Growing Resilience: Mitigating the Impact of Trauma

As teachers and parents, we have two aspects of trauma to consider and mitigate – the impact of trauma on our own lives and the impact of trauma on our children and students’ lives. As we explore ourselves and the coping strategies that we have developed over time, it is possible for us to reflect on children’s behaviours as ways that they have grown resilience and survival.

This two post series on growing resilience is a collaborative effort with myself, Nancy Barr of NMBarr Consulting, and Kyla Bouvier of Back2Nature Wellness and Events. It is designed to take us on a journey of understanding and empowering ourselves and the children in our care.

Today’s post is the second in this series, and focuses on strategies to mitigate the impact of trauma on our students by creating safe spaces where new neural pathways can be formed.

Trauma, Fear and Learning

Teachers may not deal with trauma directly, bu they are part of the healing process. They give their students order and predictability. After the chaos and confusion of their lives, nothing is more comforting than routines.
Pipher, 2002

There are many different forms of trauma that our children might experience. These include neglect, abuse, family dysfunction, and intergenerational and historical trauma. In addition to these, we are now living through a world pandemic. The self-isolation, loss of school and social gatherings, socioeconomic impacts and fear may lead to children and families being in crisis. As adults, we are in the midst of trying to figure out different ways to support children now at a distance and when we return to school, in whatever form that takes on.

Traumatized children have a set of problems in the classroom. These include difficulties with attending, processing, storing and acting their experiences in age-appropriate fashion.”
Bruce Perry, 2007

As adults, we are able to reflect on what coping strategies we have created for ourselves to manage our fears and beliefs. By reflecting on how our own coping strategies, we can better understand our students’ behaviours. Sometimes, what presents as misbehaviour is actually a stress behaviour.

To help us understand the involuntary nature of stress behaviour, Nadine Burke shares her research on the impact of Adverse Childhood Experiences on children.

Dr. Jody Carrington goes further and explains what is happening in a child’s brain when they “Flip Their Lid”.

A brain that has experienced some sort of traumatic event reacts differently than a brain that has developed normally. In fact, Dr. Bruce Perry is one of the many researchers that believes the more threat a brain perceives or experiences, the less intelligent or mindful it is when reacting to stressful situations. A child who has experienced developmental trauma will spend much of of their time, energy and focus on survival rather than on cognition and learning.

So how do we help children create new pathways and patterns to shift their brain to focus on cognition and social emotional learning? This is where teaches are empowered to make a difference.

Planning with the Child in Mind

Foundational ideas around what is “good teaching” can create a framework for planning with the child in mind. These include

These key pedagogical ideas all come into play when designing learning backwards from an instructional idea. That idea might come from a child, the class, the community or be some other opportunity to engage in learning in a unique way. Along with content, meaning making and assessment, we can also plan for specific trauma-informed strategies to create new patterns in the brain.

Strategies to Mitigate Trauma

Trauma impacts children’s mind, spirit, emotion and body. therefore, we need to use strategies that create a space for children to heal their mind, spirit, emotion and body.

Classroom Environment

Sask Reads has identified that well-designed learning environments:

have intentionality and purpose that is carefully planned prior to instruction;
are functional and adaptable;
are organized to support the use of instructional approaches, including areas for whole class, small group, and individual learning
reflect the strengths, needs and interests of all students; and
are aesthetically inviting to students because their interests, cultures, learning, and work are present within the walls of the classroom.

A trauma-informed classroom environment also might include alternate seating, natural lighting, and places to go where kids can choose to be alone or to be with other people, depending on what they need right then.

Body Breaks

Body Breaks help to promote physical fitness, brain health, focus and cognitive development. Things to keep in mind:

Body breaks are designed to raise the heart rate and/or use large muscles.
Body breaks should take no more than 10 minutes 0- ideally they are 2-3 minutes.
They are often done right at student desks and require little or no equipment.

You can find examples of Body Breaks in this resource summary.

Brain Breaks

Children who have experienced trauma may have compromised brain stem and limbic systems. Brain breaks are specific strategies that can address stress responses, help to develop the brain stem and limbic systems, and activate both left and right parts of the brain. One example of a brain break is tapping therapy.

You can find examples of Brain Breaks in this resource summary.

Mindfulness

Mindfulness can be described as the practice of paying attention in the present moment while calmly acknowledging and accepting one’s feelings, thoughts and bodily sensations.

You can find examples of Mindfulness Strategies in this resource summary.

Self Regulation

Self-Regulation is a term we use in education, but do not have a shared understanding of what it means. Dr. David Tranter states that “Self-regulation refers to the ways in which people cope with and recover from ongoing stress.” Tranter found that children who have experienced chronic stress have difficulty navigating the demands of the classroom. Children may need support to:

Monitor their own emotional, physical and mental state,
Co-regulation techniques where an adult models calming strategies.

