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Agreements for Multicultural Interactions (1)

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SEL Core Competencies with Skills English and Spanish copy

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Components of Emotional Intelligence - updated copy

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Strategies to Improve Emotional Intelligence Components copy

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MAAS Mindfulness Attention Awareness Scale Updated 2016

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Trauma-sensitive and trauma-informed schools are spreading around the country. But if they don't start with how schools themselves can induce trauma, they won't work.

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Many teachers are working to modify their classrooms and schools to offer a more supportive environment for students who have experienced trauma in their lives. They're taking heed of research showing that adverse childhood experiences like poverty, neglect, and exposure to violence affect children's brains and may have a negative impact on learning and behavior.

"For me being trauma-informed has so much to do with mindset, accepting that different people come into a school setting with incredibly varied life experiences," said Lindsey Minder, a second grade teacher profiled in an Edutopia video introducing trauma-informed practices. "Some of those life experiences may be traumatic. And the way in which that plays out in my particular classroom could look a number of ways. And by me having that lens it makes it less about are they doing 'the right thing' or the 'wrong thing' and more about, 'where is that behavior coming from? Why is that happening?'"

While dealing with all the issues kids bring to school can be overwhelming for teachers, the upside is that they are well positioned to make a big impact on students' lives. Positive relationships with caring adults can help buffer students from the effects of trauma and chronic stress, making trauma-informed schools "healing places."

"If you're fearful, if you're anxious, if you're distracted about something that's happened to you, you literally can't learn. Your brain shuts down," said Dr. Linda Darling-Hammond, president and CEO of the Learning Policy Institute. "So it's essential to give kids social and emotional tools that allow students to recover from the challenges that they have experienced. Take actual classroom time to work on the building blocks of how to perceive your emotions, how to talk about them, how to get along with other people, how to take a moment and become calm when you need to, how to express your needs so that others can meet them."

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Strategies Schools Can Use To Become More Trauma-Informed

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Many teachers are working to modify their classrooms and schools to offer a more supportive environment for students who have experienced trauma in their lives. They're taking heed of research showing that adverse childhood experiences like poverty, neglect, and exposure to violence affect children's brains and may have a negative impact on learning and behavior.

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When someone comes to you with bad news or a problem they are facing it's a natural reflex for most of us to say something along the lines of "just be positive!" - well, one therapist is here to tell you, this advice is toxic. Nobody wants to be kicked when they are already down so naturally, we think that telling people uplifting mantras about positivity will give them the boost they need, but this is not always the case.

Psychotherapist Whitney Hawkins Goodman, LMFT, owner of The Collaborative Counseling Center, runs an Instagram account called @sitwithwhit where she shared an important chart on the difference between giving someone 'validation and hope' versus 'toxic positivity' and it's making waves on the internet.

Psychotherapist Whitney Hawkins Goodman created a chart to educate people on the difference between validation and 'toxic positivity' - and it's going viral

The therapist explained that she found the 'toxic positivity' sayings from Pinterest, which can be harmless mantras for some but for people going through a tough time they can have a deeper effect.

Image credits: sitwithwhit

Image credits: sitwithwhit

Image credits: sitwithwhit

Image credits: sitwithwhit

Image credits: sitwithwhit

Image credits: sitwithwhit

Image credits: sitwithwhit

Image credits: sitwithwhit

Along with the post Goodman wrote: "I've realized people HATE the word toxic. I hear ya'll. Got a lot of comments on "never give up." Decided to keep it. There are relationships, life goals, plans and situations that is OK to give up on. Not everything needs to result in completion. Sometimes it is safer to give up. We owe each other the space to discuss the options," and asked her followers, "What are some other positive sayings that you think are totally dismissive?"

People loved the chart and thought it nailed this very important lesson

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Therapist Explains The Important Difference Between Support And 'Toxic Positivity' In One Simple Chart

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When someone comes to you with bad news or a problem they are facing it's a natural reflex for most of us to say something along the lines of "just be positive!" - well, one therapist is here to tell you, this advice is toxic.

