Welcome to The Soothing Space! This site is designed to educate and support families and students of Radford City Schools. We hope to provide resources for assisting families and teachers in understanding trauma, stress, the effects on the developing brain, and how we can best support students during challenging times. Our focus is on social emotional learning to assist students in recognizing their emotions, the link to their behaviors, and how to manage them. This site will grow over time, please come back and visit us again!
We can experience trauma in many ways. the causes of trauma are less important than how trauma manifests in a child's life
but it is important to understand that we can experience trauma in many ways.
There are 3 types of trauma:
Type 1 - single exposure
Type 2 - one type of exposure that is repeated OR exposure to one or two different events
Type 3 - Toxic Stress and Developmental Trauma Disorder
The Five Competencies as defined by the Collaborative for Academic Social Emotional Learning (CASEL)
Self-awareness: The ability to accurately recognize one’s emotions and thoughts and their influence on behavior. This includes accurately assessing one’s strengths and limitations and possessing a well-grounded sense of confidence and optimism.
Self-management: The ability to regulate one’s emotions, thoughts, and behaviors effectively in different situations. This includes managing stress, controlling impulses, motivating oneself, and setting and working toward achieving personal and academic goals.
Social awareness: The ability to take the perspective of and empathize with others from diverse backgrounds and cultures, to understand social and ethical norms for behavior, and to recognize family, school, and community resources and supports.
Relationship skills: The ability to establish and maintain healthy and rewarding relationships with diverse individuals and groups. This includes communicating clearly, listening actively, cooperating, resisting inappropriate social pressure, negotiating conflict constructively, and seeking and offering help when needed.
Responsible decision-making: The ability to make constructive and respectful choices about personal behavior and social interactions based on consideration of ethical standards, safety concerns, social norms, the realistic evaluation of consequences of various actions, and the well-being of self and others