Spring 2025
Instructor: Jennifer Jorgenson MSW, LICSW
Final Grade: In Progress
Course Description from Syllabus:
This course is a part of the graduate course sequence in Trauma-informed, Resiliency-based and Interprofessional Practice. EDSP 6340 will focus on trauma informed and evidence-based practices with children and families. Students in this course will be introduced to evidence informed interventions aimed at improving social-emotional well-being for children and youth who have experienced trauma and adversity. By the end of the course, students will leave with a toolbox of knowledge, practice and skills they can apply to their direct practice with children, youth and families in education and social service agencies.
Course Reflection/ Impact:
This is the final course within my graduate career. When signing up for this course, I thought the best course for me would be something that I heald near and dear to my heart, which is trauma informed practices and resiliency with children and families. This is a topic that I have become extremely passionate about over the past few years, especially since I have had many students who have experienced trauma in their lives and I only know there are more to come. Through taking these courses in trauma-informed care, I feel as though I am taking the right steps in ensuring a better future for my students.
In the first half of this course, we learned about motivational interviewing. This is the idea of how can we help others discover new interests or help them make change in their lives through encouraging and uplifting manners. This system is used to help strengthen personal motivation for change around a specific goal through acceptance and compassion (Motivational Interviewing Network of Trainers, 2019). This approach is generally used with practitioners, but elements of it can be helpful for teachers when working with students who may need extra support when working through difficult situations. It can be helpful when trying to help students regulate after a event that could have happened in the classroom. We also talked about healing from historical trauma. We watched an interview with Resmaa Menakem which talked about healing racial trauma through body-centered psychology. In this interview, Menakem talks about how our bodies hold onto past trauma and the idea of threats and how our bodies react to those different situations. This was mostly the idea of dirty pain versus clean pain. This is the idea that dirty pain is working around the idea instead of facing it head on, while clean pain is dealing with the emotional effects while it is happening, but is more beneficial in the long run (National Wellness Institude, 2019). This is an idea that I have been thinking about a lot as I have watched my students try to navigate through challenging situations. I often find that they take the dirty pain route and are holding onto feelings and resentment fro much longer rather than facing their challenges head on. I often feel that I have also taken the dirty paint route through many experiences in my own life as an adolescent, but now find that it is easier to take the clean pain route and work through it in the moment to come out on the other side in a better space. This is something I actively work on with my students when they come to me for advice on situations happening in their own lives.
In the second half of this course, we talked more about screening and assessment and different practices we can implement within our school communities. We had lecture material on how to implement restorative practices school wide. This included looking at the power of relationships and at the multi-tiered system of support (MTSS) model. These are systems that are in place at my current job and I have seen the positive impacts that it has for our students and families in our community. There was also a lot of information at the later part of the course about the ACE's study and I did a training to be certified in psychological first aid. We watched a film called Paper Tigers, which followed teenagers from a school that have had numerous adverse childhood experiences (ACE). They learned what they were and how it could impact their futures both emotionally and physically. They also showcased the importance of positive relationships with the teachers in their community and how it helped them face the challenges that they were having and how to seek help through positive interventions (Pritzker et al., 2015) . Within the training for psychological first aid, we learned how schools are often the places in communities that people turn to after traumatic events. It is important for educators to be trained in this so they know how to respond and help those in need after difficult times. It is always important to tell accurate information while remaining calm and not overwhelming those involved. This training made me think back to times durring my teaching carrer when I wish I had this knowledge. There have been a few instances where I believe it would have been helpful when trying to make students and other staff feel safe during difficult moments.
In this class, I got to do a project where we did research on other interventions that are trauma informed. I did my project on Trauma Affect Regulation: Guide for education and therapy (TARGET). This intervention is used to help prevent and treat post traumatic stress disorders. This program is a seven step program that helps those involved recognize and understand the events that have happened to them and help them find new strategies for emotional regulation. This program is predominantly used for teenagers and had programs that involve the adults in that child's lives and their families (Wu, 2017). Through researching this program, I was able to learn about other supports that could be possibly integrated into schools. I also enjoyed watching the presentation done by my peers about the interventions that they researched. An overarching issue is that we would love to see some of these ideas integrated within our schools, but it is very hard to since most schools are under staffed and do not have the appropriate personal to run them. Also there is a factor that many of these programs are expensive to train people and schools may not have the funds to do so. My hope is that in the future, schools can find ways to get teachers, administration, guidence counselors and other adults trained in various trauma informed practices.
Resources:
Motivational Interviewing Network of Trainers. (2019). Understanding motivational interviewing. MINT. https://motivationalinterviewing.org/understanding-motivational-interviewing
National Wellness Institute. (2019). Healing Racial Trauma Through Body-Centered Psychology with Resmaa Menakem. In YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yl8NKF5to- 0
Karen Pritzker, James Redford, & KPJR, F. (Producers), & Redford, J. (Director). (2015). Paper Tigers. [Video/DVD] Roco Films. https://video.alexander
Wu, J. (2017, August 28). Trauma Affect Regulation: Guide for Education and Therapy. The National Child Traumatic Stress Network. https://www.nctsn.org/interventions/trauma-affect-regulation-guide-education-and-therapy
tch/paper-tigers