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Poverty, violence, hunger, abuse, and an unstable world are causing chronic stress for our nation's kids. And that sad truth is that prolonged exposure to stress can damage the centers of the brain associated with learning, cause behavioral problems, and increase the cycle of violence. Nearly half of the children in the United States, or almost 35 million kids, have experienced "at least one or more types of serious childhood trauma," according to a survey by the National Survey of Children's Health (NSCH).

As teachers are the adults who see students for the longest periods of time throughout the day, they play a critical role in recognizing the symptoms of trauma and treating it at the classroom level. After reading our brief synopsis on trauma, check out the tips below that are absolutely essential for anyone working with trauma.

What is trauma?

Trauma can be broken down into these eight categories, according to the work of Bonnie L. Green, PhD, Professor Emeritus of Psychiatry at Georgetown University (Wilson & Sigman, 2000/Green, 1993):

1. Threat to life or limb.

2. Severe physical harm or injury, including sexual assault.

3. Receipt of intentional injury or harm.

4. Exposure to the grotesque.

5. Violent, sudden loss of a loved one.

6. Witnessing or learning of violence to a loved one.

7. Learning of exposure to a noxious agent.

8. Causing death or severe harm to another.

For young students, traumatic stress can severely impact a student's ability to learn, function in social environments, or manage their emotions and behaviors. Becoming a trauma-informed educator means becoming more acutely aware of how trauma alters the lens through which its victims see their world, and building practices that honor that reality. The good news: beyond these tips below, there are professional development opportunities that can greatly help you support your students (and yourself).

Implementing trauma-informed best practices in the classroom

Know the signs

According to the National Child Traumatic Stress Network, children experiencing traumatic stress can have difficulty self-regulating emotions, may be aggressive, skittish, impulsive, or require extra attention while simultaneously remaining fearful of new or unfamiliar situations or people. Teachers may also notice physiological symptoms of trauma such as appetite issues, weight changes, exhaustion, frequent illness, or poor hygiene. When these changes are sudden, it's especially telling that a student may be experiencing traumatic life events. A comprehensive list of traumatic stress symptoms can be found in the NCTSN Toolkit for Educators. Are any of your students exhibiting one or more of these signs?

Provide consistency and structure

Students who experience trauma can feel triggered by a lack of clear structures, boundaries, and routines. As we're sure you can imagine, providing classroom consistency, daily structures, clear expectations, and reliable warmth and love help stressed students feel safe. Normalcy is profoundly healing and comforting, particularly for students who do not feel in control of their lives.

Implementing even small classroom systems can greatly alleviate emotional stressors and prevent behavioral incidents. For example, sharing a clear agenda for the day's learning makes a student aware of what's ahead and expected, giving them time to get comfortable. This decreases the stress and uncertainty caused by classroom activity transitions and the roll-out of assignments. Additionally, offering a student some choices throughout the day gives them a sense of dominion, developing a mending sense of self-control over their environment.

Get serious about social-emotional training

Traumatized students require explicit emotional training to regulate their emotions, process stress, and heal from their experiences. Ideally they should receive counseling, but on the classroom level, social-emotional learning can include things like meditation, breathing exercises, and mindfulness practices that provide students with time to pause and reflect on their emotional state.

Teaching students to recognize negative emotions, pause, and process them before they manifest into negative behaviors also builds coping skills and reduces the need for disciplinary measures. "When well taught and when practiced regularly, [mindfulness] has been shown to be capable of improving mental health and well-being, mood, self-esteem, self-regulation, positive behavior, and academic learning," according to research by Katherine Weare, Professor Emeritus of Education at the University of Southampton (2013).

Use restorative practices over zero tolerance policies

Students with traumatic backgrounds benefit from clear boundaries and limitations, coupled with a restorative approach to discipline, rather than a punitive one. Restorative practices rebuild a traumatized student's relationship to authority and to the adults and peers in their daily lives. Restorative circles, team-building exercises, meditations, and counseling can all reform a traumatized student's belief in fairness, as well as their capacity for conducting themselves with integrity.

