# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Young adults are extremely stressed-out these days-and colleges across America are scrambling to support them.

In 2013, a group of top-flight colleges including Stanford, Harvard, Princeton and the University of Pennsylvania formed the Resilience Project to pool ideas and resources around building students' coping skills, including Baylor's workshop on cultivating grit and a Harvard group that encourages students to reflect on their beliefs about success and failure. Yale last year launched" Psychology and the Good Life," a class about how to find happiness, while Bates is focused on helping students discover "purposeful work." The Princeton Perspective, meanwhile, is a project committed to normalizing failure among certain not-used-to-failure types.

Florida State University is taking a different approach with a new program that aims to tackle not just how students can weather stress, but also how they can deal with trauma. This fall, its 6,000 incoming freshman will be required to take part in the "Student Resilience Project," an online trauma-resilience initiative developed by the Institute for Family Violence Studies at FSU's College of Social Work.

Every freshman will learn in a four-to-five minute video about adverse childhood experiences, or ACEs, such as emotional, physical or sexual abuse, a mother being treated violently, or household mental illness. The video explains that people attempting to cope with the suffering that results from those experiences can wind up engaging in harmful behaviors, including drug and alcohol use and dysfunctional relationships. Then, through a series of online videos in the style of TED talks, faculty and mental-health providers will offer strategies and testimonials on how students can deal with issues they may encounter in college, from breakups, academic stress, and the pain of losing a parent or grandparent.

Karen Oehme, director of the Institute for Family Violence Studies in the College of Social Work at FSU, says the program is aimed both at students who have faced trauma and those who have not. "Even if you haven't experienced ACEs, or had only one, students come here and have all of this stress, and these issues they didn't expect," she says. "We want to help them too. It's stress management and stress reduction."

FSU's program is unique from other resilience programs in a few ways. It addresses trauma head-on, and acknowledges that many students will have faced it before they get to school-in the form of sexual abuse, community violence, witnessing domestic violence, or racism. Indeed, many survivors of the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting in Parkland will join FSU this fall.

It's informed by the idea that unmanaged responses to stress can interfere with students' ability to succeed in college, along with longer-term negative consequences. It is online-which raises some concerns about how effective it can be at helping students deal with trauma-and it is meant to be preventative and universal. Finally, the motivation for the program goes beyond ensuring that kids graduate with decent grades. "We are not just dealing with academic resilience," Oehme says. "We want to look at the whole person."

How FSU's program got started

Last fall, Jim Clark, dean of FSU's school of social work, went to the provost of the university with an idea: a program to build student resilience that would educate young adults about trauma and its effects.

Three things contributed to his making the request. First, like other universities, FSU has seen a massive uptick in demand for mental-health services; according to one study from Belgium, one in three college students report mental-health issues each year.

Clark was also motivated by the memory of Andrew Coffey, an FSU fraternity student who died last year in a Greek hazing ritual. The president of the university committed to raising awareness about hazing, substance abuse, and mental health issues.

Finally, Clark, who has been a psychotherapist for many years, noticed that incoming students seemed much more fragile and less able to respond to the multiple emotional and academic demands of university than previous generations. "Theres's less sturdiness among students who are facing a lot of pressures coming into the university," he said. Clark is far from the only person to observe this phenomenon: Peter Salovey, president of Yale and an early pioneer in research on emotional intelligence, told Quartz that while students today are more sophisticated and worldly than previous generations, they are also much less resilient.

When the provost said yes, Clark and Oehme set out to find a preexisting program that worked. They came up short, since most resilience programs have not been systematically evaluated. "We don't have peer-reviewed literature saying this is what works in the college system," he said. So they set out to design a program based on the science of resilience and informed by trauma awareness, which the university plans to evaluate.

Clark wanted to go beyond short-term triage of students' problems and get closer to the root of some of the issues they face. "Most people do not know there is a connection between what happened to them and how they are coping it with it," he said. Trauma-informed service means that instead of sending students the message, "Why are you always messing up like this?," the college asks, "What happened to you?"

"That's the operative question," Clark says. "All the things you and everyone else thinks you are doing wrong might be the solutions you have formed to deal with past trauma." If you become aware of the trauma, its impact, and the availability of other coping mechanisms, you might be able to let go of some of the destructive behaviors.

