After ten years of teaching, when I was teaching third grade, I had my one of my most challenging years as a teacher. I had a class of 25 students, twelve of which had experienced significant traumatic events in their lives. I knew trauma was an issue for some children, as I had one or two students over the years but I had never experienced so many in one classroom. Undesirable behaviors were rampant that year and I did not have the level of tools necessary to help them or myself. I felt that I was always putting out fires with little time to teach uninterrupted. Things got better finally, when I reached out to administration for help in late fall. I got some additional aide assistance which helped with supporting students. I felt that it was hard to distance myself from the many traumatic events that all these students were dealing with at home. After finishing the year, I wanted to educate myself on the topic of childhood trauma and adverse childhood experiences (ACE's). I wanted to learn more about strategies to use in my classroom for helping these children as well as coping strategies for me. I wanted to learn what ACE's I had and how that might affect my teaching practice. This is what started my thirst for knowledge on the topic which seemed a perfect fit for my capstone project. I also wanted to extend this learning to other teachers in my building so they would have more knowledge should they experience this in their own classrooms. I discussed the idea with my teammate, Dacia Lackey who decided to join me on this project. I was so happy she did.

Connecting Assessment of Diverse Stakeholders to Your Context

My work with diverse stakeholders, shared learning experiences, and how I anticipated my instructional mindset evolved during the TLI process:

With regard to Group Processes: We discussed stakeholder opinion on how staff at our school would react to another behavior initiative. I asked clarifying questions and shared some of my potential ideas about becoming Trauma Informed School. I asked their thoughts about becoming a Trauma informed school. I find when asking clarifying questions, you can really get at underlying thoughts a person has about a topic. Asking questions and then listening to stakeholders puts them at ease. I discussed how informing our teaching staff about available resources might be a way to alleviate concerns about starting a new behavior program or approach and sharing ACE’s (Adverse Childhood Experiences) self-assessment as a step to bridge the gap. The powermapping activity helped us pinpoint which staff members were more reluctant to take on this initiative and which staff members would be supportive. This informed our next step of education for staff.

With regard to Reflective Practices: I talked about how a book study and ACE self assessment might be a way for staff to become more informed about a trauma informed approach. I talked about how reading more on the topic over the summer helped me reflect on my practice and how the same approach could be valuable to other staff members were they given the resource. I shared ideas about how a trauma informed approach that deals with follow through and consequences would be a possible game changer if that could be the end goal. I shared how a leadership team could be formed to guide this approach through following an implementation guide I discovered this summer. We moved to a position of using that first may prove the best idea and take a step back. This would give leadership team more information in order to go to staff education approach on this topic. During our needs assessment, I let the broad and diverse group of stakeholders talk/reflect and I listened carefully and took notes. I asked for all stakeholders to talk about their feelings about our proposed ideas and prompted each member to share what they thought in a roundtable like session. I employed a variety of communication methods including emails, google classroom and in person discussion during our book study. (see evidence under Do tab)

How my awareness of those from different cultures, experiences, and backgrounds inform your chosen project.

I am acutely aware how much of our population stems from poverty and all the challenges that come with that. I have attended professional development on the cycle of poverty and want to be sensitive as a teacher to its effects on students and parents. Part of my project will involve developing socially just learning environments which involves nondiscriminatory actions toward children from poverty. Many of the children experiencing trauma come from poverty (some of which are native american, hispanic or mixed race). Teachers often hold bias toward lower class children and I want to bring this notion to the forefront. We need to treat children and adults from poverty in an equitable manner.