"Restorative Justice is particularly impactful for traumatized students because it prioritizes de-escalation. It's about getting to the root of a student's triggers, underlying issues, and motives, teaching healthy communication skills," says Gina Angelillo-Farieri, a Restorative Justice Coordinator in the New York City Department of Education. "Relying solely on punishment leaves out the important and healing lessons that students of trauma so desperately need."

Take care of yourself

Working with individuals who have experienced a traumatic event can make someone more susceptible to secondary traumatic stress. In other words, if you're working with kids who are coping with trauma, there's a chance it could affect you too. That's why it's so important to take care of yourself - a healthy teacher is a more effective teacher. According to the Treatment and Services Adaptation Center, awareness is the key to managing secondary traumatic stress. They recommend regular small group check-ins, regular exercise, a healthy diet, and sufficient sleep.

For more on trauma-informed teaching, check out these resources:

Tags: Professional Development, Trauma and Resilience

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Trauma-Informed Teaching Tips for Educators & Traumatized Students

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Poverty, violence, hunger, abuse, and an unstable world are causing chronic stress for our nation's kids. And that sad truth is that prolonged exposure to stress can damage the centers of the brain associated with learning, cause behavioral problems, and increase the cycle of violence.

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Shawn Ginwright Ph.D.
From time to time, researchers, policy makers, philanthropy and practitioners all join together in a coordinated response to address the most pressing issues facing America's youth. I've been involved with this process for long enough to have participated in each of these roles. I recall during the early 1990s experts promoted the term "resiliency," which is the capacity to adapt, navigate and bounce back from adverse and challenging life experiences. Researchers and practitioners alike clamored over strategies to build more resilient youth.

In the early 2000's the term "youth development" gained currency and had a significant influence on youth development programs, and probably more importantly how we viewed young people. Youth development offered an important shift in focus from viewing youth as problems to be solved to community assets who simply required supports and opportunities for healthy development. Since that time, a range of approaches have influenced how we think about young people, and consequently our programmatic strategies. I have, for the most part, attempted to nudge and cajole each of these approaches to consider the unique ways in which race, identity and social marginalization influence the development of youth of color.

More recently, practitioners and policy stakeholders have recognized the impact of trauma on learning, and healthy development. In efforts to support young people who experience trauma, the term "trauma-informed care" has gained traction among schools, juvenile justice departments, mental health programs and youth development agencies around the country. Trauma informed care broadly refers to a set of principles that guide and direct how we view the impact of severe harm on young people's mental, physical, and emotional health. Trauma informed care encourages support and treatment to the whole person, rather than focusing on only treating individual symptoms or specific behaviors.

Trauma-informed care has become an important approach in schools and agencies that serve young people who have been exposed to trauma, and here's why. Some school leaders believe that the best way to address disruptive classroom behavior is through harsh discipline. These schools believe that discipline alone is sufficient to modify undesired classroom behavior, but research shows that school suspensions may further harm students who have been exposed to a traumatic event or experience (Bottiani et al., 2017). Rather than using discipline, a school that uses a trauma informed approach might offer therapy, or counseling to support the restoration of that student's well-being. The assumption is that the disruptive behavior is the symptom of a deeper harm, rather than willful defiance, or disrespect.

While trauma-informed care offers an important lens to support young people who have been harmed and emotionally injured, it also has its limitations. I first became aware of the limitations of the term "trauma-informed care" during a healing circle I was leading with a group of African American young men. All of them had experienced some form of trauma ranging from sexual abuse, violence, homelessness, abandonment or all of the above. During one of our sessions, I explained the impact of stress and trauma on brain development and how trauma can influence emotional health. As I was explaining, one of the young men in the group named Marcus abruptly stopped me and said, "I am more than what happened to me, I'm not just my trauma". I was puzzled at first, but it didn't take me long to really contemplate what he was saying.

The term "trauma informed care" didn't encompass the totality of his experience and focused only on his harm, injury and trauma. For Marcus, the term "trauma informed care" was akin to saying, you are the worst thing that ever happened to you. For me, I realized the term slipped into the murky water of deficit based, rather than asset driven strategies to support young people who have been harmed. Without careful consideration of the terms we use, we can create blind spots in our efforts to support young people.

