Excerpt from Healing Connections: A Community Approach to Childhood Trauma and Attachment, Chapter 18, Safe and Connected Schools by Andrew Vincent, M.A. (Click here to read Andrew’s bio). After providing a thorough foundation to aid in recognition and understanding of the signs of complex developmental trauma at school, and why behavior-based or exclusionary strategies for addressing student behavior and learning needs are not effective, the chapter goes on to provide many helpful tips for teachers and other educators. Using the case example of a young student named Marcus, who had already been suspended as a 5-year-old, this chapter demonstrates how parents, teachers and support specialists can work together to help all students learn and thrive.  This excerpt taken from pages 341, 343 and 357-359, provides a glimpse into this helpful chapter.

After his three-day suspension, parents Tiffani and Brandon were instructed to bring Marcus to the clearance meeting. It seemed strange for a 5-year-old to attend; however, they assumed the best expecting Marcus’ time in the meeting would be short and welcoming. On the bright side, they would be able to discuss the reports from Marcus’ occupational therapist and psychiatrist. These reports contained information crucial to understanding Marcus, such as his sensory integration difficulties, and recommended accommodations…

The original explanation from the school principal about why Marcus was suspended was that his behavior was violent and that he hit another student with his lunchbox.

As the school year progressed, Marcus’ parents developed a positive relationship with his primary teacher. When reviewing the incident, she explained that Marcus had never been violent, as was reported by the administration. The incident was because Marcus was spinning around in the long lunch line and accidentally hit the child with his lunch box. While Marcus’ behavior was dangerous, it was also a clear manifestation of his disability, as had been documented by his occupational therapist. Had his accommodations been met properly, the entire situation could have been avoided.

So, what is a teacher to do?

Trauma-informed care vs Trauma-specific services

Trauma-specific services refer to interventions and therapies led by mental health professionals to treat trauma related symptoms. Trauma-specific services are usually reserved for clinical settings, and it is not appropriate to initiate these interventions without proper mental health training. Trauma-informed care, on the other hand, is for everyone, especially those who have influence over the spaces that people with trauma must navigate, such as schools and classrooms. Being a trauma-informed teacher means you are informed about the effects of trauma on students and allow this knowledge to inform how you teach and lead. Obviously, there’s more that teachers can do, especially in the areas of advocacy, making referrals, and affecting organizational change, but that is outside of the scope of this chapter.

There are several benefits to implementing trauma-informed instruction, and the impacts go far beyond helping the individual students struggling because of trauma.

1. It benefits all learners, not just those who are dealing with trauma-related issues. Rather than thinking of these practices as unique accommodations that should be applied to the few students who are overtly struggling with regulation, we can consider them as best practices that benefit everyone in the classroom. While children without developmental trauma may function well in a typical classroom environment, they would do even better in a trauma-informed environment. A helpful analogy is to think about indoor smoking and asthma. Children without asthma can function well with smoke in their environment (at least for a while) even though this is not the healthiest environment. For someone with asthma, this same environment is disabling. Becoming a smoke-free environment is crucial for some people, but it is beneficial for everyone, as is trauma-informed care.
2. It reduces teacher workload. There is no doubt about it: working with students who have been impacted by trauma can be difficult and time consuming. When students reach the point of having major emotional and behavioral meltdowns, teachers are left with a big mess to clean up (sometimes literally). There’s time wasted with warnings of consequences, following through on consequences, documenting what happened, making phone calls home, resetting the rest of the class, re-teaching the material that was missed, and meeting with the student to prevent future incidents. Trauma-informed practices can reduce time spent addressing student behavior by (1) helping children remain regulated, (2) helping them re-regulate more quickly if dysregulated, and (3) preventing catastrophe when emotions and behaviors are temporarily too big for the classroom with predetermined appropriate protocols.
3. It models the social-emotional skills we want all children to learn. When a student disrupts class with extreme behavior, the rest of their class get their cues by watching how the adult in the room handles the situation. Teachers want to minimize the disruption as quickly as possible to get back to the lesson, and they may try a number of different strategies to accomplish this. Some common methods are raising their voice, increasing warnings and consequences, shaming the behavior, enticing with rewards, and rushing through the protocols to have the child removed from class as quickly as possible. At best, these strategies may have mixed short-term results (sometimes curbing behavior and sometimes exacerbating it), but there are no long-term benefits for anyone. A trauma-informed approach teaches the class to care for all humans, that true power comes from not allowing others to dictate our emotional state, and that the best leadership tools are co-regulation, connection, compassion, and curiosity.
4. It is intuitive. Teachers are often discouraged and befuddled by children who exhibit chronic emotional and behavioral disturbances. They may exhaust all their tools for classroom management, only to witness these tools lead to more harm than good. Some teachers manage the situation and survive the school year, only to have the same dynamics repeated with a new set of students. By becoming trauma-informed, teachers learn that behavior is often the language of childhood trauma. Once teachers can break through this language barrier and recognize the child’s underlying needs, their options are vastly expanded. Meeting needs is much easier when we know what they are.
5. It helps us be the healthiest version of ourselves. Teachers enter this work to help children learn, grow, and thrive. When teachers sense this is being accomplished, they flourish emotionally, and children are also more likely to learn, thrive and grow with teachers who are emotionally flourishing. The opposite is also true: when children who are overwhelmed create major disruptions that teachers do not know how to effectively navigate, teachers become overwhelmed themselves, which leads to becoming less effective. Teachers often take these feelings home, replaying negative encounters and ruminating about what role they may have had in exacerbating the situation and what they could have done differently. When this happens routinely, it is a sign that the teacher may be experiencing Secondary Trauma. Trauma-informed instruction can reduce the amount of exposure teachers experience to traumatic turmoil and can equip them with strategies and boundaries that come with knowing their role.