. It's the executive as in the government, if you think about that, what the government does, is it organises it sets goals, and it you know, it delegates those goals down to organisations beneath it to help it achieve what it's aiming for. And our prefrontal cortex has executive functions just like that. It might choose you know, to walk across the classroom and get an apple. So it tells your body, the different systems in your body, what it wants to achieve, it delegates the task down, it's not going to deal with the motor cortex, which is actually physically moving your legs around to get you towards the apple, your prefrontal cortex is executive decisions, that okay, all the systems in the body work together now to help me achieve X or Y get me to the app or move me across the classroom help me complete this piece of work.

Emma Shackleton: 17:03

So one type of logical behaviour is what's known as goal directed behaviour. And that's actually working towards a favourable outcome. Like, for example, when we know that we've got an assignment to finish, or a huge pile of books to mark, we work our way steadily through that task. And the aim is the completion of that task. So we're looking to get to the finish line. So the goal is getting through the task and getting to the end of it.

Simon Currigan: 17:30

Another function of the prefrontal cortex is all around reasoning and logic, learning that if I do A, it results in B, you know, if I give a compliment to one of my friends, it makes them smile and improves our relationship. If I've insult their work, it's going to upset them. And that's going to degrade the relationship. So reasoning and logic are almost solely responsibility, the prefrontal cortex in our brain.

Emma Shackleton: 17:53

Prefrontal cortex also deals with emotional regulation. So that's our ability to understand, manage and cope with that different range of emotions that we feel

Simon Currigan: 18:05

It also deals with processing social interactions.

Emma Shackleton: 18:08

And also processing language. So processing language is actually really complicated and can take quite a long time. So some children can take up to seven seconds to process a single instruction. Because language processing is very complex, we have to hear the words that are spoken, we have to read the body language of the person who's speaking, if we can see them interpret those nonverbal signals, we've got to think about every single word that said and how it said before we then formulate the understanding and what that means in our brains.

Simon Currigan: 18:45

So the kind of thoughts we have in our prefrontal cortex, the kind of thinking we have, this is the kind of thinking that separates us from the rest of the animal kingdom, our prefrontal cortex helps us build societies, it helps us build rockets, it helps us understand complex problems and come up with solutions. It helps us work together and achieve what we can't do by ourselves by working together in teams. There is a problem though thought processes in the prefrontal cortex are very, very slow. And also, they're very, very expensive. And by that, I mean they're expensive in terms of calorie burn. So when we're using our prefrontal cortex, brain is burning through calories very, very quickly. So what does our brain do when it's presented with a situation it thinks, right, I can use a very, very easy, cheap, quick, automatic behaviour, it thinks I can use a very relatively cheap, fast, strong emotional behaviour. Or I can analyse something with a prefrontal cortex, which is going to be slow, and it's going to cost me a lot of calories.

Emma Shackleton: 19:45

And as we've already touched on what's really interesting is under normal circumstances, when we're faced with a decision or a choice, our emotional brain gets first crack at deciding what to do. So if this is a non survival situation, it will then pass on the decision to the logical part of the brain with a very strong suggestion of what we should do, which is linked to the emotion. The logical brains job most often is to provide reasons and rationale for why that emotional decision is correct. But when we're not under stress, the logical brain is able to override this emotional decision. So the level of stress plays a key part in determining which sorts of behaviours we see.

Simon Currigan: 20:32

I just like to take a pause for a moment and say that if you're finding this podcast useful, then you're going to love what we've got waiting for you in our Inner Circle programme. The Inner Circle is your one stop shop for all things behaviour. It's a comprehensive platform filled with videos resources on behaviour inspiration to get you unstuck with classroom behaviour. We've got training resources on de escalation, supporting kids with anxiety, support strategies for conditions like autism, ADHD, and PDA. practical ways of helping pupils deal with strong emotions, assertive behaviour management techniques for managing the whole class, setting out your classroom environment for success. Resetting behaviour with tricky classes, and more. Our online videos walk you through practical solutions, step by step, just like Netflix, you can turn an Inner Circle subscription on or off whenever you need to, with no minimum contract. Plus, you can now get your first seven days of Inner Circle for just one pound. Get the behaviour answers you've been looking forward today with Inner Circle, visit www.beaconschoolsupport.co.uk And click on the Inner Circle picture near the top of the homepage for more information. So what has this got to do with classroom teaching? What does this got to do with managing children's emotions and behaviour in the classroom? Because the title of this podcast is Why do some kids make poor behaviour choices? So we need to look at the four behaviour types that our child is experiencing in the classroom. And the four behaviour types are emotional, automatic, survival and logical. In everyday life, both us as adults and our children have access to three most of the time, their decision making is related to their emotional decisions, automatic stored away behaviours and their logical decision. So let's imagine we've got our child he walks into a room, he's experienced lots of failure in writing lessons in the past, he sits down looks at the writing task. What he's now doing is assessing what am I going to do in this situation using those three key ways of thinking, emotional behaviour, automatic behaviour and logical behaviour. And something really interesting happens under stress that's going to affect his decision making.

