Special Edition: Rethinking Traditional Classroom Rules & Rewards

**Brittany Wheaton** (0:00)
Everybody needs to learn how to sit with discomfort, not when they're learning how to do four times four.

**Erica Mandy** (0:08)
Today is Saturday, August 15th. It's back to school season, and whether your kid is excited to go back or already struggling with the transition, today we're taking a closer look at what kids may actually need to thrive at school. Because for generations, being a good student has often meant sitting still, following directions, and maybe earning a sticker or some other reward for good behavior. But what if some of those traditional approaches aren't actually bringing out the best in every kid? And what if behavior we sometimes label as lazy, disruptive, or defiant is actually telling us something else is going on? Today, we're exploring one approach that challenges some longstanding ideas and reflects a growing conversation and debate about how we understand kids' behavior at school.
We're joined by Brittany Wheaton. She spent 17 years working with K-12 students, including 13 years teaching kids with emotional impairments, learning disabilities, and cognitive impairments. Now, she's the founder of the platform, online community, and brand, Teaching to a Riot. She trains educators to look beyond behavior and focus on the psychological needs underneath it. So we'll talk about what those needs are, why some kids can hold it together all day at school only to completely fall apart at home, and why she says even some common reward systems may do more harm than good. We'll also get into the reality for parents. You can't necessarily change your child's teacher or how their classroom operates. So what can you do to help your kid feel safe, capable, and ready to learn? That's coming up.
Welcome to The NewsWorthy Special Edition Saturday, when we sit down with a different expert or celebrity every Saturday to talk about something in the news. Don't forget to tune in every Monday through Friday for our regular episodes where we provide all the day's news in less than 15 minutes. I'm Erica Mandy. It's now time for today's Special Edition Saturday.
Brittany Wheaton, thank you so much for joining us here on The NewsWorthy.

**Brittany Wheaton** (1:57)
I'm excited to be here. Thank you.

**Erica Mandy** (1:59)
So I know you've built a really big following at this point around the idea that we need to meet kids' needs first and not just react to behavior with things like rewards and punishments. So as kids are heading back to school this month, can you first just give us an overview of your core philosophy and what you wish more? Teachers and parents and adults in general understood about what kids need to thrive in the classroom.

**Brittany Wheaton** (2:23)
The foundation of everything that we do is that there are certain psychological needs that must be met in the classroom in order for a brain to function optimally. And they are autonomy, relatedness, which we call belonging, and then competency. And all three of those must be met consistently enough that the nervous system feels safe in the space. What we're finding is that there are subliminal cues in the environment. The brain is subconsciously aware of how authentic it can be in a space, how valued it is with the members it's with, and how successful it feels in overcoming the challenges, the obstacles put in front of it. And there you get autonomy, which is authenticity, belonging, relatedness, feeling valued, and competency, your self-belief, that you can be successful.
And we take that and we combine it with strategies to make sure psychological needs are met for the students, as much as we can meet them in the classroom.

**Erica Mandy** (3:47)
And there are five core needs though, right? So are there two more we haven't talked about yet?

**Brittany Wheaton** (3:51)
Yep. So the three needs, autonomy, belonging, competency, and then we have two needs on top of that, safety and comfort. So safety is physical safety, and freedom from immediate danger, and comfort could be sensory-oriented, or it could be lack of motivation.
Because for some kids, the way that their brains are wired, that lack of motivation can recruit the brain's pain center. So the experience the brain reads is kind of painful.

**Erica Mandy** (4:27)
And as many kids are just starting school in this month, how long do we need to give them to have those needs met, to have enough consistency, as you said? Should we expect that they're going to need some time in the early weeks of school to figure out their environment?

**Brittany Wheaton** (4:46)
Yes, the way that the brain handles transition, it can be very chaotic. Set shifting is what that is called when the brain transitions from one system or way of thinking or doing something that it was comfortable with. Set shifting is very, very, very hard for children because they lack prefrontal cortex power because their brains are still developing. When a child goes to school from the summer, you can expect the brain to already be in its stress response because one, arousal is really high. If you have high arousal, let's say you're super excited, your arousal can easily switch to high intense anger. Because the arousal is the same as excited. So you've got a kid that is super excited for school, but as soon as they walk in, they see the kid that, I don't know, bullied them two weekends ago. And then all of a sudden, that excitation goes from joyous and happy and ooh to they're ticked.