When I used to hear the word trauma, I would think of extremes such as car accidents, civil wars, unforeseen deaths, and other devastating tragedies that people go through. It wasn’t until our current Covid-19 Pandemic that I started to realize that trauma encompasses much more than these extremities. I also had some experience teaching an EAL student who had just moved to Canada this year who had unfortunately had to flee their home country due to civil war. At the time, I wished that I could have been better prepared to help this student work through some of the trauma that he had already experienced at such a young age.
With this in mind, I decided that it was important for me to learn as much as I could about what trauma is, why it’s more important than ever to understand right now, how it affects our students, signs of trauma in the classroom, and how I can create a trauma-informed classroom to support these students.
What is Trauma?
Trauma is a threat or a perceived threat to one’s own safety or that of a loved one. We can measure trauma using what’s called an ACE score, which tallies the number of Adverse Childhood Experiences that have happened in a child’s life. These experiences include maltreatment (physical, emotional, sexual, and verbal abuse as well as neglect) as well as dysfunctions within the family or family members (divorce, substance abuse, mental illness, incarceration, and violence in the home).
To learn more about ACEs and a specific program that’s been piloted in Rochester, New York called “Promoting Youth Resilience”, check out this article on Creating a Culture of Care.
Why is this topic important right now?
What had me particularly interested in studying the effects of trauma on our students right now is knowing that the Covid-19 Pandemic, particularly safety measures including isolation and quarantines, could magnify the number of students needing support in coming years.
We have learned of the results of these types of quarantine through studies that followed outbreaks such as SARS outbreak in Canada and the Ebola outbreak in Sierra Leone. This research has shown that quarantine can have negative psychological impacts as it in itself is a stressful experience. Quarantine has negative effects on students as they are taken out of school, lose their routines, and miss interactions with their peers. Parents may also inadvertently pass some of their anxiety and stress onto their children, which in the long run can result in post-traumatic stress symptoms occurring.
Understanding the effects that we can plan to see on our students when this pandemic is finally over made it plain and simple for me; I needed to understand more so I can better support my future students.
For more information on the psychological effects of Covid-19 with regards to children, check out this article from the Italian Journal of Pediatrics, COVID-19 quarantine: Psychological impact and support for children and parents.
But there was another reason that this issue was of particular interest to me right now as well, and this wasn’t anything new.
During this past year of teaching Grade 4, I taught a student who had just come to Canada and, as far as we knew, had only had a few months of schooling throughout his young life. I felt ill-equipped to teach and support this student who not only could not speak a word of English, but had most likely came from a refugee camp. This student, along with many other EAL students in our school populations, was another reason that I decided to devote my time into researching and creating a trauma-informed classroom.
We know that EAL students are coming with memories of war and refugee camps. We now need to be looking at how we can help these students overcome their lack of or disruption of schooling by focusing on the effects of trauma that they’re coming in with. We need to not only focus on the fact that they have missed a certain number of years of school, but that they have also experienced complex traumas that many of us cannot fathom.
As an example, many of these students will have experienced fleeing their home countries to escape war and to find safety in refugee camps. This can have a negative effect on things like problem solving skills in the classroom, as they have spent many of their childhood years focusing all of their attention on survival and overcoming threats.
To learn more about the effects of trauma on refugee children in particular, here’s a great article from the BC Teal called Trauma-informed Teaching Practice and Refugee Children: A Hopeful Reflection on Welcoming Our New Neighbours to Canadian Schools
How does trauma affect my students?
The more ACEs (Adverse Childhood Experiences) that a child has suffered, the more likely they are to suffer long-term effects such as alcoholism, drug abuse, depression, disease, and even early death. Childhood trauma also has a profound effect on a child’s brain development, which can include an effect on their emotional and cognitive development. To put it in simple terms, the brain of a child who has experienced extreme trauma develops differently, particularly with regards to how they handle stress and anxiety.
Many of our students are lucky enough to grow up feeling secure and safe in their environments, which makes it possible for them to learn how to properly regulate themselves under stress and throughout other negative emotions. Students who grow up experiencing trauma, however, spend too much time in a highly dysregulated state and develop unhealthy coping measures such as shutting down or “flipping their lids”.
During these stressful states, our bodies release a hormone called cortisol which triggers a physiological response in our bodies, including higher blood pressure, muscle tension, and a depressed immune system. Children who are in constant states of stress are exposed to even higher levels of cortisol which can also lead to the damage of brain cells and functions, for example in the hippocampus.
Students that have been through significant trauma have also lost their sense of identity and belonging because they have felt so powerless throughout the traumatic experiences. They may also be triggered by reminders of trauma, which can lead to their brains going into fight or flight mode even though there is no actual threat present.
What are some signs of trauma that I might notice?
If a child has grown up living in a state of constant fear or high stress, their amygdala (which controls and regulates our emotions) can actually become overdeveloped. In our classroom, this presents as students who can be:
- Highly impulsive
- Hyperactive
- Over reactive
- Unable to complete high-order thinking tasks
Children can also become trapped in a state of fight or flight, which results in overreactions to every day experiences. This means that in the classroom, we are likely to see:
- Behavioral outbursts
- Difficult to manage behaviors
- Defiance
- Disruptive behaviors
- Aggressive behaviors
Studies have also found that when certain areas of a child’s brain are put into constant overdrive because of trauma, it can result in other areas of the brain not operating at typical or optimum levels. In the classroom, this may present as:
- Cognitive delays
- Difficulty maintaining attention
- Processing delays
- Comprehension difficulties
- Sensory issues
- Difficulty staying awake
Student who have higher ACE scores may also suffer low self-esteem, anxiety, depression, and withdrawal.
So how can I create a successful trauma-informed classroom to help support these students who are coming to school with a history of trauma?
To find some answers to this question, I started out by researching peer-reviewed articles and having some conversations with other professionals that I work with, including school counsellors and psychologists. My current summer class, Current Issues in Counselling, also had tons of great resources for me to start my research with. And as always- I watched a few great Ted Talks, like this one by Lisa Godwin: How Teachers Can Help Students Navigate Trauma to get me started.
I had a few main discoveries throughout my research:
- We tend to focus on the behavioral interventions without considering the underlying issues that are causing the behavior in the first place.
- Childhood trauma can negatively impact our students’ relationships with their peers, their behavior in the classroom, and impair their ability to learn.
- The number of people who have suffered childhood trauma is much higher than I would have expected- for example, over two-thirds of us have suffered at least one adverse childhood experience.
What this meant for me was that I needed to learn as much as I could about trauma itself, how it impacts our students, and how I can create an inclusive classroom space that all of my students can thrive in!
To find out what I learned and how you can create a successful, inclusive classroom, check out my next post on The Trauma-Informed Classroom!
Micki Banks
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