Responding To Student Trauma

Immediately effective trauma-response framework for educators to help students during and after crises. Responding to Student Trauma is an urgent addition to current trauma response practices. Written by a middle school counselor, this easy-to-follow book provides a framework for understanding and responding to the needs of students experiencing trauma. With many schools lacking adequate staff for supporting student mental health, this guide gives educators the information and strategies they need to address the specific needs of their students. Packed with strategies to use immediately, Responding to Student Trauma categorizes trauma according to the source: self/home, school, community, and country/world. It directly addresses how to respond to crises currently facing students and educators and includes tips for planning ahead to be ready for the next crisis. The versatile structure allows Responding to Student Trauma to be used as a standalone resource, as a supplement to existing programs, or as a trauma response framework to create a schoolwide program. Having clear and comprehensive programs for times of crisis and students who are struggling with traumatic experiences allows staff to support student mental health and helps reduce staff anxiety and uncertainty about unexpected incidents. Digital content includes a reproducible school-planning worksheet, teacher quick-guide worksheet, and action items checklist to ensure the entire staff is trained and feels prepared to respond quickly to situations. A free downloadable PLC/Book Study Guide available at freespirit.com/PLC.

Educators must both respond to the impact of trauma, and prevent trauma at school. Trauma-informed initiatives tend to focus on the challenging behaviors of students and ascribe them to circumstances that students are facing outside of school. This approach ignores the reality that inequity itself causes trauma, and that schools often heighten inequities when implementing trauma-informed practices that are not based in educational equity. In this fresh look at trauma-informed practice, Alex Shevrin Venet urges educators to shift equity to the center as they consider policies and professional development. Using a framework of six principles for equity-centered trauma-informed education, Venet offers practical action steps that teachers and school leaders can take from any starting point, using the resources and influence at their disposal to make shifts in practice, pedagogy, and policy. Overthrowing inequitable systems is a process, not an overnight change. But transformation is possible when educators work together, and teachers can do more than they realize from within their own classrooms.

In this galvanizing book for all educators, Kristin Souers and Pete Hall explore an urgent and growing issue--childhood trauma--and its profound effect on learning and teaching. Grounded in research and the authors' experience working with trauma-affected students and their teachers, Fostering Resilient Learners will help you cultivate a trauma-sensitive learning environment for students across all content areas, grade levels, and educational settings. The authors--a mental health therapist and a veteran principal--provide proven, reliable strategies to help you * Understand what trauma is and how it hinders the learning, motivation, and success of all students in the classroom. * Build strong relationships and create a safe space to enable students to learn at high levels. * Adopt a strengths-based approach that leads you to recalibrate how you view destructive student behaviors and to perceive what students need to break negative cycles. * Head off frustration and burnout with essential self-care techniques that will help you and your students flourish. Each chapter also includes questions and exercises to encourage reflection and extension of the ideas in this book. As an educator, you face the impact of trauma in the classroom every day. Let this book be your guide to seeking solutions rather than dwelling on problems, to building relationships that allow students to grow, thrive, and--most assuredly--learn at high levels.

From the author of Mindfulness for Teachers, a guide to supporting trauma-exposed students. Fully half the students in U.S. schools have experienced trauma, violence, or chronic stress. In the face of this epidemic, it falls increasingly to teachers to provide the adult support these students need to function in school. But most educators have received little training to prepare them for this role. In her new book, Tish Jennings—an internationally recognized leader in the field of social and emotional learning—shares research and experiential knowledge about the practices that support students' healing, build their resilience, and foster compassion in the classroom. In Part I, Jennings describes the effects of trauma on body and mind, and how to recognize them in students' behavior. In Part II, she introduces the trauma-sensitive practices she has implemented in her work with schools. And in Part III, she connects the dots between mindfulness, compassion, and resilience. Each chapter contains easy-to-use, practical activities to hone the skills needed to create a compassionate learning environment.

"Traumatic or adverse experiences are pervasive among school-aged children and youth. These experiences undermine students' ability to learn, form relationships, and manage their feelings and behaviour. Meanwhile, educators and school-based professionals often remain unaware of the complex needs of their students or how to meet them within the hours of the typical school day, all while possibly dealing with their own stressors. Supporting and Educating Traumatized Students: A Guide for School-Based Professionals provides a practically oriented tool for understanding and assisting students with a history of trauma. Designed specifically for professionals in mental health and education settings, this volume combines content and expertise from practitioners, researchers, and other experts with backgrounds in education, school psychology, school social work, school administration, resilience, school policy, and trauma. The book provides a thorough background on current research in trauma and its impact on school functioning; administrative and policy considerations; and a broad set of practical and implementable strategies and resources for adapting and differentiating instruction, modifying the classroom and school environments, and building competency for students and staff impacted by trauma. Rather than provide complex treatment protocols, the chapters in this book offer simple techniques and strategies designed for all types of educational environments within the context of multiple potential sources of trauma. Supporting and Educating Traumatized Students is an essential resource for classroom teachers, administrators, and school-based professionals, as well as courses that address crisis, trauma, and education across a broad spectrum of specializations."--

This book explores how educational institutions have failed to recognize and effectively address the symptoms of trauma in students of all ages. Given the prevalence of traumatic events in our world, Gross argues that it is time for educational institutions and those who work within them to change their approaches and responses to traumatic symptoms that manifest in students in schools and colleges. These changes can alter how and what we teach, how we train teachers, how we structure our calendars and create our schedules, how we address student behavior and disciplinary issues, and how we design our physical space. Drawing on real-life examples and scenarios that will be familiar to educators, this resource provides concrete suggestions to assist institutions in becoming trauma-responsive environments, including replicable macro and micro changes. “Ideas and strategies that teachers, parents, students, and leaders of any organization can leverage to make positive transformational changes.” —Martha J. Kanter, U.S. under secretary of education (2009–2013) “A treasure trove of information on trauma, as well as thoughtful recommendations for schools from pre–K through college.” —Kathleen Ross, president emeritus, Heritage University “It is a book for the ‘Generation T’ in the context of our time. Offers strategies of quieting the hyper-aroused stress response system. —Ed K.S. Wang, Massachusetts General Hospital

This book centers equity in the approach to trauma-informed practice and provides the first evidence-based guide to trauma-informed teaching and learning in higher education. The book is divided into four main parts. Part I grounds the collection in an equity approach to trauma-informed care and illustrates one or more trauma-informed principles in practice. Chapters in Part II describe trauma-informed approaches to teaching in specific disciplines. In Part III, chapters demonstrate trauma-informed approaches to teaching specific populations. Part IV focuses on instruments and strategies for assessment at the institutional, organizational, departmental, class, and employee levels. The book also includes a substantial appendix with more than a dozen evidence-based and field-tested tools to support college educators on their trauma-informed teaching journey.