Sunday, October 29, 2017

8 Strategies for Supporting Students in Trauma

Breaking News!
Congratulations to our Kickball team for their first win of the season, a 9-2 win over PVCC students. Pitcher Cindy Pryor pitched a gem and made an incredible catch on a comebacker. Chris Stanek made an acrobatic catch of a knuckling drive to left field and Luke Robbins provided an offensive spark with several RBI on hard kicked balls.   

Next Game: Sunday at 1pm at Washington Park. C’mon out and cheer on the team or give playing a shot.

Excellence in Education: 8 Strategies for Supporting Students Who Experienced Trauma
Almost all veteran teachers have at least one class that forces teachers to change and adapt their ways. For me, this class was my Individualized Reading class, a class designed for students who were reading several grade levels below grade-level. It was my third year of co-teaching this class and the results had been pretty impressive.

This class was quite different. Fortunately, I was working with a veteran teacher who was very reflective and a team player. About a month into the year, we realized that we had to make some changes. After meeting after school for several days, we recognized that we truly didn’t know our students. Yeah, we had read their IEPs and looked at their files and we knew several of these students had experienced trauma. One student, had seen her mother killed by her father. Another student, had been sexually abused by a family member. Another student’s father was incarcerated for domestic violence. We sought out our school psychologist, who fortunately agreed to come and observe our class and talk to the team--all of these students were part of our freshman transition program, so in addition to teaching these students reading, I also taught them history and they all had the same math, English and science teacher.

Fortunately, our team approach made

  1. We developed consistent routines and expectations. For many students, especially those who have experienced trauma, knowing what to expect helps students feel safe. We standardized all of our rules and expectations in all of our classes. Honestly, I think this was the most difficult task for us as teachers because it required us to change.
  2. Establish appropriate consequences. Closely related to the above, it was important for us to set logical consequences for misbehavior. We knew the consequences couldn’t be seen as punishments and we also knew that many misbehaviors were manifestations of traumatic experiences. Our first idea was to have class meetings and to have students develop appropriate consequences. Honestly, this failed miserably. The consequences the students established were illogical and/or draconian. In time we developed a form for students to reflect on what happened and we eventually elicited the help of a school counselor who talked to the students about what happened.
  3. Build on strengths and interests. Using our freshman seminar class, we did a variety of activities that focused on strengths and interests. Whenever possible, we played to student strengths. We made use of flexible grouping and cooperative learning strategies and developed assignments that contributed to positive self-thoughts.
  4. Celebrate the small victories. For some of these students, just the fact that they were showing up every day was a major victory. SOL scores be damned. We had to focus on small wins. The big wins would come.
  5. Student called time-outs. I can’t tell you how many temper tantrums, cuss-outs, near fights I saw at the beginning of the year. While they didn’t stop, we were able to minimize them by giving each student the right to leave class and go to a calming place. We developed a series of places where students could go with no questions asked when they felt angered.
  6. Plan ahead. For many of these students school is where they felt safe. Weekends and vacations induced trauma. While there was little we could do, we knew we had to be more patient and compassionate about these times. We also had to be purposeful in teaching topics that may serve as triggers. For example, in Individual Reading many of the students read the Bluford High Series, which often were about violence; for one student this was “too real.”
  7. Support. As a team we met every week to discuss our students. These students needed support. They needed to know that we believed in them. During these meetings, we identified a “positive” that we saw in each student. For example, if Chris led a thoughtful discussion in Earth Science class, the science teacher shared this with the team. And guess what, when Chris came to my history class, I was complimenting him on his work in science and the English and math teachers were doing the same.
  8. Teamwork. This group challenged all of us. Many were failing our classes. It was exhausting--both mentally and physically. It was important for us to take care of ourselves, to support each other and to celebrate our successes.
We were lucky to be able to address the needs of our students as a team, but I believe that each of these eight strategies can be practically implemented in all classes.

Need To Knows
Substitutes: As you create your substitute plans, please be sure to provide them with information regarding student accommodations (health plans, SBIT, 504s, IEPs). Please be sure to turn your emergency lesson plans into Kate.

Useful Links
Technology / Website Permission Request Form Please use this form to request use of a website or any resource that requires student log-in if the site is not already on the approved list. DART approved list



Calendar and Memo Items
October 3 Triplets: Shannon Hutchison-Krupat, Michelle Kessler, Peggy Smith
October 5: Tucker Tapscott
October 8: Nanette DeFrank

Calendar and Memo Items
October 5: Parent-Teacher Conferences
October 10: Tech Tour Field Trip* and Flu Shots (see this link for more info and dates)
October 11: PSATs
October 12:  Faculty Meeting (AM Only) and PD Follow-Up Due -- your PLC should create a student watch list and document your plans using this form for the following items:
October 13: Art Field Trip*

*Please see Monticello Shared Calendar for list of field trip students

Worth Your Time
What Evil Depends On: Good People to Be Quiet, A Former High School Football Player Remembers When His School Integrated A great story/audio interview from StoryCorps. This story has many potential lessons for many classes.

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