The Supportive Classroom

Trauma-Sensitive Strategies for Fostering Resilience and Creating a Safe, Compassionate Environment for All Students

Laura Anderson, Jon Bowen

• Publisher: Ulysses Press
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781646041169
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Classroom Management

Build a mindful, trauma-aware classroom today with this practical, easy-to-use book. Designed specifically for busy teachers, it is full of strategies and tools for understanding trauma and building empathy. One in four children have witnessed or experienced a traumatic event that can affect behavior and learning. But school can be a safe, stress-free environment that can actually reduce bad behavior, foster resilience, and heal trauma. The Supportive Classroom shows teachers and educators how they can provide the different types of trauma-aware support that each student needs. Written by two experienced school psychologists, The Supportive Classroom offers an easy-to-understand overview of trauma, empathy, and self-care paired with proactive and reactive tools that can be implemented in the classroom right away. These practical ideas include: - Suggestions for classroom setup
- Proactive behavioral supports
- Checklists for identifying triggers
- Examples of trauma-aware support from real-life students and teachers
- Strategies for recognizing trauma exposure Every teacher brings their own unique culture, style, and passion into the classroom. This book offers a blueprint for creating a safe, welcoming classroom based in trauma-sensitive practice that can be adapted to your unique classroom.

PART ONE TRAUMA IN THE SCHOOLS

CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION TO TRAUMA

When we began working in school systems, the potential immediate and long-lasting effects of trauma exposure and childhood adversity received little attention. Instead, we were trained to identify and intervene with students who demonstrated problem behaviors and learning delays. It is impossible to know how many of those students were struggling in school as a result of trauma or adversity. As well-intentioned educators, we participated in methods that likely did not support these students to the current standard of best practices and even potentially triggered further trauma effects. Thankfully, we have had the opportunity to learn and evolve in our own practices with the support of veteran educators, proactive teams, and professional development opportunities. We have had the unique privilege of spending time in hundreds of different classrooms and have learned practical approaches that truly work in school environments.

Teacher training programs and school districts now offer a variety of trauma-informed or trauma-sensitive workshops and classes. We are collectively improving our ability to identify and support the needs of students who have been exposed to traumatic situations and childhood adversity. Additionally, there has been increased attention on the ways that we can implement proactive behavioral strategies that are effective for all students. Many of these best practices and approaches overlap, and we have gathered some practical strategies together in this book.

WHY DO WE CARE SO MUCH ABOUT TRAUMA?

As our society has become more educated on childhood trauma and adversity, we have realized the implications are widespread and can be very damaging. In his groundbreaking book The Body Keeps the Score, Dr. Bessel van der Kolk, psychiatrist and author, highlights, “Trauma remains a much larger public health issue, arguably the greatest threat to our national well-being.”¹ As we will discuss in greater detail, traumatic experiences and childhood adversity are implicated in many educational, health, and social difficulties.

According to current data, more than 50% of students in the United States have experienced some form of trauma prior to high school graduation.² Some estimates place this number closer to 67% of students.³ The American Psychological Association (APA) explains, “A traumatic event is one that threatens injury, death, or the physical integrity of self or others and also causes horror, terror, or helplessness at the time it occurs.”⁴ As we will further describe, defining trauma or adversity is almost irrelevant, as the child’s perception of the situation determines whether or not it felt traumatic. Trauma is a perceived experience. We can all agree on the extreme circumstances, such as physical or sexual abuse, weapon violence, exposure to war, etc. However, there is a gray area of what may be considered traumatic, including the perception of what happens in a family, how an individual is treated, how the teacher feels about that individual, etc. Adversity and adverse experiences are often used to describe a wide range of other situations and systemic variables that cause an individual or group stress. Adversity and trauma may range from lack of food at home to ongoing homelessness to domestic violence to witnessing a school shooting.

Many people who experience what most of us would consider trauma will move forward without significant effects. However, we are seeing more students each year who demonstrate behaviors consistent with trauma exposure. We may not have any information about our students’ home lives or histories, so we need to be prepared with a trauma-informed and supportive classroom for ALL students.

Additionally, we believe it is important to more fully understand trauma so we can build empathy for our students who are struggling at school. We have been part of countless discussions and team meetings in which classroom educators express frustration about a student and their particular behaviors. When team members learn of the adversity the child has experienced at home, they almost always feel compassion and renewed motivation to help support the child instead of punishing them. A trauma-focused discussion can help your team move from hopelessness into a problem-solving approach.