Dr. Stuart Shanker has identified five domains of regulation and strategies to help develop them:

Biological
Emotional
Cognitive
Social
ProSocial

Community and Citizenship

Teaching how to be a good citizen and community member is another approach to engage students in deeper learning and build relationships. Through projects and authentic tasks focusing on community building and citizenship, students are given both skills and opportunities to connect to their community in a positive way. Projects and tasks help students find connections cognitively, emotionally, physically and spiritually. These connections help to build positive neural pathways.

In Saskatchewan, the Human Rights Commission has led the development of a “made by teachers for teachers” resource, Concentus Citizenship Education, that connects to our current Social Studies Curriculum and brings citizenship connections to life.

Rhythm and Movement

Trauma treatments that include rhythm, movement and drumming are showing successful outcomes for children who have experienced trauma. Dr. Bruce Perry says we need “Patterned, repetitive, rhythmic, somatosensory activity” to help heal trauma.

You can find examples of Rhythm and Movement Strategies in this resource summary.

Storytelling

Storytelling is a powerful way teaching and learning that helps to build relationships and make connections between ideas. Storytelling is an Indigenous Way of Knowing and predates school and schooling in North America.

You can find examples and information about Storytelling on this resource summary.

Project Based Learning

Project based learning allows students to have control and input into their learning, allows for a focus on relationship-building within the classroom and community, and builds connections between otherwise discreet curricular ideas. Projects are:

relevant and engaging to students,
connect and integrate numerous curricular outcomes across multiple courses,
include formative assessment practices such as self-assessment, goal-setting, monitoring progress and self-determination of changes required.

Chris Clarke, a teacher from Saskatoon, has created a website, Engaged Students, that explores different aspects of a project-based, integrated curriculum course that he teaches in.

Place-Based Learning

Place-Based Learning immerses students in a place’s heritage, culture, landscape. Place lays the foundation for study of language, art, mathematics, social studies, science and other subjects.

Place-Based Learning and Land-Based Learning are often confused. The National Centre for Collaboration in Indigenous Education held a digital forum that helped to define land-based learning.

Healing Through the Arts

Art helps kids deal with difficult situations. Painting, beading, drumming, dancing and drama can all access the emotional part of the brain. By observing and talking about the art that they made, they are able to access the left hemisphere of the brain that controls verbal messaging. You can hear more about Art Therapy After Trauma on the Kinds in the House Parenting Website.

By changing our experiences, we can change our brain biology, which impacts our subconscious mind, conscious mind, energy and bodies. It is empowering to know that we can do this for ourselves as well as create a space for children to mitigate the impact trauma has had on their lives.

If you would like more information about how you might have our Growing Resilience Team work with your staff, please contact us.

Terry Johanson
306-220-9169

Nancy Barr
306-290-8108

Kyla Bouvier
306-291-8181

April 30, 2020 0

Discipline with Dignity: Trauma-Informed Classroom Management

Classroom management is the part of teaching that is invisible when it is working well, and highly visible when we and our students are struggling. Sometimes it may feel like herding cats:

Classroom Management’s purpose is to “provide structure while helping students develop autonomy, awareness and self-regulation skills” (Emerich France, 2018).

Traditional classroom management theories rely on teachers viewing student behaviour as a matter of choices or intentional defiance. As a result, traditional solutions have been a list of consequences and rewards. While consequences may be a part of a classroom management plan, if the goal of classroom management is to have students understand themselves and self-regulate, teachers and students need to first identify the causes of behaviours, attempt to prevent triggers and increase self-awareness.

General principles of Discipline with Dignity (Curwin, Mendler, & Mendler, 2018) are:

This perspective of classroom management allows us to link the effects of trauma and brain development to understanding some of the underlying causes of student behaviours. Classroom management is founded on knowing our students and building relationships with them.

Basic Needs that Drive Behaviour

Curwin, Mendler, and Mendler (2018) and Dr. Martin Brokenleg (Circle of courage, 1990) have identified what our and our students’ basic human needs are in order to be healthy and whole.