Emma Shackleton: 22:52

And just to be clear, Simon, even though we're talking through that thought process, it happens in a split second, as we're not actually weighing up all of those options, depending on the level of stress will behave in different ways, because it's an automatic and instant and speedy response. So automatic behaviours, as we've already mentioned, are very fast, the brain loves that it uses less energy uses less calories. So in the instance of the boy sitting down and feeling threatened by the math task, his automatic behaviour might be to leave the classroom, because history has taught him that when he leaves the classroom, he avoids the writing and gets away from that task that he doesn't like, he feels better when he's out of that stressful situation. So in a way, it feels like a win for him. Because he feels better when he does that.

Simon Currigan: 23:41

Let's assume it's the first or second time he's walked into that writing lesson, he doesn't have this established pattern of behaviour to fall back on. Well, his body and brain are going to assess the situation. And the first thing that's going to flip through if there's not an automatic behaviour is an emotional decision and emotional assessment of the situation he finds himself in. Now he might have all sorts of past and history associated with a failure of writing. And that's going to kick up emotions, it might be sadness, it might fear. And that is going to be a very strong decision making way of choosing what to do next, he's not going to be thinking about his targets, the first wave of information that comes to the brain is this is a threatening situation, I feel emotionally uncomfortable in it. And that is going to give a very strong sort of steer on how I'm going to

Emma Shackleton: 24:29

And because of that, then the logical decision behave. making part of the brain which we know to be slow and weak under stress, and burns a lot of calories, is likely to take a backseat. So the pupil isn't likely to be thinking about the ramifications of their actions, they're not likely to be thinking ahead to why I might miss golden time on Friday. If I don't sit down and complete the writing now. Likely the logical part of the brain is going to be overridden.

Simon Currigan: 24:57

Something interesting happens to our brains under stress. So our child's walked into the classroom, they've seen a writing task, which is something that's going to cause them to experience stress, which is going to fire up all the adrenaline, noradrenaline and cortisol in their system. Under stress. Our brains literally stop listening to the prefrontal cortex, right? The bit that's all about making decisions based on the long term, on moving towards our goal. It's like it's been taken offline. So let's imagine we've got our child who's been in this situation several times keeps walking out of class. We've sat down with them separately out of the writing lesson. We've given them a coaching conversation. We set them targets talked about what to do when they feel stressed, and then we send them back into the room. But because of that high level of stress, they're not able to access their thinking about their targets, they've stopped planning ahead, they've stopped thinking about the consequences of their actions, they've stopped even processing language particularly well. And what they're left with, to make decisions about how to act in this situation are their emotional decisions. And their logical decisions.

Emma Shackleton: 26:03

If you think about it, compared to when you drink alcohol, or excessive alcohol that actually shuts down first, the prefrontal cortex of the brain. So this is why our decision making goes off track. This is why language processing, logic, that all goes out of the window at that point,

Simon Currigan: 26:21

This all makes sense, really, I'm going back to emotional decision making, I'm not going to go to alcoholism. In the wild. If we're in danger from a predator, what our body does is it starts pumping up the stress chemicals. In that situation, If we sit and methodically think things through, while that lion, or that tiger is in front of us, we're dead. That kind of slow, logical reasoning is too slow to keep us alive in survival situations or high pressure situations, we have to act fast. So what our brain does, is it relies on emotional thinking and automatic behaviour, making decisions from the gut keeps us alive, and it helps us prosper.

Emma Shackleton: 26:58

And actually, even under moderate amounts of stress, our ability to access the prefrontal cortex is reduced. So it doesn't take a lot of stress for us then to take that logical part offline.

Simon Currigan: 27:11

So we've got our pupil back in class. Again, if they're stressed because of the type of work they're receiving, or they're stressed due to social anxiety, and they find it difficult being in crowds or groups, or they're experiencing sensory stress, that's going to impact on their ability to think logically, slowly about their goals. If you've got a pupil in school who's experiencing stress, and you're trying to use things like language, logically talking about their goals, it's just not going to work. Because that kind of conversation relies on a part of the brain that is not particularly active right now.

