Resilience for Brilliance

Trauma, Tornadoes, and Teenagers

The title of this section is a bit misleading. Not the trauma. Not tornadoes. No, the
misleading part is the word teenagers. Though this blog is written with high school teachers in mind most of the time, trauma affects ALL people, no matter what race, age, ethnicity, or IQ a person may have. Read on to learn more about trauma in students and how to lend a hand and pick someone up when they’re down.

ACEs and the Importance of Knowing Your Students

I would argue that knowing your students is the difference between a good teacher and a bad one. Everyone has that favorite teacher and most often then not, it’s because they knew them on a personal level: what sports they liked, who their friends were, what their favorite subject was, and even what was going on in their life. An ACE score is just a survey concentrated on things that are considered trauma that affect many students lives. By knowing our students and their ACE scores, we can better understand when and why they act out or seem disconnected from their surroundings.

Tips on learning more about your students:

• Go check their student file in the main office
  • If you think you need to, you can even ask their previous teachers if they have any insight
• Silently observe them in your class, in the hallways, and even at sporting events or clubs
• Really LISTEN to what they have to say
• Create an activity for the first day of class so you can ask them questions and they can tell you anything they want to
• ASK THEM
  • Ask how their day is going, ask what they are excited about during the year and make sure you show that you’re genuinely interested!

https://twitter.com/ClaireCreight10/status/1115100209296625664

Upstairs vs. Downstairs

In Fostering Resilient Learners: Strategies for Creating a Trauma- Sensitive Classroom, Souers and Hall discuss the biology of trauma and make an important distinction between the “upstairs brain” and “downstairs brain” and what that means for our students. The graphic below explains the difference between the two:

As you can see, we should always aim for ourselves and our students to be in the upstairs brain in order to be happy, healthy, and successful.

Self Aware So You Can Self Care

Dealing with so many students who have so many different ACE scores can be daunting. In order to make sure you don’t get swept up into the chaos, take these tips to care for yourself.

• Take time to reflect on what makes you, you.
  • No one can take these away from you
  • Imagine these qualities as your cement shoes. No matter what happens, what waves come, what tornado hits, your cement shoes always keep you grounded and upright.
  • This tip can be used for yourself and your students to make sure both of you are firmly grounded in who you are despite all the chaos surrounding you
• If it becomes too much, step away.
  • Take the time out of your day to care for yourself whether this is through meditation, yoga, a good workout, ice cream, a facemask, or even binge watching Game of Thrones. Giving yourself some “me time” gives you the opportunity to finally breathe and clear your mind.
• Be a constant role model for your students
  • If you act in a positive, honest, and graceful way, they will begin to do the same
• Don’t become Dorthy.
  • Souers and Hall refer to a student acting up as a “tornado” and stress the importance of not getting caught up in them. As appealing as it is to lose your cool when a student does, we need to stay focused on the task at hand and find a way to encourage your student to participate in the class without creating too much stress.

Watch this video above by Mark Sander to get a much better understanding of the ACE study, the biology of trauma, and how to help our students!