What are trauma informed teaching practices?
Trauma informed education should not just be one more thing added to our ever growing list of demands to our jobs. If it is just a checklist for educators, then trauma informed education can and will make the wounds of trauma even more pronounced and can blatantly ignore other types of trauma.
One way to start is to look at the culture of a school because traumatic events can and often occur at school. How are students, staff, and parents treated within the walls of your school? What microaggressions are taking place with school policies and curriculum that affect minority populations on campus? These events don’t usually occur once; they happen repeatedly day after day, grade after grade. It includes the traumatic behavior and the fact that it rarely, if ever, gets addressed, handled, and solved.
Another societal problem to address is systemic oppression and its effect on BIPOC and LGBTQI+ students in our schools and classrooms. Systemic oppression includes discussing and addressing racism, poverty, and injustice in the world. The antidote to these issues is to include anti-racism and anti-oppression in all classrooms. Ensure that your school is actively making sure that it is safe for all students and then progress by working with community groups to fight police brutality, minimum wage, and environmental racism.
Lastly, consider getting rid of rigid and punitive rules in your classroom, school, and district. Don’t go along or mindlessly apply rules for infractions that students with trauma need to break in order to have some sense of control in their lives. Some educators will argue that students need to be held accountable and there are rules and laws in society. While that is true, some of our rules and laws in society are inherently racist and only serve the purpose to keep some groups of people down and other groups in power. Students don’t need to be held accountable to failures of adults and racist institutions. Students need a safe place at school to deal with trauma and emotions.
