Every year new students come into our classroom. We often don’t know what they’ve been through or what they’ve experienced, but we are able to see how those experiences affect them. According to one source, nearly 45% of children under the age of 18 have had at least one adverse childhood experience or in other words, have experienced trauma.
According to Kristin Souers, author of the book “Fostering Resilient Learners”, trauma is defined as “an exceptional experience in which powerful and dangerous events overwhelm a person’s capacity to cope”. This can include any number of events such as:
- Substance abuse in the home
- Parental separation/divorce
- Mental illness in the home
- Witnessing domestic abuse
- Suicidal household member
- Death of parent or loved one
- Parental incarceration
- Experiencing abuse
The events listed above are all considered to be adverse childhood experiences or ACEs. Data shows that the higher a student’s ACE score, the more likely a student is to have attendance issues and behavioral issues, less likely to complete coursework, and are less likely to be in good health, and who can blame them? Students that have experienced trauma have so many other things going on in their brains, so how can we expect them to want to come to science class ready and prepared to listen to a lecture about electron orbitals?
More importantly, what can we do as teachers to help our students overcome and work through their trauma? How can we foster resilient learners in our classrooms?
1.) Remember that students are forever changed, not forever damaged by their trauma
The students in our own classes may have gone through some horrible things, but that does not define who they are. As teachers, we need to take the time to recognize the strengths of our students and define them by those strengths, not by their trauma or behavior.
Students who have experienced trauma are absolutely not defined by their behavior. We should be prepared to deal with predictable behaviors and deal with them in a calm and rational way. If that doesn’t work and a conflict does occur, we need to be prepared to reconcile and connect with students in order to build a relationship with them, which we can do by:
- Listening
- Reassuring
- Validating
- Responding
- Repairing
- Resolving
The article below lists 8 different ways to support students experiencing trauma!
https://www.edutopia.org/discussion/8-ways-support-students-who-experience-trauma
2.) Strap on your cement shoes and stay in your upstairs brain
Sometimes as teachers we tend to lose our cool when a student tests our patience and we go into what Souers calls our “downstairs brain”. When we are in our downstairs brain, we tend to act with our emotions and go into flight, fight, or freeze mode without thinking about what we are saying or doing.
People who have experienced trauma often live their lives in their downstairs brain. Their lives are often fueled by fear and they constantly have to be prepared to react: to fight, run, or freeze, which obviously is not a mindset conducive to learning.
So how can we as teachers get students out of their downstairs brain and back into their upstairs brain? Well for starters, we have to stay in our upstairs brains ourselves, which we can do by:
- Taking a deep
- Shutting our mouths
- Strapping on our concrete shoes
What are concrete shoes, you ask? Concrete shoes are the values that are most important to you and are what will keep you grounded when a student is testing you. If you stay true to who you are and what you value, you’ll stay in your upstairs brain and hopefully help your student get there too!
3.) Showing Grace
Sometimes people just need a little bit a grace. They need a chance for forgiveness, a chance to show that they are not all bad. When we have students who have experienced trauma, we need to show them some grace from time to time because who knows if they’ve ever received it before. Even if it is a student that gets on our every last nerve, a little bit of grace may be the start to building a relationship between you and the students that shows they are not alone and you are there to help. Examples of showing grace listed by Kristin Souers includes:
- giving more than one chance
- asking students what their needs are
- being compassionate
- listening
- giving them a break
- thanking them for something they’ve done
- offering help
- modeling grace
4.) Taking Care of YOU
You can’t begin to help your students if you aren’t taking care of yourself. As teachers, we experience some heavy stuff on a day to day basis and if we don’t take the time to debrief and unwind, it can lead to teacher burnout. How can we possibly help our students if we are experiencing burnout? Below are some various examples of self care to try out!
At the end of the day, teachers are so much more than a person who stands at the front of the classroom and teaches about the water cycle. For students who have experienced trauma, we are also a safe person, a confidant, and someone to trust. Not every student is going to need to know the properties of elements on the periodic table after they graduate, but they all need to know how to cope with and overcome their trauma. We can build a learning environment where students feel safe and loved. We can make sure our students are supported, engaged, healthy, and challenged in our classrooms. We can foster resilient learners.
It starts with us.
Excellent post Anna! I LOVED the quote at the very start of your post. It is so powerful and really sets the stage for the entire post. This goes to show how important it is that we instill courage in our students because with enough courage, they can overcome almost anything! I also liked how you included taking care of ourselves, which is something I didn’t really think about. If we aren’t taken care of, how can we expect to take care of others? I feel like many people say they don’t have time to take care of themselves. What are some ways to make time for self care?