Students Facing Trauma

Responding with Care to Students Facing Trauma, by Kristin Souers, published in Mental Health in Schools (January, 2018).

This week's staff meeting (Thursday's Late Start) will be a quick reminder on how to help support students that are experiencing ongoing life stresses.  Recognizing what our students are experiencing can help us respond effectively to their needs.  This can be difficult at this time of the year, so we're going to spend a little time talking about how we can do this during these last weeks of school.

Traci, Kim, Erika, Kristen, Lori and I were at a district meeting this week to talk about how to best support our students.  One of the topics was recognizing that trauma impacts students' brains and spirits as well as their bodies.  Most researchers view trauma as resulting not only from catastrophic events, but also from ongoing stressors like divorce or mental illness within the family.

Research in the late 1990s identified 10 "adverse childhood experiences" (ACEs) that affected people's health as children, and into adulthood.  Looking at this list of events, which includes experiences like parents going to jail, the death of a loved one, substance misuse in the home, we realize how prevalent traumatic experiences are among today's students.  As educators, we can't ignore this issue and its impact on student learning.

At this week's staff meeting, we will look at six ways to reach our students, to provide staff with tools to use these last stressful weeks of school - to best meet the needs of everyone!