The Trauma-Informed Classroom
5 Easy Ways to Use Trauma-Informed Practices in Your Classroom
According to the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), two-thirds of students in U.S. schools will report a traumatic event by the age of 16. Today, as many as 38% of students in the U.S. are growing up in single-parent homes. 8% don’t live with a parent at all.
In the county I teach in, 18% of my students live in households whose yearly incomes put them below the poverty line. What that means for me is that out of a class of 30 students, 11 of them live in a single-parent household, 2 of them don’t live with a parent at all, 5 of them are living in poverty and as many as 20 of them have experienced some kind of traumatic event. The bottom line is that children are showing up in our classrooms every day carrying a heavy burden of fear, anger, and uncertainty, which manifests itself in their behaviors at school.
What Is Trauma?
Trauma is defined as “a deeply distressing or disturbing experience.” Examples of childhood traumatic events include but are certainly not limited to, physical or sexual abuse, divorce, poverty, death of a family member, incarceration of a family member, witnessing or experiencing domestic violence, military deployment of a family member, or serious injury or disease. Any one of these examples can leave children deeply traumatized for life and not every child has access to the resources they need to understand and process their emotions, which in turn, manifests as behavior issues at home and at school.
How Does the Brain React to Trauma?
My interest in the subject of trauma-informed teaching is rooted in the fact that I am a survivor of childhood trauma and a combat veteran who struggles with PTSD. Being both a teacher and a lifelong learner, I have spent a great deal of time trying to understand my own trauma and how it affects me and the people around me.
What I have learned is that traumatic experiences can actually cause physical changes in our brains. Our brains are naturally wired for survival. When our ancestors encountered a dangerous situation, like a close encounter with a lion, their brains developed what we call the “fight, fight, or freeze” response. This allowed them to survive future encounters with lions and other predators by developing an automatic response to dangerous situations that bypasses our brain’s conscious decision-making process so we can quickly react without spending precious seconds having to formulate a course of action.
The structure found in the brain that regulates the fight, flight, or freeze response is called the amygdala and is located near the top of the brain stem. In a crisis, the amygdala hijacks the entire brain; taking control automatically until the crisis has passed. When the amygdala is activated, two important parts of the brain that regulate rational thinking and storing new information, the prefrontal cortex, and the hippocampus, shut down temporarily until the danger has passed.
Repeated traumatic events that activate the amygdala actually cause physical changes in the brain where the amygdala increases in size and the pathways that activate the fight, flight, or freeze response become stronger. This exaggerated fight or flight response is called Post Traumatic Stress Disorder or PTSD. PTSD is most often associated with warfighters and first responders, but anyone can develop PTSD from exposure to traumatic experiences.
The main takeaway here is that when a person’s fight or flight response is activated, they are physically incapable of learning and retaining new information.
What Does Trauma Look Like in Children?
Children who have had traumatic experiences often show visible signs that can be easily recognized once you know what to look for.
Physical indicators of childhood trauma can be a serious physical injury or signs of neglect like unkempt hair, dirty clothing, and a lack of personal hygiene. Behavioral clues that a student has had a traumatic experience include depression, anxiety, having a hard time concentrating, sleeping in class, self-harm, alcohol or drug abuse, overtly sexual behavior, aggression, or defiance.
Creating a Trauma-Informed Classroom.
When I left the army to become a history teacher and football coach, I brought that same style of communication and leadership that I had experienced as an infantryman to the classroom. I was a strict disciplinarian, a no-nonsense teacher who tolerated no deviations from my classroom expectations.
My first year teaching was a disaster. My students dubbed me “The Incredible Hulk” for the wildly angry outbursts I would have in response to misbehavior by my students. I was a traumatized teacher who was traumatizing already traumatized teenagers. My teaching went on like that until I was forced to confront and deal with my own childhood and battlefield trauma.
I finally reached out to the Veteran’s Administration to get the help I needed. In that process of learning about my own trauma and how my brain had been changed by it, something clicked in my head. What if my students were given this same information? What if I ran my class the way my doctors ran our PTSD classes?
I decided I didn’t have much to lose. I was having to send students to the office sometimes 5 or 6 at a time, and my test scores were abysmal. However, once I started implementing trauma-informed practices in my classroom, I began to see some positive changes.
Let me share some of those most effective practices with you now.
1. Share your calm
Students who have suffered traumatic experiences often are used to being yelled at and disparaged by the adults in their lives. Always use a calm and friendly voice, even when dealing with negative behaviors. What they need is one adult who always demonstrates unconditional respect and affection, even when they fail to live up to your expectations. Students need to know that you are going to treat them with kindness no matter what.
