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When I decided to research socio-emotional learning and how to implement a trauma-informed curriculum into the classroom, I did so because of my own personal experience with the topic. Trauma is a topic that is near and dear to my heart. I was a student who underwent a lot of my own personal trauma, which leaked out into my classroom experiences. I also had two teachers who knew enough about trauma to help me find ways to succeed in spite of it. 

In 2013, when I became a teacher, I found that many of my students wanted to stay after class or during their lunch breaks to talk. As I listened, I saw myself in so many of these middle schoolers. It broke my heart to hear about their parent’s divorce and how they were being used as a pawn between Mom and Dad. I shed tears with them when they shared stories of their sibling’s death or their aunt’s struggle with addiction. I watched middle school girls skip meals, and I saw them catch glimpses of themselves in the mirror or a window reflection, sucking in their stomachs with the desperate desire to be smaller. I watched my students panic before tests, act out during a group project, or simply not turn in work because it was just too much for them to wrap their brains around. After years of listening to my students tell me what they were feeling, I realized that so many of them felt anxious, stressed, and overwhelmed. I found that many felt the need to shrink themselves in order to fit society’s preconceived norms because they felt inferior. These observations went hand in hand with my research that showed that middle schoolers already have a propensity to be stressed, anxious, overwhelmed, and feel inferior, and trauma only exacerbates this. 

I knew I wanted to help these kids. In fact, I felt it was my life’s purpose to do so. As an English teacher, I knew I was supposed to care about their test scores and meeting the state standards, but all I wanted to do was to help their hearts and brains. It made sense to me that their test scores wouldn't improve until they were able to relax and feel safe enough to learn. Until 2020, I never knew there was a name for what I wanted to do. Since then, I have spent a great deal of time learning about socio-emotional learning and incorporating it into my classroom. The more teachers I met and the more I discussed this with them, the more I realized that almost every teacher wanted to help their students who struggle. They wanted to learn ways to help their students with anxiety, stress, and feelings of overwhelm, but they did not know how or they thought it was entirely too overwhelming to learn. What they didn't know, however, was that they were already implementing socio-emotional learning into their curriculum- they just did not know that was what they were doing.