Take Care of Yourself and Your Students: Strategies for Creating a

Trauma Sensitive Classroom

Mickey Hughes

Effective Practice Specialist /SSD

mjhughes@ssdmo.org

Our Agenda for today

Overview / definitions

Impact on brain development

Impact on learning

Impact on behavior

Evidence- Based Practices

enhancing connections

sensory supports

teaching emotional regulation strategies

Window of stress tolerance

mindfulness strategies

Self –care for educators

Who’s in the room?

• General education teachers? Elementary, middle, high?

• Special education teachers? Elementary middle high?

• Counselors?

• Social workers?

• Parents?

• Community support?

• Principals?

• Other?

Review of what we know:

Talk to a small group around you…

1. How can trauma impact a child’s ability to learn and behave?

2. List three interventions you are aware of for students with trauma backgrounds.

3. What is your group’s opinion about what kids from trauma backgrounds need most from school?

Resources Movement Resources: Gonoodle, koo koo kangaroo, kidsbop, Songdrops

References: • The Adoption Advocate

• Child Trauma Academy (Dr. Bruce Perry)

• Cognitive Behavioral Intervention for Trauma in Schools (CBITS)

• Consciousdiscipline.com (Becky Bailey breathing strategies, calm corner, etc.)

• Heather Forbes www.beyondconsequences.com

• Helping Traumatized Children Learn. A Report and Policy Agenda. Massachusetts Advocates for Children.

• Lynne Kinney. Bloom: 50 things to say, think, and do with anxious, angry, and over the top kids.

• Mindfulschools.org

• National Trauma Stress Network

• The Heart of Learning and Teaching: Compassion, Resiliency, and Academic Success ( Ron Walpow, Mona M. Johnson, Ron Hertel, and Susan O. Kincaid)

• Pbis.org

What is trauma?

• Trauma occurs when overwhelming, uncontrollable experiences psychologically impact a child, creating feelings of helplessness,

vulnerability, loss of safety, and loss of control.

• Public Event – Forces beyond anyone’s control: A natural disaster, car accident, etc. Associated with much less stigma, out in the open.

• Private Event – behind close doors/ air of secrecy. Associated with share, fear, loss of trust, freedom, support, love, safety.

Trauma is subjective……..

• Different people can be exposed to the same experiences and they may or may not be traumatized by it.

Factors that influence this are: the person’s age,

other level of toxic stress in their life,

the level of trust that was betrayed,

the person’s disposition/ predisposition to be resilient, etc.

Prevalence rates

• More than 50% of the general population have experienced at least one traumatic event.

• 25 % have experienced 2 or more.

• People in the mental health, child welfare, and domestic violence systems have experienced extremely high rates – 80-100%

• What is the prevalence of trauma in your community?

ACES video

Table talk

• What surprised you in the video?

• How might you use this information in thinking about supporting your staff? Your students?

• In the video, it is stated that knowing about ACES can be empowering…how so?

Family Centered Practice, June 8, 2007 Regional Child Abuse Prevention Councils 2011

ACEs Often Last a Lifetime . . . But They Don’t Have To

• Healing can occur

• The cycle can be broken

• Safe, stable, nurturing relationships heal parent and child.

Regional Child Abuse Prevention Councils 2011

Activity

Think about a time when you had an extreme, out of character reaction to something… Did you overreact? Did you withdraw/ hide? What were the circumstances, the triggers? Discuss your experience with a shoulder partner.

Discussion:

• Trauma occurs when overwhelming, uncontrollable experiences psychologically impact a child, creating feelings of helplessness, vulnerability, loss of safety, and loss of control.

Brain Science Made Simple

Impact of trauma on the brain

Trauma can impact the developing brain by…. 1. Reducing the number of connections formed 2. Reducing the size of the cortex 3. Strengthening the survival connections Resulting in…………. Memory problems Attention difficulties, Delays in language development Emotional and behavioral regulation deficits

Fight, Flight, Freeze The Automatic Safety Response

Fight / Flight– “Hyper-arousal --

decease in pain tolerance, increased anxiety, exaggeration of startle response, insomnia, panic, rage

Freeze- “Hypo-arousal”- the decrease in psychological and physiological tension marked by such effects as emotional indifference, flattened affect, irritability, low grade nervousness, disengagement, depression, and hopelessness

When the brain’s alarm is triggered:

• A frightened child doesn’t focus on words- they attend to threats based on signals in their environment.

• We know what those signals are a necessary part of survival

• Hypervigilance – the chronically defensive child

Hypervigilance

Raised arousal

Very sensitive to stress

Increase in Anxiety “I don’t know if I’m going to be okay” “I don’t know that everything will work out.”