Curwin, Mendler, and Mendler	Dr. Martin Brokenleg
Identity – “how we view ourselves and how we feel about ourselves”
Attention – “the need to be acknowledged by others in a way that makes us feel that we matter”	Generosity – to give our knowledge, skills, insight, experience, and resources to others; receiving a sense of purpose from strengthening the community
Connection – “our need to feel that we belong to something that matters to us”	Belonging – to feel valued, affirmed and significant within the group; believing in the importance of a shared purpose; to identify with shared goals
Competence – “feeling that we know how to do something”	Mastery – to develop abilities, skills, and knowledge in order to take risks, to try new things and learn from others; to embrace challenges and learning
Control – “the desire to make decisions that count, to have real choices, to control our environment”	Independence – to feel in control of our learning; to have a sense of competent autonomy and to contribute to responsibility

Saskatchewan teachers and educational assistants used a Circle of Courage graphic organizer to brainstorm what they need to keep in mind to create a learning environment that fosters a sense of belonging, mastery, independence, and generosity in their students:

A school environment that provides opportunities for students to have their needs met is part of a “prevention mindset” (Curwin, Mendler, & Mendler, p. 61). Looking at prevention from the student perspective, appropriate behaviour is generally achieved when students:

Feel connected to the teacher, one another, and the curriculum.
Believe that success is attainable with reasonable effort.
Feel respected by being heard; feel teachers strongly care about them in personal ways.
Are given responsibility, especially in helping other children. This involves giving appropriate choices throughout the day.
Look forward to sanctioned moments of joy and laughter every day.
Believe that what is being taught is relevant.

Activating Peers as Learning Resources

Dylan Wiliam has identified five strategies for Formative Assessment, which increase student engagement and achievement.

Wiliam’s work guides our instruction in many ways, including how to activate learners as instructional resources. Collaborative learning that encourages group goals and individual accountability is more powerful than simply having students work on tasks in a group. This group work increases student sense of belonging and provides a space for generosity within a community of learners.

Wiliam (2011) identifies why students benefit from helping their peers:

they are working towards a common goal and they benefit from the efforts of all, resulting in increased motivation.
they care about their group members, resulting in social cohesion.
they understand and can address the difficulties their peers are having, resulting in personalization.
thinking together brings clarity, resulting in cognitive elaboration.

Assessment Strategies

Wiliam writes about a number of strategies that can enhance peer support of learning within a classroom.

In his book Embedding Formative Assessment, Wiliam suggests many strategies, including:

Peer Evaluation of Homework – The class or teacher create criteria (rubric) for the work. Who is assessing the work changes and is not announced until the homework is complete. Evaluators may be: Self, Other – individual or group or Teacher
Two Stars and a Wish – student feedback on other students’ work – 2 positive qualities and a suggestion for improvement; Teacher needs to instruct students on what quality feedback looks like. Sentence starters can be useful to give to students in advance.
Preflight Checklist – When there are specific requirements or features of a piece of student work, this list is checked by a peer prior to the work being handed in. If there are pieces missing that were on the checklist, the peer is the one held accountable.
Group-Based Test Prep – Within a group, each student is assigned a different part of a unit to review. They prepare and present their review to their group. Peers assess the review using coloured cups (red – not as good as I would have done; yellow – about the same as I would have done; green – better than I would have done).

Teaching and using group work goes beyond learning styles, and can enhance student motivation, engagement and resilience.

Stress Behaviours

(Adapted from The Mehrit Centre’s Infographic on Understanding Stress Behaviour for Teachers)

Brain research has shown that there are differences between stress behaviours and misbehaviour. If we treat them in the same way, it can be hard on our students and hard on ourselves.

The 5 Primary Domains of Stress

There are many different reasons why a student might show signs of stress behaviour. These are linked to Shanker’s five domains of self-regulation.

Signs of Stress Behaviour

Stress behaviours (Shanker, 2018) are biological in nature and neither intentional nor conscious choices on the part of students. These might include:

Heightened impulsivity
Difficulty ignoring distractions
Problems in mood (sees everything negatively)
Erratic mood swings
Trouble listening
What she is saying doesn’t make sense

Dealing with Stress Behaviour in Students

When a child exhibits stress behaviour, what do we do as educators? Shanker (2018) suggests that we:

Along with specific calming strategies that can help students, include mindfulness strategies and ways to integrate social-emotional learning throughout the day.

Effects of Early Trauma

“Trauma has a powerful capacity to shape a child’s physical, emotional, and intellectual development, especially when the trauma is experienced in early life” (JBS International and Georgetown University National Technical Assistance Centre).

Three Types of ACEs (Adverse Childhood Experiences)

There are significant impacts of ACEs on individual health outcomes. Brain science has determined that ACEs disrupt neurodevelopment, which leads to social, emotional and cognitive impairment, adoption of health-risk behaviours, disease, disability, and social problems and eventually can lead to early death.

Continued exposure to trauma creates an environment filled with relentless fear, resulting in the development of a self-defence mechanism in a child’s brain that requires a fight, flight or freeze response. Stress responses are maintained due to:

A persistent fear response that ‘wears out’ neural pathways;
Hyperarousal that causes children to overreact to non-threatening triggers;
Dissociation from the traumatic event in which the child shuts down emotionally; and
Disruptions in emotional attachment, which can be detrimental to learning.

