Trauma Informed Education

The Pennsylvania Department of Education in conjunction with assistance from other Health and Human Service agencies has organized numerous resources addressing trauma. You may view the state resources by selecting the the hyperlink.

What is Trauma-Informed Care?Learn about how trauma-informed care shifts the focus from “What’s wrong with you?” to “What happened to you?”

How childhood trauma affects health across a lifetimeChildhood trauma isn’t something you just get over as you grow up. Pediatrician Nadine Burke Harris explains that the repeated stress of abuse, neglect and parents struggling with mental health or substance abuse issues has real, tangible effects on the development of the brain. This unfolds across a lifetime, to the point where those who’ve experienced high levels of trauma are at triple the risk for heart disease and lung cancer. An impassioned plea for pediatric medicine to confront the prevention and treatment of trauma, head-on.

Trauma Information

This Trauma Informed guide is a web-linked compilation of resources from a range of Health and Human Service agencies, federal partners, and respected sources outside government. The site will contain both information and resources for human services leaders at the state, tribal, territorial, and local levels on recent advances in our understanding of trauma, toxic stress, and resiliency and specifically what these advances mean for program design and service delivery.

Some general trauma resources in the guide, which are applicable to all human services programs, include:

What is Trauma?
What are Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACES)? How are they different from trauma experienced at other times during the life course?
What is Post-traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)?
How does exposure to trauma affect brain development?
What do we mean by trauma-informed services and why is such an approach important?

Trauma can be physical or psychological stemming from a myriad of events. The Trauma and the Brain article provided by Sam Himelstein, Ph.D., the founder of the Center for Adolescent Studies, discusses how trauma effects people, particularly teens. Traumatic stress can be associated with lasting changes in multiple areas of the brain causing responses that may require others to be empathetic to the behavior or reactions to that of a person who has experienced trauma.

The National Center on Safe Supportive Learning Environments (NCSSLE) offers information and technical assistance to States, districts, schools, institutions of higher learning, and communities focused on improving school climate and conditions for learning. With resources and support, educational stakeholders can collaborate to sustain safe, engaging and healthy school environments that support student academic success.

Self Care

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The Self-Care resource below is provided by Mindful Teachers.

Self-Care ResourcesSelf-care for educators and other helping professionals

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