While the term trauma informed care is important, it is incomplete. First, trauma informed care correctly highlights the specific needs for individual young people who have exposure to trauma. However, current formulations of trauma informed care presumes that the trauma is an individual experience, rather than a collective one. To illustrate this point, researchers have shown that children in high violence neighborhoods all display behavioral and psychological elements of trauma (Sinha & Rosenberg 2013). Similarly, populations that disproportionately suffer from disasters like Hurricane Katrina share a common experience that if viewed individually simply fails to capture how collective harm requires a different approach than an individual one.

Second, trauma-informed care requires that we treat trauma in people but provides very little insight into how we might address the root causes of trauma in neighborhoods, families, and schools. If trauma is collectively experienced, this means that we also have to consider the environmental context that caused the harm in the first place. By only treating the individual we only address part of the equation leaving the toxic systems, policies and practices neatly intact.

Third, the term trauma-informed care runs the risk of focusing on the treatment of pathology (trauma), rather than fostering the possibility (well-being). This is not an indictment on well-meaning therapists and social workers many of whom may have been trained in theories and techniques designed to simply reduce negative emotions and behavior (Seligman 2011). However, just like the absence of disease doesn't constitute health, nor the absence of violence constitute peace, the reduction pathology (anxiety, anger, fear, sadness, distrust, triggers) doesn't constitute well-being (hope, happiness, imagination, aspirations, trust). Everyone wants to be happy, not just have less misery. The emerging field of positive psychology offers insight into the limits of only "treating" symptoms and focuses on enhancing the conditions that contribute to well-being. Without more careful consideration, trauma informed approaches sometimes slip into rigid medical models of care that are steeped in treating the symptoms, rather than strengthening the roots of well-being.

What is needed is an approach that allows practitioners to approach trauma with a fresh lens that promotes a holistic view of healing from traumatic experiences and environments. One approach is called healing-centered, as opposed to trauma-informed. A healing centered approach is holistic involving culture, spirituality, civic action and collective healing. A healing-centered approach views trauma not simply as an individual isolated experience, but rather highlights the ways in which trauma and healing are experienced collectively. The term healing-centered engagement expands how we think about responses to trauma and offers more holistic approach to fostering well-being.

A shift from trauma informed care to healing centered engagement (HCE) is more than a semantic play with words, but rather a tectonic shift in how we view trauma, its causes and its intervention. HCE is strength based, advances a collective view of healing, and re-centers culture as a central feature in well-being. Researchers have pointed out the ways in which patients have redefined the terms used to describe their illnesses in ways that affirmed, humanized and dignified their condition. For example, in the early 1990s AIDS activists challenged the term "gay-related immune deficiency" because the term stigmatized gay men and failed to adequately capture the medical accuracy of the condition. In a similar way, the young men I worked with offered me a way to reframe trauma with language that humanized them, and holistically captured their life experiences.

A healing centered approach to addressing trauma requires a different question that moves beyond "what happened to you" to "what's right with you" and views those exposed to trauma as agents in the creation of their own well-being rather than victims of traumatic events. Healing centered engagement is akin to the South African term "Ubuntu" meaning that humanness is found through our interdependence, collective engagement and service to others. Additionally, healing centered engagement offers an asset driven approach aimed at the holistic restoration of young peoples' well-being. The healing centered approach comes from the idea that people are not harmed in a vacuum, and well-being comes from participating in transforming the root causes of the harm within institutions. Healing centered engagement also advances the move to "strengths-based' care and away from the deficit based mental health models that drives therapeutic interventions. There are four key elements of healing centered engagement that may at times overlap with current trauma informed practices but offers several key distinctions.

