“In His Cortex”: Tantrums and Self-Awareness

“In His Cortex”? What?

When I was an elementary school teacher, I once attended a staff development meeting about… well, I’m not sure what it was about, to be honest. But the speaker was an incredibly animated man with some quirky presentation habits. It’s probably due to these odd behaviors that I never forgot his presentation. Maybe he did it on purpose!

Anyway, this man talked about what our more challenging students were going through when they were having meltdowns. He described the very front part of the brain, the prefrontal cortex, as the place that was shutting down when the students were so emotionally charged. Because the prefrontal cortex deals with self-control, the shutting down of that portion of the brain leads to a shutting down of self-control. His point was, basically, that we needed to be patient with these students and not attempt to reason with them in that moment. Continue reading ““In His Cortex”: Tantrums and Self-Awareness”