Trauma-Informed Strategies
TRauma-informed strategies
Trauma-informed strategies are specific ways we, as adults who work with children, can mitigate the effects of trauma. These strategies are research-based, evidence-supported, and have been shown to help the brain in the following ways:
To reset in order to learn
Make and store memories
React and behave in more appropriate ways
As educators and professionals who work with children, we have all encountered children who have experienced trauma (even if we don't know it).
Many times, students are punished for behaviors that stem from past traumas. This type of discipline or punishment serves only to re-traumatize the students and may reinforce the cycle of trauma. It is the job of schools and educators to provide stability and safety for these children (McInerney & McKlindon, 2014). Doing so helps break the cycle of trauma, and you can start with the strategies described below.
Principles for Interacting with Students with trauma
Always empower, never disempower.
Provide unconditional positive regard.
Maintain high expectations.
Check assumptions, observe, and question.
Be a relationship coach.
Provide guided opportunities for helpful participation (McInerney & McKlindon, 2014).
For more information: Trauma Informed Schools & Classrooms
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Know your students
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"Students don't care how much you know, until they know how much you care."
-John C. Maxwell
Getting to know your students and building relationships with them is one of the most important things educators can do (Gonzalez, 2016). Furthermore, forming relationships helps build trust in the classroom, which provides students space to take risks, allows for more comprehensive differentiation, and often gives educators a more complete picture of what students experience outside of the classroom. By doing this at the beginning of the year, educators will already be well on their way to having a trauma-informed classroom.
Gonzales (2016) provided a four-part system for getting to know your students:
Icebreakers
Gonzalez (2015) gave three examples of nonthreatening icebreakers. These examples are:
Blobs and lines: students must line up or gather in blobs based on something they have in common with other students in the class. This game can be as simple as asking students to line up by birthday and gather together by eye color (brown, green, blue).
Concentric circles: students form an outer and an inner circle. The inside circle faces out to form a pair with someone in the outer circle. The teacher or facilitator will ask an open-ended question, the pair will share answers, and then the inner circle rotates to make a new pair for the next question.
This or that: students move to one side of the room that correlates with their answer to a question. For example, if a teacher asks if students prefer the beach or the mountains, students would go to either side of the room based on their opinion.
2. Take inventory
Gonzalez (2016) explained how giving out a survey with questions for the students and/or their parents can provide a lot of insight into your students. These surveys can be different based on the grade level you teach.
3. Store your data
One of the biggest mistakes we can make is to give the student surveys, read them, and never look at them again. Instead, do something with the data. Whether that is creating a Google sheet with information, making some kind of bulletin board with interests, or another kind of chart, Gonzalez (2016) emphasized the importance of continuing to look at student information as the year progresses. The chart also serves as a reminder of which students you still need to really get to know.
4. Do regular check-ups
Throughout the year, it is important to continue to check-in with students to see how they are doing. Gonzalez (2016) wrote teachers could give a new survey, but we would even recommend doing personalized conferences with your students based on a pre-determined set of questions you have developed.
Using your module handout, brainstorm what information you wish you had for each of your students. What can you do to find out this information? How might the information help you as the year progresses?
social-emotional learning
Perry et al. (2021) noted the three brain states: survival state, emotional state, and executive state.
Social-emotional learning is crucial for young people to "acquire and apply the knowledge, skills, and attitudes to develop healthy identities, manage emotions and achieve personal and collective goals, feel and show empathy for others, establish and maintain supportive relationships, and make responsible and caring decisions" (CASEL, para. 1).
Watch the video explaining social-emotional learning. What are three of your most important take-aways from the video? How can social-emotional learning make a difference in the classroom? Record your thoughts on your module handout.
5-4-3-2-1 Grounding
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The 5-4-3-2-1 grounding technique can help an escalated student calm down and practice managing tough emotions through the following guided activity (Smith, 2018). The educator will ask the student to slow their breathing, and:
Focus on 5 things they see around them.
Focus on 4 things they can touch around them.
Focus on 3 things they can hear around them.
Focus on 2 things they can smell around them.
Focus on 1 thing they can taste.
Between each focal point, the student will have a moment of silent focus and reflection.
Practice this technique either with a partner guiding you or, if you do not have a partner, on your own. Record your experience with this strategy on the module handout.
Students who "Hide" in Class
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Wyman (2020) explained hiding in class can look like:
Trying to stay completely under the radar (invisible)
Being loud in class, saying they don't care, and displaying a dramatically negative attitude.
To combat this, it is important for educators to demonstrate "curiosity and a desire to connect" (Wyman, 2020, para. 6). To do this, Wyman (2020) suggests the following strategies:
Gather information: Look in cumulative folders, ask former teachers, consult with counselor.
Ask questions to dig deeper about their home lives, backgrounds, interests, academic support, social-emotional support, and personal connections.
Apply engagement strategies such as think-pair-share, technology use, giving student choice, and overall lesson structure.
How might making intentional connections have helped you with a difficult student you have taught in the past? Record your reflection on the module handout.
Conscious discipline
The use of Conscious Discipline principles as a school-wide model has been shown to improve school climate, school readiness, social emotional learning skills, and pro-social behavior (Rain, 2014). The seven tenets of conscious discipline are composure, encouragement, assertiveness, choices, empathy, positive intent and consequences.
You can find out more by going to the Conscious Discipline website.
Mindful Moments
Incorporating mindfulness in the classroom can often help support students dealing with trauma in direct and indirect ways. Educators can teach mindfulness strategies by explicitly modeling a set of core strategies during scheduled mindful moments as well as through spontaneous situations, including breathing and body scans.
Visit TREPProject for more information on incorporating mindfulness in the classroom.
Clear & COnsistent is Kind
Trauma Responsive Educational Practices [TREP] (2021) noted educators must attend to students' psychological, physical, and emotional safety while at school.
Students who have experienced trauma may act hypervigilant, pre-occupied, irritable, or withdrawn. The parts of the brain responsible for these feelings and behaviors are calmed by having predictable and consistent routines and expectations.
This predictability and consistency helps to counteract the instability and lack of safety in their home lives.
Visit the TREPProject for more information.
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