Communities, and individuals who experience trauma are agents in restoring their own well-being. This subtle shift suggests that healing from trauma is found in an awareness and actions that address the conditions that created the trauma in the first place. Researchers have found that well-being is a function of the control and power young people have in their schools and communities (Morsillo & Prilleltensky 2007; Prilleltensky & Prilleltensky 2006). These studies focus on concepts such as such as liberation, emancipation, oppression, and social justice among activist groups and suggests that building an awareness of justice and inequality, combined with social action such as protests, community organizing, and/or school walk-outs contribute to overall wellbeing, hopefulness, and optimism (Potts 2003; Prilleltensky 2003, 2008). This means that healing centered engagement views trauma and well-being as function of the environments where people live, work and play. When people advocate for policies and opportunities that address causes of trauma, such as lack of access to mental health, these activities contribute to a sense of purpose, power and control over life situations. All of these are ingredients necessary to restore well-being and healing.

The pathway to restoring well-being among young people who experience trauma can be found in culture and identity. Healing centered engagement uses culture as a way to ground young people in a solid sense of meaning, self-perception, and purpose. This process highlights the intersectional nature of identity and highlights the ways in which culture offers a shared experience, community and sense of belonging. Healing is experienced collectively, and is shaped by shared identity such as race, gender, or sexual orientation. Healing centered engagement is the result of building a healthy identity, and a sense of belonging. For youth of color, these forms of healing can be rooted in culture and serves as an anchor to connect young people to a shared racial and ethnic identity that is both historical grounded and contemporarily relevant. Healing centered engagement embraces a holistic view of well-being that includes spiritual domains of health. This goes beyond viewing healing only from the lens of mental health, and incorporates culturally grounded rituals, and activities to restore well-being (Martinez 2001). Some examples of healing centered engagement can be found in healing circles rooted in indigenous culture where young people share their stories about healing and learn about their connection to their ancestors and traditions, or drumming circles rooted in African cultural principles.

Healing centered engagement offers an important departure from solely viewing young people through the lens of harm and focuses on asset driven strategies that highlight possibilities for well-being. An asset driven strategy acknowledges that young people are much more than the worst thing that happened to them, and builds upon their experiences, knowledge, skills and curiosity as positive traits to be enhanced. While it is important to acknowledge trauma and its influence on young people's mental health, healing centered strategies move one step beyond by focusing on what we want to achieve, rather than merely treating emotional and behavioral symptoms of trauma. This is a salutogenic approach focusing on how to foster and sustain well-being. Based in positive psychology, healing centered engagement is based in collective strengths and possibility which offers a departure from conventional psychopathology which focuses on clinical treatment of illness.

Adult providers need healing too! Healing centered engagement requires that we consider how to support adult providers in sustaining their own healing and well-being. We cannot presume that adulthood is a final, "trauma-free" destination. Much of our training and practice is directed at young peoples' healing but rarely focuses on the healing that is required of adults to be an effective youth practitioner. Healing is an ongoing process that we all need, not just young people who experience trauma. The well-being of the adult youth worker is also a critical factor in supporting young peoples' well-being. While we are learning more about the causes and effects of secondary on adults, we know very little about the systems of support required to restore and sustain well-being for adults. Healing centered engagement has an explicit focus on restoring, and sustaining the adults who attempt to heal youth- a healing the healers approach. Policy stakeholders should consider how to build a systems that support adult youth worker's well-being. I have supported organizations in creating structures like sabbaticals for employees or creating incentives like continuing education units for deeper learning about well-being and healing.

Marcus's comments during our healing circle "I am more than what happened to me" led me to question our approach to trauma. What blind spots do we have in our approaches to supporting young people who experience trauma? How might the concepts which are enshrined in our language limit rather than create opportunities for healing? What approaches might offer "disruptive" techniques that saturate young people with opportunities for healing and well-being?

The fields of positive psychology and community psychology offers important insight into how policy makers, and youth development stakeholders can consider a range of healing centered options for young people. Shifting from trauma informed care or treatment to healing centered engagement requires youth development stakeholders to expand from a treatment-based model, which views trauma and harm as an isolated experience, to an engagement model which supports collective well-being. Here are a few notes to consider in building healing centered engagement.

