Last night I woke at one a.m., drenched in sweat. Not sick, not feverish – just flooded.
It wasn’t illness; it was processing. When a system doesn’t metabolize stress, someone has to, and often it’s the body of the person who cares most.
By sunrise, I’d written to leadership – a calm request to revisit how support could be shared among the team. Containment helps no one; regulation needs community. I also wrote to the inclusion support lead, reflecting that for one particular student, regulation isn’t yet cognitive – it’s reflexive, pre-verbal, entirely body-led. They move before they can name. Movement is their awareness.
The act of writing pulled me out of dorsal. A small restoration of agency.
Later, I received a warm reply. There would soon be a meeting with family and staff. That small, steady follow-up felt like co-regulation in institutional form – a system remembering how to care.
By mid-morning, the student had already begun to slip into flight during class. They lasted maybe eleven minutes before heading out. I followed: not to correct, but to stay with their state. When we reached the gym, something changed. The teacher there welcomed them in without hesitation. Within minutes, they were in full ventral-sympathetic flow – coordinated, focused, alive. They threw off their coat, running hard, laughing freely.
It struck me: this is learning.
The institution calls it play. But regulation before education – that’s the real curriculum.
Later, I shared the moment with the teacher – the way movement restores focus, the way play builds trust. The teacher’s eyes softened. “That makes me emotional,” they said. “That’s what we want for every student.” These are hinge points in teaching — where connection and learning meet through biology, not compliance.
The rest of the morning unfolded in rhythm: walking, pausing, small acts of connection; a found object returned, a snack shared, a kind word offered. It looked like wandering, but it was the body composing safety, one movement at a time.
By lunchtime, I sought rest. The staffroom was too crowded, too dim, so I went outside and watched the crows scatter and regroup. Their movement mirrored the day: restless, repetitive, somehow restorative.
In the afternoon, there were moments of joy and turbulence in equal measure. Freedom, frustration, laughter, language that stung, and then repair. Each rise and fall another lesson in co-regulation: rupture, restore, repeat.
And then, just before the end of the day, the news came: the support rotation would move ahead. Four adults would now share the load. Advocacy had become regulation – gentle persistence turned to balance. The system had exhaled, if only slightly.
Then came the final twist of irony. My new timetable arrived. I’d be supporting an English class studying Macbeth. After eighteen years of teaching that play, here it was again.
I guess “Nothing is, but what is not.”
It felt fitting. Education is still haunted by what it doesn’t yet see: by the unseen body, the unspoken biology, the nervous system beneath the narrative.
By day’s end, I didn’t rush home. I lingered, sort of tired, sort of grateful, sort of aware that something subtle had shifted. The student laughed, the teachers breathed easier, and the building itself seemed a little lighter.
Sometimes gentle persistence is regulation.
Sometimes advocacy is co-regulation.
And sometimes the smallest structural shift – in this case, four people instead of one – is what lets everyone’s nervous system finally find its rhythm again.