Trauma-Informed Teaching

 

When it comes to trauma-informed teaching, we must look at the trauma students in our classroom are faced with everyday. We typically think of trauma as an event, or something that has caused harm. We should look at trauma as a response to stressful situations and that person's ability to cope. For children, this could be an event that impacts them physically, emotionally, or their well-being. As a teacher, practicing and regulating our own emotions and setting biases aside can also create a safe environment. 

"Through trauma-informed teaching, teachers consider how trauma can affect learning and introduce approaches to better manage our own responses. Trauma-informed instruction asks teachers to be mindful of our emotions so that we do not trigger student anxiety; to encourage students to express themselves and work through their emotions; and to model social and emotional skills such as empathy, cultural awareness, and patience." (Hawkins, M. 2022)

Creating an environment will help students feel safe, and the skills we learn to pass on to our students to self regulate are the same skills we use to model our behavior and emotions. Our classroom should provide predicability and consistence in goals and expectations. Students should feel supported and feel like they can trust the adults and students in the classroom. Students also bring their own culture and identity. Our classrooms should be culturally sensitive to our students as well.  

 

According to the MSEA trauma toolkit, the types of trauma our students may bring into our classroom are:

• community violence
• refugee experience
• early childhood trauma
• terrorism
• neglect
• physical abuse
• domestic abuse
• sexual abuse
• natural disasters
• complex trauma
• school violence
• medical trauma
• traumatic grief

Using an SEL activity to learn more about a student not only allows you to create a relationship with them, but it helps create insight into what is going on in the students' life outside of the school setting. We have to remember that behavior is a form of communication and the students that are going through something traumatic can display this in a variety of ways from shutting down to lashing out. Our classroom may be the only space a student can feel safe, have a meal, find some rest, and take a moment to be a kid.  Students may look towards us for help, answers, and solutions. Listening to what the students tell us is the first step to building a relationship that will all us to help them. When issues arise in our classroom, we must model and become self-aware of our own nonverbal cues and how we regulate ourselves in front of the students. How we present ourselves nonverbally is something we may not consider as relevant, but students who have experienced trauman can pick up on our nonverbal cues more than we realize.  

"Children who have experienced trauma will be in a persistent state of alarm and less capable of concentrating when they enter classrooms. Because of this, they will pay more attention to the nonverbal cues of a teacher, such as tone of voice, body posture, and facial expressions. Unless teachers adopt some regulating practices for those students, such as meditative breathing or rhythmic motor activity, children will remain in the alarm state, impairing cognitive learning." (Perry, B. 2016)

Students who are going through or have gone through traumatic experiences will tend to have cognitive delays, have a hard time buidling and maintaining relationships, unable to understand social cues, difficulty understanding cause and effect, and feel uncertain about their future. Noticing when a student is coping through their triggering event and help create a plan to help support the student and how to cope is part of the process to becoming trauma-informed. When helping students, it is important to help them identify and manage their emotions. Once a student can learn how to self-regulate, the student can then avoid shutdowns, outbursts, or self-harm.  

Trauma-Informed is taking the time to get to know where our students are coming from and what they are going through. While educators may not be able to know every student's story, they do need to understand our students are come from a diverse backgrounds.  The space and classroom I create has to feel safe, provide support, be predictable, and hold high expectations that were set as a class, so students will be able to learn. I have to teach the skills to help regulate emotions behavior.  SEL activity, breathing techniques, a walk, or talking a pause to recenter and refocus can all help students. When issues arise, being able to calm the student down is the first step. Then the student will be able to consider consquences and repair relationships.