As a result of the coronavirus pandemic that interrupted the 2019-2020 school year by closing schools across the nation, many students were at home being educated via remote learning without the social and emotional support that schools can offer. Students may have been emotionally affected by family members or friends who have fallen ill or by the recent acts of racism associated with the murder of George Floyd and police brutality. Now, as schools begin to open again in September, it is essential that educators are equipped with way to address students' and staff' social and emotional needs. This website will focus on supporting student and staff wellbeing through a multi-tiered trauma-responsive perspective and will provide resources, supports, and considerations at each tier to comprehensively support all needs.
This website includes a lot of information and resources to help you navigate this school year. Before diving into the Resources page, we recommend that you start at the What is Trauma-Responsive MTSS? page. The buttons on this page will take you to pages with foundational information on trauma, MTSS, and trauma-responsive MTSS. After reviewing this information, we recommend that you next explore the Tier 1, Tier 2, and Tier 3 pages to learn specific ways you can provide support to students at each tier. If you have questions along the way about terminology or vocabulary, be sure to check out the Glossary page. Finally, the Resources page includes links to helpful and practical resources while the References page includes citations to any journal articles or website that was mentioned in this website.
We hope that you find this website helpful and meaningful. If you have any questions, please see the contact information below.
Dr. Christopher Liang
Dr. Christopher Liang's Gender, Race, Inclusion, and Trauma lab is focused on four main areas of research and scholarship. The first area of his research seeks the understand the role of coping and cognitive processes in the association between perceived ethnic discrimination and mental health outcomes among people of color. His second area focuses on understanding the role of masculinity in the health-related and sexual behaviors of men, with a focus on help-seeking and gender-based violence. His third area of research addresses the intersections of gender, culture, and perceived discrimination in the lives of ethnic minority women and men in the United States. His last and main area of focus is examining the effectiveness of a modified evidence-based school-based intervention on the academic well-being of youth of color in urban settings. A current focus of his work is to implement and test the effectiveness of the trauma-informed schools approach. Contact Dr. Liang at christopher.liang@lehigh.edu.
Kelsey Gaier
Kelsey Gaier is a current doctoral student in the School Psychology program at Lehigh University. Her research interests include universal screening for behavioral and emotional risk, interventions for students with social, emotional, and behavioral disorders, and the implementation of school-wide positive behavioral supports (SWPBS). Contact Kelsey at klg316@lehigh.edu.