Trauma-Informed Education Strategies: Creating Safe and Supportive Learning Environments
Trauma is widespread in schools and can significantly affect students, impacting their academic performance and overall opportunities for success. However, schools possess the capability to prevent children from being defined by their adverse experiences, fostering healthy learning and achievement throughout their lives.
Understanding Trauma
Trauma is a psychological and physiological response to an event that overwhelms a person’s coping resources. It is an unconscious process: the fear centers of our brains assess a situation and flood our bodies with stress hormones that trigger a physiological response, often before we realize what’s going on. This response, commonly known as the fight or flight response, is a survival mechanism. The stress response does not always dissipate when a threat is so intense that it prevents a person from viewing their world as fundamentally safe and predictable.
An early effort to recognize and measure the effects of trauma began over 20 years ago. The Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)-Kaiser Permanente Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) Study, conducted from 1995 to 1997, gathered and analyzed data from over 17,000 adults about their childhood experiences and current health status and behaviors. The CDC identified several common stressors, termed Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs), that disrupted child neurodevelopment. These included abuse, neglect, and household challenges such as family violence, mental illness, or incarceration.
Trauma as an Equity Issue
Trauma disproportionately affects students of color, students with disabilities, those living in poverty, LGBTQ+ students, and others who experience marginalization. Trauma impedes educational attainment on its own. Classroom behaviors associated with trauma often manifest in two observable patterns: hyperarousal and disassociation.
- Hyperarousal: Students exhibiting hyperarousal are physiologically always at the ready to fight a threat or escape from it. They are hypervigilant against perceived threats and may misinterpret tone of voice or physical cues, responding with tantrums or outbursts. Students exhibiting hyperarousal may have an exaggerated startle response and struggle to adjust to even minor changes in their daily routine.
- Disassociation: Disassociation appears in students whose nervous systems are effectively worn out. Students who experience trauma often show diminished interest and capacity for processing new information. The same stress hormones that reshape a child’s classroom behavior can also suppress development in the parts of the brain responsible for logic and learning.
The Impact of Trauma on Life Outcomes
Without intervention, trauma can have a significant impact on life outcomes for students. Even one Adverse Childhood Experience has been shown to decrease postsecondary educational achievement by 20%. The same causes of poor academic performance can lead to lifelong patterns of poor work performance and chronic financial stress. In addition, the physical and emotional toll of trauma can steer many young people towards alcohol and drug use, risky sexual behaviors, and suicidal thoughts or behaviors. All of these can have negative health outcomes across their lifespans.
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Creating a Trauma-Informed Classroom
Educators must be careful they don’t add to a student’s trauma. School policies, including academic (e.g., tracking) and behavior (e.g.,discipline), can carry implicit bias that can retraumatize a student. A trauma-informed approach encourages educators to recognize resilience in their students and continue to build on that resilience in the classroom. In trauma-informed teaching, safety is the foundation for student success.
Educators can use the following everyday practices to create safe and predictable learning environments. It is important to note, however, that multiple approaches will be needed due to the variety of traumatic experiences that student’s face. Every student deserves a chance to gain mastery over new content. Administrators can support trauma-informed teaching practices in their schools, for example, on how to modify curriculum or classroom management techniques to address the needs of students.
Practical Strategies for Educators
- Bite-Sized Learning: Bite-sized learning opportunities with frequent breaks can minimize feelings of anxiety, even if this means tackling math worksheets three problems at a time.
- Limited Choices: For students who struggle to make choices, presenting a limited range of 2 to 3 options can help retrain their brains toward independent decision-making.
- Positive Social Support: Positive social support is the top predictor of resilience in the aftermath of trauma. Asking a student directly “how can I help?” communicates that you hold space for their needs, even in their most difficult behavioral moments.
- Foster Positive Relationships: Educators can foster positive relationships through classroom activities. Building laughter and sensory stimulation into the school day is proven to deescalate stress responses.
- Peer Support: Check-in buddies or other peer supports provide students with connections on difficult days.
- Prepare for Disclosures: Educators may sometimes be on the receiving end of disclosures. School districts can take additional steps to prepare school staff for disclosures, such as school-wide trainings to help adults recognize the signs and symptoms of trauma, and investing in Mandated Reporter Training from a local Domestic Violence or Sexual Assault Center.
- Wrap-Around Support: Wrap-around support for children should include partnerships with extracurricular organizations, health service providers, and community non-profits. Such partnerships ensure a holistic approach to student wellness, and prevent school staff from burning out or operating outside of their training.
- Revisit Disciplinary Policies: School districts should also consider revisiting disciplinary policies with a trauma-informed lens.
- Consistent Routines: Apply school-wide trauma-informed best practices. Consistent routines, especially in the morning and during transitions, help students feel prepared to navigate the school day.
- Self-Regulation Strategies: Self-regulation strategies, like deep breathing and mindfulness, help teachers and students alike in dealing with the added stressors trauma brings to the classroom.
- Rewards-Based Systems: Rewards-based classroom management systems, such as Multi-Tiered Systems of Support (MTSS) and Positive Behavior Intervention Supports (PBIS), can eliminate fears of retribution for students who have experienced discipline in extreme or unpredictable ways.
Additional Considerations for Educators
- Acknowledge Lived Experiences: We have to let go of this notion that kids can just “leave their problems at the door,” forget about everything that happened outside the classroom, and focus on learning. When we pretend that nothing has happened and ignore kids’ lived experiences, we find ourselves getting into conflict and confrontation with kids unnecessarily.
