Fall 2023
Instructor: Jessica Strolin-Goltzman, PhD, LMSW
Final Grade: A
Course Description from Syllabus:
This course will provide students with the theoretical foundation and conceptual frameworks that relate to building resilience for children, youth and families who have experienced trauma and adversity. This fully online course aims to help in-service and pre-service professionals in education, child welfare, health, and mental health gain a common language and knowledge base that will support equitable service delivery through the use of collaborative, family engaged, & trauma responsive practices. Specifically, it will introduce students to core concepts relate to resiliency, equity, attachment, child development, family systems, and trauma responsive & evidence informed practices. Students will leave this course with the skills necessary to put on a “trauma lens” when engaging with families and communities.
Course Reflection/ Impact:
I began this course while starting a new position at a different school. I knew that I wanted to take a course around trauma since I was having meetings about upcoming students who have have been through a considerable amount of trauma. I was constantly hearing about how they had behaviors that were hard to handle and I knew that I wanted to strengthen my tool box to be able to help all of my students succeed.
One of the first topics we covered in this course was about adverse childhood experiences (ACE's). I was shocked by how events that happen in someone's childhood could have long lasting, and sometimes permanent, effects on their bodies. This also ties in with adverse family experiences (AFS). I feel like I took away a lot from Nadine Burke's TED Talk titled, How childhood trauma affects health across a lifetime. I have gone back and rewatched this TED talk and have read parts of her book as a reminder of how trauma is impacting current generations and what we can do moving forward. I have also sent this TED talk out to many colleagues to share the wealth of knowledge. This also ties into the idea of toxic stress and how it is affecting everyone, but has been very hard hitting on marginalized communities.
As a class, we then took a look at the idea of attachment and different family systems. The idea of attachment looks that the ways in which adults and children interact. In healthy systems, the individual has a need, makes the need known, has the need met, and therefor develops trust. These themes came out heavily in the book The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma by Bessel van der Kolk. They mention in the book that "kids will go to almost any length to feel seen and connected" (van der Kolk, 2014, pg. 179). This speaks volumes to how our students will act within our schools to feel a connection or to just be seen or heard. Some students know how to create healthy relationships with adults in the building, while other students who may be struggling to form said attachments may act out in radical ways to get either positive or negative attention. van de Kolk also mentions that "trauma, whether it is a result of something done to you or something you yourself have done, almost always makes it difficult to engage in intimate relationships" (van der Kolk, 2014, pg. 34). This is why it is so important for teachers and other school staff to get training on trauma as well as different restorative practices in order to promote and restore relationships with students, but particularly those who have experienced trauma.
We also took time to look at brain development and resilience. We learned about the many ways our brains rewire themselves when faced with adversity and how that can affect people throughout their lives. Even though we are not able to magically stop maltreatment and other traumatic events in peoples lives, we can find ways to cope and understand what happened to them and help find ways to move forward and to grow from those experiences. In an review of neuroscience literature by Sandra Twardosz and John Lutzker, they looked at how our brains adapt due to maltreatment that happens during development. They mentioned that "the brain can respond to the stress of abuse and neglect by developing in a way that leads to heightened responsiveness to threat throughout life with possible consequences for survival, mental health, learning, and physical well-being" (Twardosz & Lutzker, 2010). Research is showing that there are many side effects to trauma that is negatively affecting people's mental and physical health, as well as their ability to learn and be functioning members of society.
All of these topics then led us into finding ways that we can incorporate trauma informed practices within our workplaces. We took a look into DCF's role in Vermont. We watched a video that Vermont DCF put out called No Decision About Me, Without Me. In this video, people who were a part of DCF custody shared their experiences with foster care placement and how it shaped them. A common experience was that let alone moving from home to home, they were often moving to different schools which were often in different districts due to the lack of foster care placements in the state. This disrupted relationships and connections that these students were trying to form. This also led to different mental health issues as well as behaviors in schools that have led to suspensions and expulsions and have cause learning to be on the back burner because their survival skills were taking over (Vermont DCF, 2014). All of these issues are super important for educators and care givers to keep in mind as we are working with youth who are being adversely affected by traumatic events. This is a prime example that trauma happens everywhere and that in our day to day interactions with students, we need to be cognizant and aware of what might be happening outside of our classroom walls and do our best to support those who may be struggling.
At the end of this course, we created our own personal trauma toolkits to summarize the work that we had done together over the semester. This toolkit is something that I often go back and review when I am struggling with a situation or feel like I need a refresher on how I can better show up for my students, whether it is thinking about the ACE's study or helping students who I know have been displaced from their biological families. Since this course, I have shared multiple resources from my toolkit with staff members and administration at my school when I have been made aware of situations that directly apply to my learning through this course. This has allowed me to have conversations with others about the importance of trauma informed care and the effects that events on our students lives can have on their development and how it could possibly impact their decisions in the future. This course, as well as my other trauma related courses, have made me want to get more involved with the community as well as bring awareness to the continuous work that we do within schools in order to raise awareness about trauma and its life long impacts. This is a topic that I continue to be passionate about and will keep doing research in order to help our vulnerable youth.
References:
van der Kolk, B. (2014). The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma. Penguin Books.
Twardosz, S., & Lutzker, J. R. (2010). Child maltreatment and the developing brain: A review of neuroscience perspectives. Aggression and Violent Behavior, 15(1), 59–68. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.avb.2009.08.003
Vermont DCF. (2014, September 4). No Decision About Me, Without Me. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ol4wBMR46jE