"Time does not heal, time conceals"

While it may seem grim to kick off freshman year by educating kids about the impact of trauma, research suggests that colleges might be wise to do so. Trauma is far more prevalent than we realize. According to one of the largest studies conducted on adverse childhood experiences, conducted by Kaiser Permanente and the Center for Disease Control, 26% of a large, nationally representative sample of adults reported experiencing one ACE; 22% reported experiencing three or more. Since ACEs are strong predictors of negative outcomes such as disrupted neural development, depression, disease, and early death, trying to address them seems a sensible approach for an institution aiming to prepare students for life. "Time does not heal; time conceals," writes Vincent Felitti, a professor of medicine at the University of California San Diego, in the journal Academic Pediatrics.

Center for Disease Control

Even for students who do not arrive with a history of trauma, college offers ample opportunities for stress. There's the academic pressure, the high cost of tuition, and the experience of living apart from your family for the first time, not to mention many tricky social situations. The video and audio presentations talk about the "normality" and advantages of taking risks, explaining that by failing, we actually build the muscles of resilience.

It's far from a sure bet. If students don't use the program, or find it annoying, they will have plenty of opportunities to say so. The hope, Clark says, is that those who don't need intensive services gain some additional education and awareness, and those who discover through the program that they need more individualized help-or who know that already-will be able to find it on campus. And the simple introduction of the program may help reduce the stigma that often surrounds mental-health and substance abuse problems, while reminding students that it's entirely normal to struggle sometimes. Already, FSU's graduate and post-graduate departments have already asked to get programs tailored for their students.

"America has bought into the gospel of success at all costs," says Clark. Young people often grow up feeling like there's not a lot of room for failure and setbacks. But resilience is built through messing up and moving on. For students who don't know how to do that already, college is a good place to start.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
One university's uniquely compassionate plan for teaching students resilience

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Young adults are extremely stressed-out these days-and colleges across America are scrambling to support them. In 2013, a group of top-flight colleges including Stanford, Harvard, Princeton and the University of Pennsylvania formed the Resilience Project to pool ideas and resources around building students' coping skills, including Baylor's workshop on cultivating grit and a Harvard group that encourages students to reflect on their beliefs about success and failure.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Posted in

Inspiration

The school year is under way and as educators, students, and families fall into a new, yet familiar rhythm, the business of learning begins. Despite many teachers' best planned lessons, best decorated boards, and most innovative stations, they may be dismayed to find that some of their students are simply not learning, are having trouble paying attention, or are even too emotionally dysregulated to engage in the basics of math, writing, and reading. There are a lot of good reasons this could be going on, and we often jump to ADHD, ODD, laziness, or any number of common "culprits" behind such behaviors. While we're quick to label, we often forget to investigate why those behaviors might be showing up in the first place, and frequently overlook the impact of toxic stress and trauma on our students.

Cortisol and adrenaline, stress hormones, flood the brain

The muscles contract and eyes dilate

Palms may get sweaty

Heart rate increases

When we think about our students' learning brains, we might imagine an upstairs and a downstairs. The upstairs brain, namely the prefrontal cortex (PFC), is our academic brain, and helps us with executive functioning skills like planning, organizing, regulating, and inhibiting impulses. The downstairs brain consists of our limbic system (including the amygdala), which is responsible for our fight/flight/freeze response and bypasses the PFC so our bodies can respond quickly to threats of danger (perceived or real). What does this look like?

The body is ready to fight, run away, or freeze to survive. The most critical thing to remember is that our brains and bodies are wired for survival. Even though we're not all necessarily facing predatory animals in the wild, our brains respond the same way to other events in our lives. When the brain is under stress and feels like it needs to be in fight/flight/freeze mode, the upstairs brain turns off, and the body relies on the downstairs brain. That means those higher-order, executive functioning skills are inaccessible. Usually, a stressful event results in a brief elevation of cortisol, and this can help us perform better (think: "getting in the zone" for a sports game, performance, or test). While good in small doses, large amounts of stress can be toxic for our brains and bodies. When we're faced with trauma, our brains are constantly in this state of toxic stress.

Emotional, physical, or sexual abuse

Neglect

A parent who is incarcerated, gets a divorce, has a mental illness, has experienced domestic violence, or abuses alcohol or drugs

Trauma can include one of the Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) identified by researchers in a CDC-Kaiser Permanente Study. These are:

Trauma can also include witnessing community or neighborhood violence, bullying, immigration/migration/refugee status, and institutional trauma (from the foster care system or juvenile detention), among other toxic stressors.

