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Helping Children with Trauma Succeed in the Classroom
Thirteen of every 30 students in a classroom will have toxic stress from three or more Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs). Toxic stress or trauma can involve events such as physical abuse and/or emotional abuse and neglect, divorce, bullying, domestic violence, car accidents and a death in the family. Traumatic experiences greatly affect a child’s journey through school. A child impacted by trauma may experience physical ailments, intrusive thoughts and fears, and decreased attention and concentration, all which impact learning. Teachers, support staff and administrators spend a large amount of time supporting, calming and disciplining these students. Teachers are not therapists but it is important to use a universal classroom management approach since we do not always know which students have trauma. This training will address how trauma affects students, the ACE’s study, how to create a safe environment for all students and ways to avoid re-traumatizing practices. Specific hands-on tool and strategies will be discussed to help staff engage all students in the learning process and support emotional self-regulation. Teachers who make the shift from “what is wrong with this student” to “what has happened to this student” are seeing amazing results including decreases in suspension and office referrals and increases in attendance, student engagement, academic success and graduation. Attendees will improve their understanding of:
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This training really helped me think outside the box when it comes to understanding children’s behaviors as well as my own. Extremely eye opening.” I am going to change my responses to be trauma-informed and adopt these classroom strategies for the students.” Good suggestions of positive changes we can make in our classrooms” The classroom regulation techniques were wonderful.” |