- Recognize Prevalence: We have to examine our biases and understand that trauma is prevalent among kids of all races and all socio-economic statuses and neighborhoods. You don’t need to uncover the trauma, necessarily, but you do need to believe that it is happening to the kids in your classroom.
- Understand the Impact on Development: Trauma just really messes with healthy development in all kinds of ways. It can be anything from difficulty regulating emotions to difficulty regulating body temperature. Trauma is especially toxic to the brain and impactful on learning when it’s chronic or ongoing, as happens frequently for students living in poverty.
- Be Aware of Survival Mode: When you’re in survival brain, you can’t learn and you can’t have a calm interaction that follows complete logic. Don’t assume you know who’s been impacted by trauma and who hasn’t, the extent of the trauma, or the reason for it. There’s always more that kids don’t tell us or that we haven’t uncovered.
- Avoid Labeling: Don’t label kids or unnecessarily advertise their trauma. Working with kids impacted by trauma is not a bragging right for the teacher to prove how hard his/her job is. Other adults can easily make assumptions about kids if they only know about the trauma and not about all the other qualities and experiences - including positive ones - that students bring to the table.
- Avoid Judgement: Don’t judge the trauma or compare traumatic situations. It’s not for us to decide if an experience was “not that bad.”
- Don't Take it Personally: Don’t take the behavior personally. It’s not about you, and if you can avoid taking misbehavior as a personal disrespect or affront to your authority, it will be so much easier to respond constructively. Remind yourself that the student is not giving YOU a hard time, the student is HAVING a hard time.
- Don't Dig Up Trauma: Don’t try to dig up trauma and psychoanalyze kids. Students may not understand what happened or be able to label their experiences as traumatic, and you probably don’t have the time, energy, or training to do a deep dive into your students’ issues. Fortunately, you don’t need to know all the details of what happened to students in order to help them. Spend less energy figuring out the cause and more on understanding solid ways for responding to the effects in your classroom.
- Don't Fix the Trauma: Don’t take on the burden of fixing the trauma for the child. You are not responsible for solving the problem or restoring the child to wholeness. If you try to do that, you will carry the emotional weight of that trauma vicariously, and that does nothing to help the student. The student needs you to be emotionally available and strong, not in a ball of tears because you’re so upset about what the child has experienced. Make it your goal to be compassionate and caring while being lovingly detached from the situation. It is not yours.
- Communicate Safety: There are ways to communicate to kids that you are there if they want to talk and letting them know you are a safe adult. From a practical standpoint, this looks like being in the moment with kids instead of frazzled, distracted, and seemingly overwhelmed. The older they get, the more kids will pick up on those cues and they will not see you as someone they can talk to. Slow down a bit. When you ask a child, “How are you?” really listen for the answer.
- Observe and Ask "What's Going On?": When you see a student is struggling with emotions that day, it’s sometimes best to be direct. Say, “I notice you seem to be feeling upset today. Try to read the students’ body language and notice patterns in the way they behave so you can read between the lines on the days you can’t get a direct answer. Instead of asking what’s wrong with a child, ask what’s going on with the child.
- Curiosity about Students and Communities: Thinking this way will shift your countenance, demeanor, and energy. I definitely think that it starts with a curiosity about the students and their families, but also about the communities that they’re coming from. Provide structure and predictability to counteract students’ feeling of being “on high alert” at all times.
- Rethink Traditional Practices: There are some structures in school that inherently just don’t go with the trauma-informed approach. For example, some of our discipline practices like automatic suspensions, or shaming kids in front of the class, or giving a random consequence for something that they did all take power and control away from students. As teachers, if we perpetuate that feeling - that you’re actually not in control over your world - we might be making things worse.
- Acknowledge Teacher's Feelings: Teachers can experience a sort of secondary PTSD from dealing with students’ responses to trauma all day. This takes a toll on you emotionally, so it’s important to recognize that and build in self-care practices. That’s called vicarious trauma which is basically when you feel the impacts of trauma because you have been bearing witness to the impacts of trauma for someone else.
- Prioritize Self-Care One is self-care and wellness that we talk about all the time, but really committing to that and taking care of your physical, mental, and emotional health.
- Process Emotions By process, I don’t mean vent (like when you go to happy hour at the end of the week where you complain about the challenging student behavior from the week before). Maybe you had a student that was acting out all week, and not necessarily talking about that it was so frustrating … but did you feel helpless? … not good enough as a teacher because you can’t figure this kid out? … like you need more support from your administrator?
Conclusion
Trauma is pervasive in our schools and threatens the young people we work with, affecting their school performance and opportunities for lifelong success. But it isn’t a threat we are powerless to fight. By implementing trauma-informed education strategies, educators can create safe, supportive, and predictable learning environments that foster resilience and promote the academic and emotional well-being of all students. Trauma is an exceptional experience in which powerful and dangerous events overwhelm a person’s capacity to cope. Every child has a different capacity to cope, so this definition honors each child’s individual reactions and interpretations. Trauma is not necessarily violence. Trauma is an epidemic right now, affecting kids across racial and socio-economic lines. It’s probably safe to say that every teacher is working with kids who have experienced trauma. And yet most kids who have experienced trauma will not receive any kind of special services or counseling. The kids will simply show up to the classroom, and you’ll be expected to understand, process, and manage all those complex emotions and behaviors on your own.
Resources
- Fostering Resilient Learners (by Kristin Souers and Pete Hall)
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tags: #trauma #informed #education #strategies