Emma Shackleton: 27:44

But interestingly, under stress, our emotions become stronger. So the emotional part of the brain actually gets a boost from that stress. The more stressed that we become, the more we rely on emotional decision making because the logics taken a backseat, it's kind of no longer there. And this is what leads us to make bad decisions that later on when we feel calm, again, our logical brains might regret. Our students behaviour in the classroom is being driven by pure emotion.

Simon Currigan: 28:17

So if our student becomes a bit stressed, and you know, starts to threaten to walk out of class, or becomes abusive, if we start talking to them about you know, their targets, or what their mom will think later in the day, it's just not going to be effective, we need to engage them in a way that appeals to their emotions. We need to reduce how much we talk, because processing language, part of the function of the prefrontal cortex is impaired, they're going to literally find it harder to understand what we're saying they're going to find it harder to articulate what they're thinking. So they're just going to find that conversation frustrating. They're going to feel like you don't understand them. And I use the word feel there on purpose, because we feel things emotionally very, very strongly, the more stressed we become. So when we're engaging with kids who are becoming emotional, we need to respond in a kind of emotional way. And when we do this, we need to think about not just what we're saying reducing the language, we need to think about all the nonverbal cues we send, we need to think about how we're using our body language to say that we're not a threat to them, we need to think about the tone of voice we're using, because the tone of voice that we use is a shortcut for the message that we're saying. So we need to think very much about how we're engaging emotionally with a child at that point, rather than trying to beat them over the head being logic bullies.

Emma Shackleton: 29:29

And the same is true for automatic behaviours too. So when we experience higher levels of stress, our automatic behaviours grow stronger, our brain starts playing scripts for behaviours that have served as well in the past without thinking through the logical long term consequences. So they're maladaptive they might be successful in the short term, like the boy getting out of class getting away from the writing, but they harm us in the long term. So although the boy knows that he's going to get into trouble for walking out of class, his immediate instinct is to get away from the thing that he's finding threatening. So he's using the emotional drive to reduce the discomfort and walk out of class. What he's not doing is thinking actually, when I walk out of class, it ends me up in a whole heap of trouble later.

Simon Currigan: 30:18

But we can use automatic behaviours to our advantage. If we repeatedly rehearse and practice positive behaviour strategies with the students when they're calm. Get them to experience the trigger, rehearse the behaviour or positive behaviour that we want to instil in them until they become automatic. This practice can give the student an alternative behaviour to use when they do start to become stressed and experienced the trigger because Automatic behaviours, as Emma said, become stronger under stress. So we need to replace old negative automatic behaviours with strong new positive ones.

Emma Shackleton: 30:55

So in summary, when our students start to engage in emotionally driven behaviour that's negative, we need to do an assessment of how much stress we believe they're experiencing and adjust our response accordingly.

Simon Currigan: 31:09

When they're calm we can use more language and logic and as they become more stressed, relate to them more on an emotional level, or remind them about the positive automatic behaviours they've been working on. The other day I heard someone use the phrase when emotions are high intelligence is low. And I think we've kind of explained why that is today that are completely endorsed that by that one more thing, when emotions are high intelligence is low, an automatic behaviours are king.

Emma Shackleton: 31:34

So if you work with kids with challenging behaviour, and you're just not sure why they're acting that way, we've got a download that can help. It's called the SEN handbook, and it will help you to link behaviours that you've seen in the classroom with possible causes, such as autism, ADHD, and attachment. The idea here of course, isn't for teachers to make a diagnosis we're not qualified to. But if we can link behaviours to possible causes quickly, it means that we can get the right help and get early intervention strategies in place. It's a free download. So go to our website now. www.beaconschoolsupport.co.uk Click on free resources near the top and we'll also put a link in the episode description.

Simon Currigan: 32:20

And remember to subscribe to the show to make sure you hear each episode as it's released. It's super easy and only takes 10 seconds. Open your podcast out now click the subscribe button or the Follow button as it's called in Apple podcasts. And your podcast app will automatically download every single episode for you. So you never miss a thing. And I recommend celebrating your decision by coaxing down a squirrel from a tree and gently combing his hair. self care is so important for humans and woodland creatures alike. And squirrels are so busy at this time of year, they can neglect their appearance. So do please spread some joy today.

Emma Shackleton: 32:57

And remember, if you've got a friend or colleague who you think would find today's content useful, then don't keep this information all to yourself. Use the Share button in your podcast app to let them know about the episode so that the classes and students that they work with can benefit as well. That's the end of another episode. Enjoy the rest of your week. And we'll see you next time on school behaviour secrets. Bye now.

Simon Currigan: 33:21

Bye.