(JBS International and Georgetown University National Technical Assistance Centre).

Intergenerational and Historical Trauma

The Georgetown University National Technical Assistance Centre for Children’s Mental Health has identified two types of trauma that may have an impact on children in schools:

Intergenerational trauma results when disturbing experiences have not been addressed and their emotional and behavioural legacy is passed down from parents to their children. Parents who experienced persistent trauma in childhood may struggle with their own ability to express empathy, compassion, and self-regulation. Unresolved trauma may make it difficult for parents to build trusting relationships and healthy attachments. This trauma is then transmitted to future generations.
Historical trauma goes beyond a single family to a community caused by historical, systematic abuse and injustice. In additional to family-specific intergenerational trauma, historical trauma may also result in shame and loss of culture and identity. The legacy of historical trauma can result in “repression, dissociation, denial, alcoholism, depression, doubt, helplessness, and devaluation of self and culture”.

Brain Malleability

While trauma affects brain development, causing structural and hormonal changes, the malleability of the human brain brings us hope. Because the brain can heal, and new neuropathways can be developed, teachers and schools can impact the long-term social, emotional and physical impacts of trauma. Trauma-informed schools are those where the school climate, instructional designs, positive behavioural supports, and policies are created so that traumatized students have what they need to achieve academic and social competence (Craig, 2016).

PBIS – Positive Behavioural Interventions and Supports	SEL – Social Emotional Learning
The goal of PBIS is to create a positive school climate, in which students learn and grow.	A process through which children and adults acquire and effectively apply the knowledge, attitudes, and skills necessary to understand and manage emotions, set and achieve positive goals, feel and show empathy for others, establish and maintain positive relationships, and make responsible decisions.

Dr. Bruce Perry has done significant research in the area of mitigating the impact of trauma on children.

Dr. Perry contributes to the Child Trauma Academy, which makes a number of free resources available.

Solutions in classrooms directed at brain stem activity can help create new pathways in the brain’s cortical areas. These include

patterned rhythmic activities
walking
dancing
singing
meditative breathing
create a calmer cognitive state so higher order thinking can occur
scaffold new information on prior knowledge
use classroom discourse purposefully
peer collaboration
provide direct instruction

Instruction and school environments that provide calming opportunities can help children learn to be more self-aware and foster their own emotion regulation, which then impacts the behaviour-consequence cycle.

As teachers, when we understand the underlying causes of student behaviour, we can not only respond, we can avoid triggers. Classroom Management is more than just the strategies we use, it is the relationship and understanding of the children we teach in order to help children build new neural pathways, understand their own behaviour and learn to self-regulate.

When and Where to Refer Students?

Sometimes, we might recognize that one of our students requires additional supports. Central Office personnel or support teachers may be able to help you assess where your students are at. For parents, Amy Morin writes about some of the indicators that a child might require targetted services in her blog post “When Should Parents Seek Help for a Child’s Behavior Problems?”. Supports from outside of your school system may be available through your regional health authority, which is listed on the Saskatchewan Health Authority’s Website. In the Prairie North Health Region, for instance, there are a number of youth-focussed supports in North Battleford.

Works Cited

Brendtro, L., Brokenleg, M., & Van Bockern, S. (1990). Circle of courage. Retrieved February 14, 2014, from Reclaiming youth international: http://www.reclaiming.com/content/aboutcircleofcourage

Craig, S. E. (2016). Trauma-Sensitive Schools: Learning Communities Transforming Student Lives K-5. New York: Teachers College Press.

Curwin, R. L., Mendler, A. N., & Mendler, B. D. (2018). Discipline with Dignity: How to Build Responsibility, Relationships, and Respect in Your Classroom. Alexandria: ASCD.

Emerich France, P. (2018, September). A Healthy Ecosystem for Classroom Management. Educational Leadership, 76(1). Retrieved from http://www.ascd.org/publications/educational-leadership/sept18/vol76/num01/A-Healthy-Ecosystem-for-Classroom-Management.aspx

JBS International and Georgetown University National Technical Assistance Centre. (n.d.). Issue Brief 1: Understanding the Impact of Trauma. Retrieved from https://gucchdtacenter.georgetown.edu/TraumaInformedCare/issueBrief1_UnderstandingImpactTrauma.pdf

Shanker, S. (2018). (The MEHRIT Centre) Retrieved August 18, 2018, from Shanker Self-Reg: https://self-reg.ca/

Sousa, D. A. (2009). How the Brain Influences Behaviour: Management Strategies for Every Classroom. Thousand Oaks: Corwin Press.

Wiliam, D. (2011). Embedded Formative Assessment. Bloomington, Indiana, United States of America: Solution Tree Press.

February 3, 2019 1

Tag: strategies