All or nothing responses

Big protective wall. “I can’t allow myself to be vulnerable.”

May trigger intense (and seemingly inappropriate) responses

In this state, we regress back to early behaviors…..no generalization

Have you seen these reactions in your classroom?

Students with trauma backgrounds may Over-react: • Comments or criticism from teachers and peers • Noises (startles at bells, slamming doors) • Physical contact • Environmental cues (low lighting, sudden movements) • Has difficulty with authority and redirection • Misreads context; fails to connect cause with effect They may look: • Clingy and worried about safety • Distracted and unable to complete work/homework • Irritable or angry • Uncomfortable, in pain, or sick

The needed perspective shift

“What’s wrong with you?”

“What happened to you & how can we help?”

Nurturing and Positive Relationships…… Are the key to mentally healthy children and adolescents protective factors promoted during relationship building can and

do function to reduce many challenging behaviors. Taking the time to do relationship building may save time that

would be spent implementing more elaborate and time-consuming assessment and intervention strategies.

Relationship bank account Make eye contact, encourage healthy touch, ask and listen, give your

undivided attention.

Relationship is THE evidence –based practice.” Christopher Blodgett, 2012

One Sentence Intervention

Quick, easy, and works well with students who are difficult to build relationships with (such as they don’t often follow rules, grumble whenever you talk to them, are attention avoidant, etc)

1. Smile and look into student’s eyes 2. Say “I’ve noticed _______” fill in sentence with a personal

attribute Examples ● I’ve noticed you like to collect things ● I’ve noticed these kids really listen to you when you talk ● I’ve noticed you really stand up for yourself

Approach student Low and Slow:

LOW • Lower the volume and pitch of your voice • Keep a matter of fact tone regardless of the situation • Speak in short sentences without a lot of questions • Don’t preach- this is about talking with the student, not at the student •

SLOW • Slow yourself down by slowing down your heart rate. Take slow, deep breaths • Slow down your rate of speech and make sure to pause between sentences.. • Slow down your body movements.. • Slow down your agenda and take your time

Safe, Predictable Environments

Routines, Schedules, Rituals are comforting (When things are predictable, life is calm) Surprises may be trauma triggers Rehearse/ Precorrect Offer visual schedules Establish a plan for days that routines are going to change – subs, field

trips, assemblies, etc.

What is your best advise for keeping your classroom safe and predictable?

Practice Emotional Regulation Skills.

After a cognitively challenging task, practice deep breathing or other self-regulation techniques.

Purposefully plan an activity that will excite students; e.g., freeze tag, water balloon toss, science experiment. Then practice self-regulation or calming techniques.

Help students identify their level of alertness.

Practice this self assessment daily.

Self – regulation video

Emotional regulation

Teach skills and behaviors before they are needed or required.

Teach and practice calming or self-regulation techniques

before exciting or stimulating activities; e.g., deep breathing,

pressure points, chair sit-ups, pushing down the wall,

weighted items, fidgets.

Model emotional regulation yourself!

Managing explosions

• The emotional brain does not respond to words.

• It is not helpful to a dysregulated child to calm down.

• Lend the child your brain. Move slowly, breathe deeply, move to the place you want them to be and show them what you want them to do. It is all about your non-verbal communication until the brain calms down.

• Rhythmic activities help to calm the brain. Painting, drawing, coloring, throwing a ball, drumming, marching

Window of stress tolerance

Mindfulness

• Mindfulschools.org Video Just Breathe (3:43)

• Jon Kabat-Zinn, the biologist who first coined the term “mindfulness” in the ’70s, defines it as a state of mind: the act of “paying attention on purpose” to the present moment, with a “non-judgmental” attitude.

Positive effects of Mindfulness:

Improves attention Reduces stress Results in better emotional regulation Improves capacity for compassion and empathy Brain-imaging studies at Harvard and Mass General Hospital have shown that long-term mindfulness training can help thicken the cortical regions related to attention and sensory processing, and may offset thinning of those areas that typically comes with aging. Mindfulness is widely considered effective in psychotherapy as a treatment not just for adults, but also for children and adolescents with aggression, ADHD, or mental-health problems like anxiety. Calm classroom activity

Taking care of our workforce

• Mindful Schools has found that a majority of the teachers it has trained experienced lowered stress and higher job satisfaction

• SSD social worker example

Review of what we know:

Talk to a small group around you…

1. How can trauma impact a child’s ability to learn and behave?

2. List three interventions you are aware of for students with trauma backgrounds.

3. What is your group’s opinion about what kids from trauma backgrounds need most from school?

“The solution of all adult problems tomorrow depends in large measure upon the way our children grow up today.”

- Margaret Mead, Anthropologist

Regional Child Abuse Prevention Councils 2011