Healing centered engagement begins by building empathy with young people who experience trauma. This process takes time, is an ongoing process and sometimes may feel like taking two steps forward, and three steps back. However, building empathy is critical to healing centered engagement. To create this empathy, I encourage adult staff to share their story first, and take an emotional risk by being more vulnerable, honest, and open to young people. This process creates an empathy exchange between the adult, and the young people which is the foundation for healing centered engagement (Payne 2013). This process also strengthens emotional literacy which allows youth to discuss the complexity of their feelings. Fostering empathy allows for young people to feel safe sharing their experiences and emotions. The process ultimately restores their sense of well-being because they have the power name and respond to their emotional states.

An important ingredient in healing centered engagement is the ability to acknowledge the harm and injury, but not be defined by it. Perhaps one of the greatest tools available to us is the ability to see beyond the condition, event or situation that caused the trauma in the first place. Research shows that the ability to dream and imagine is an important factor in fostering hopefulness, and optimism which both of which contributes to overall well-being (Snyder et al. 2003). Daily survival and ongoing crisis management in young people's lives can make it difficult for them to see beyond the present.

The greatest casualty of trauma is not only depression and emotional scares, but also the loss of the ability to dream and imagine another way of living. Howard Thurman pointed this out in his eloquent persistence that dreams matter. He commented, "As long as a man [woman] has a dream, he [she] cannot lose the significance of living" (p. 304). By creating activities and opportunities for young people to play, reimagine, design and envision their lives this process strengthens their future goal orientation (Snyder et al. 2003). These are practices of possibility that encourage young people to envision what they want to become, and who they want to be.

Healing and well-being are fundamentally political not clinical. This means that we have to consider the ways in which the policies and practice and political decisions harm young people. Healing in this context also means that young people develop an analysis of these practices and policies that facilitated the trauma in the first place. Without an analysis of these issues, young people often internalize, and blame themselves for lack of confidence. Critical reflection provides a lens by which to filter, examine, and consider analytical and spiritual responses to trauma. By spiritual, I mean the ability to draw upon the power of culture, rituals and faith in order to consistently act from a place of humility, and love. These are not cognitive processes, but rather ethical, moral and emotional aspects of healing centered engagement.

The other key component, is taking loving action, by collectively responding to political decisions and practices that can exacerbate trauma. By taking action, (e.g. school walkouts, organizing peace march, or promoting access to healthy foods) it builds a sense of power and control over their lives. Research has demonstrated that building this sense of power and control among traumatized groups is perhaps one of the most significant features in restoring holistic well-being.

I ran into Marcus at a street fair in Oakland not long ago. He was excited to see me and wanted to share with me that he was in a new relationship so he introduced me to his girlfriend. "This is my friend Michelle"! He introduced her with a sense of pride, and accomplishment. He also shared with me that he had enrolled in a program that was training him to become a medic. As we chatted for a while in the warm sun, dodging children, and fast walking parents, he leaned toward me and whispered, "yeah Dr. G, I'm not entirely healed, but I'm hopeful". I smiled, gave him a "brotha hug" and we departed ways.

I suppose, that if we had more time to chat he would have explained that healing is a process that we navigate for a lifetime. He might have shared with me that the future of his healing journey had just begun. Seeing him again, holding hands, sipping a soda with his new girlfriend was a powerful reminder, that he was so much more than the trauma he had experienced. As practitioners, researchers and policy stakeholders we need to listen and learn from young people who have insights that can advance how we think about trauma and healing. Shifting to healing centered engagement offered new questions, and strategies about how to support young people who experience trauma. Healing centered engagement is just a step toward a more holistic, and humanistic framework to support young people who have been harmed. Such an approach encourages us to think and act more boldly about how to restore young people and create places where they can truly flourish.

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The Future of Healing: Shifting From Trauma Informed Care to Healing Centered Engagement

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From time to time, researchers, policy makers, philanthropy and practitioners all join together in a coordinated response to address the most pressing issues facing America's youth. I've been...

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Many early childhood educators are likely to encounter young children who have experienced trauma on a daily basis.

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October 2019 Tiered Literacy Regional Meeting Agenda

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