ADVERSE CHILDHOOD EXPERIENCES (ACEs)

In addition to trauma as it is defined above, researchers have found that “adverse experiences” in general can have long-lasting effects on children and adults. Since the 1990s, dozens of research studies have been conducted on what have been termed the Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs). Scientists from the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) developed the framework for this terminology in the 1990s after they noticed a trend in their data at the Kaiser Permanente obesity clinic.⁵ During exit interviews, they began to realize many of their weight-loss patients had experienced childhood trauma, and that excessive weight gain might be related to emotional needs and traumatic exposure. They developed a questionnaire focused on 10 common childhood trauma experiences from the body of previous literature, related to abuse, neglect, and household dysfunction. (See Adverse Childhood Experience [ACE] Questionnaire in the appendix.)

After decades of investigation, researchers have discovered that the higher the ACE score, the more likely a person is to demonstrate health, behavioral, or addiction problems later in life. These experiences can have a cumulative and long-lasting effect on a person’s life. Higher ACE scores are linked to greater risk of cancer, diabetes, substance abuse, brain injuries, bone fractures, and even suicide later in life.⁶ Other potential risk outcomes include lack of exercise, missed work, severe obesity, stroke, and STDs.⁷

According to the CDC, most adults have experienced at least one ACE as a child and 20% have experienced three or more ACEs in childhood. Children with higher ACE scores are most likely to be students of color and/or living below the poverty line. As we noted previously, up to 67% of Americans experience at least one ACE during childhood. That number is 83% for people of color.

You may have first been introduced to students and trauma through the literature on ACEs, which brought childhood trauma and adversity to the attention of a wider audience and led to increased professional development on the topic to schools. Keep in mind as you consider your own ACE score and potential ACE scores of your students, this list does not encompass the full scope of trauma and adversity that we experience as humans. The ACE questionnaire does not include many experiences that may be traumatizing for children, such as medical trauma, birth trauma, trauma to the mother while in utero, exposure to community violence, attending a school or daycare with limited resources, having a parent deployed in the military, etc.

Modern researchers and practitioners are clear that the ACE questionnaire, developed more than 20 years ago, also falls short in that it doesn’t include systemic injustice, such as “structural racism or heterosexism, transphobia, etc.”⁸ The standard ACE questionnaire does not include economic hardship, death of a parent, or being treated or judged unfairly due to race or ethnicity. As we will outline in a later chapter, it is crucial to incorporate these factors into our trauma-informed approach so we do not re-traumatize students. Additionally, the ACE questions do not include protective factors (variables that predict successful outcomes) and resilience in the score. An individual’s ACE score is not the only thing predicting their life outcomes, but it may help you and your team have more empathy when working with students.

REFRAME BEHAVIOR THROUGH THE LENS OF TRAUMA

One of the major shifts in recent thinking has been the shift from believing behavioral problems are innate within the student to understanding the student as a person who has learned to respond to and operate upon his/her environment. In recent years, researchers have suggested, “a primary distinction between trauma-informed approaches versus traditional approaches for behavioral dysregulation is first inquiring, ‘what happened to him/her that led to this behavior,’ versus stating, ‘s/he is such a bad kid and needs punishment.’ ”⁹ It is often human nature to assume the worst of others when we are stressed or agitated. Before we began to receive training on the implications of trauma and adversity, and even now when we are triggered, our first thought might be “What is wrong with this student?” when they are misbehaving.

Then, the initial literature around trauma helped us reframe the question to “What happened to you?” Instead of blaming the child for their behavior, we began to acknowledge that a child’s behavior is the product of their learning and family histories. Now, practitioners are beginning to shift the question even further to “How do you interpret what happened to you?” How each person experiences trauma and adversity is very unique and is related to resilience and other protective factors. We don’t always know a child’s history, and even when we do, we do not know how the child interprets their own history. As noted previously, trauma is subjective, and its implications are varying. There is no clear formula for trauma and intervention, so we will use methods that are supportive for ALL children. It is, however, helpful to learn the various trends and themes in the research so we can become more sensitive to our students who may have trauma exposure.

ACUTE TRAUMA

Many of our students have experienced what is referred to as “acute trauma,” or a single crisis event or incident.¹⁰ Examples of acute trauma include the death of a loved one, rape, natural disaster, car accident, or any violent episode. Acute trauma may also include a physical fight or exposure to weapons at school.

Typical signs of acute trauma may include hypervigilance, exaggerated startle responses, overreactions, and misperceptions of environmental triggers. These students may seem oversensitive to unexpected noises or people in the environment. Students exposed to single-event or acute trauma typically return to baseline levels of behavior and functioning after a period of stability. A safe and stable school environment can help the child return to typical levels of functioning more quickly.¹¹

A previous preschool student of ours began demonstrating behavioral reac...