Does it seem like there’s been a heat wave in your classes lately, and you and your students are mad at or complaining about each other? Or perhaps there’s been a bit of a cold snap, and you and your students haven’t been as engaged in your classes as you’d like? Maybe temperatures have been swinging back and forth between both extremes? Or maybe your classes have been pretty temperate, and you’re interested in learning some new strategies for maintaining an optimal class climate?

Trauma-informed teaching and learning is about improving classroom environments. I invite you to watch the video presentation on class climate I created to help educators a) better understand the relationship between emotion regulation and learning; b) recognize signs of hostile or barren climate (i.e. relationship problems); and c) identify strategies for improving (or maintaining) class climate (i.e. relationship with students).

The video runs just a few minutes over an hour. In the description on YouTube I’ve included time stamps for the beginning of each section of the video in case you care to return to a specific part of it.

Before or after watching the video, you may be interested in using the class climate self assessment tool to help you identify some possible climate problems in your traditional and/or virtual classes. A pdf of the presentation slides is also available and lists references.

I’d love to hear about additional strategies you’ve tried and found successful!