2. Create a reassuring and predictable classroom environment
Students who are dealing with traumatic experiences often have home lives that are chaotic and full of uncertainty. I set up my classroom to be a haven of calm and predictability. Instead of using overhead fluorescent lights, I light my class with floor lamps that put out a softer, calmer light. I follow the same lesson format nearly every day so that students always know what to expect when they come to class. I spend most of the first week of school establishing predictable routines and procedures that I stick with the entire year. I take time to model and act out the behaviors I want to see from my students. The goal is that a student never comes to my class and doesn’t know what I expect them to do. If they forget, I gently remind them.
3. Show you care
We became teachers because we love children and enjoy watching them learn and grow. Your students need to know that. I assumed for years that my students knew how much I cared about them despite my salty exterior. As the COVID-19 pandemic came and went, it became clear to me just how much some of my students were struggling just to get through their day-to-day lives. Beginning in the 20–21 school year I began opening each class session with the following affirmation:
“In case no one has told you today, you’re going to hear it now. You are loved, you are cared for. You matter. Your life matters and the choices you make today matters. What we are going to learn today matters and how we treat each other here at school matters. If you can hear my voice, then I’m talking to you. I love you and I’m glad you came to class today.”
I was amazed at how my students responded to this. It really did make them feel welcome in class and helped set the expectations for the class session. By the end of the school year, they were reciting it with me at the beginning of every class. They even recited it at their 8th-grade graduation ceremony.
4. Focus on the positive
Our students often come to school feeling like they are not good enough. They sit down in your classroom feeling worthless and defeated before class even starts.
My goal here is to ensure that at the end of class, my students leave the classroom feeling proud of having accomplished something. At the beginning of the school year, I lavish praise on students and give them candies or stickers as a reward for doing something as simple as being in their seats when the bell rings.
In my class, there are no wrong answers, only good answers, and better answers. If a student answers a question incorrectly I tell them that’s a good answer, but I think there may be a better answer. When students perform well on tests, they are given recognition on the “Wall of Fame” I have set up on my bulletin board. If a student does poorly on a test, I congratulate them for the ones they got right and send them back to correct their mistakes.
5. Give grace
I make sure my students have plenty of opportunities to be successful each day, both academically and behaviorally. I forgive little slip-ups. I keep a cup of pencils and a stack of notebook paper for my students who forget their materials or have no materials at all. If a student is having a particularly bad day, I allow them to let me know at the beginning of class and I allow them to take time to put their head down or go see the counselor. More often than not, they take that time to regroup, and after a few minutes, they will begin to participate in class.
When I give tests, I allow students to retake a test as many times as they want until they get the grade they want. If a student’s phone goes off in class, I politely instruct them to turn it off and put it in their locker rather than confiscate it. If a student is acting out, I pull them aside and give them a chance to explain what’s going on and help them come up with a plan to make a better choice.
I made the decision to implement these changes because it was not only what my students needed, but it was also what I needed.
I wanted my students to be able to pass their state tests, but more importantly, I wanted them to be able to pass life.
As the school year went on, I began to see changes. My students were happier and more engaged, I had far fewer behavior problems in class and almost no tardies or skipping class. By the time May had rolled around, I had only sent one student to the office for the entire school year. As we went into our state testing window for that school year, for the first time in my teaching career I found myself indifferent to whatever their scores might be; I could rest satisfied that my students had learned kindness and empathy, as well as history.
Fast forward to August 2022 when my students' test scores came back. They had crushed their history test. For the first time, I achieved a level 5 rating as a teacher, level 5 being the highest rating for teachers in Tennessee. I went home that day with the realization that the missing ingredient in my teaching practice this whole time had been love.
I’ve continued to use these trauma-informed practices and it has resulted in a beautiful transformation in my classroom. I rarely have any behavior issues and when I do, I call out the behavior and not the student.
If a student is off task, I’ll begin to sing, “One of these things is not like the other ones,” to gently remind students that they are off task without singling any one student out.
My students also continue to do well on state tests. Most importantly, my students look forward to coming to my class and leave each day feeling good about what they accomplished that day. Now, after a few years of trauma-informed teaching, word has gotten around, and I have 6th and 7th graders approach me in the hall and state confidently that they can’t wait to be in my class when they get to the 8th grade.
I’m looking forward to having them in class.