In the chronically stressed brain, the cortisol tap is always on, flooding the system, and acts like poison to the brain of a developing child. When cortisol is present, energy and resources that should be used to make new connections for learning are instead rerouted to the parts of the brain dedicated to survival. Meanwhile, the amygdala becomes even more sensitive once it is activated, meaning a traumatized child may have hair-trigger responses to unprocessed emotional memories related to their trauma or stressors.

Imagine you have experienced a major trauma without a safe adult to help you process your feelings and experiences. Now, imagine that you are in a classroom with a new teacher, 25-30 new peers, and a lot of expectations to behave in a certain way. How would you respond?

Unfortunately, many of our students deal with this exact situation every day. An estimated 45% of children have one or more ACEs; approximately 10% have three or more. Yet, only about 20% of children with mental, emotional, or behavioral disorders actually receive care from a specialized mental health care provider, like a psychiatrist or psychologist. In the absence of support, children develop survival mechanisms that help them control their environments and feel safe. All individuals have very different methods of coping with difficult situations.

A good number of us are "internalizers," meaning we prefer to keep to ourselves. We might hide our feelings from others, or push them down and away. Others are "externalizers," meaning we seek to express our emotion outside of ourselves, perhaps through our behaviors, actions, and interactions with others. In either case, pure, unprocessed emotion or traumatic experiences can cause damage. Keeping things bottled up can lead to depression or anxiety. Spewing feelings out can lead to aggressive encounters and words or actions that feel out of control.

1. Take a deep breath, and shift your frame of reference for students. Rather than asking "What is wrong with this child?," ask, "What has happened to this child?" You may not get straight answers about this, but trauma-informed teachers don't need to know what the trauma is to know how to understand, support, and encourage a child.

2. Create awareness by understanding the trauma response. Hyper-vigilance, fear, shame, and guilt are typical reactions to trauma. Corresponding behavior is usually not purposefully manipulative, defiant, or avoidant. Rather, it is adaptive and functional for the child for him/her to get what they need. Understanding behavior this way can help you think through other ways for your students to get their needs met.

3. Practice self-awareness by knowing your own triggers and know how to regulate yourself. You can help a child regulate their bodies when you regulate yours. It's a bit like a superpower, and it has a fancy name: interpersonal neurobiology, but the concept is quite simple. When an adult is calm, regulated, and using their prefrontal cortex, students can co-regulate with the adult, helping to calm their own limbic structures and engage their prefrontal cortex. In other words, by being in the presence of a calm and regulated adult, children can become calmer and their brains and bodies can learn from the adult's regulation.

4. Build relationships with students not based on academics. Find out what they like to do, who their favorite pop or rap star is, and what movie they want to watch. You'll find that once your students know you care about them as people, they'll care about what you say and teach them.

5. Teach your students about their brains, their stress response system, and basic coping skills they can access in your classroom, like soothing themselves, breathing mindfully, and asking for help.

6. Create a space for calming down. A calm corner is a place in your classroom where students can go to de-stress or help regulate themselves after experiencing a big emotion. Calm corners should never be used as punishment, but only as a tool to help students. You can include stress balls, paper to tear up, sand timers, Hoberman spheres, mirrors to identify emotions, and other mindful tools.

7. Provide students with choices. This can be as simple as asking, "Do you want to use a pen or pencil?" or "Would you like to sit over here by me, or by the bookshelf where it's less distracting?" Most children, especially those who have experienced trauma, have had very few opportunities to make their own choices. By ensuring their voices are heard and giving them options, students can feel a greater sense of power and agency, thus calming their limbic systems down.

8. Be aware of potential triggers when practicing mindfulness with your students. For instance, give them the option to look down at their hands or the floor rather than closing their eyes, as keeping their eyes closed may be a trigger. Additionally, ensure that all mindfulness practices are an invitation and a choice. If a student is not able or willing to participate in a breathing exercise or mindfulness activity, do not force them to or threaten disciplinary action. Rather, take a moment to get below their eye level, let them know you are there for them, and give them a suitable alternative choice.

Luckily, as Eric Jensen, author of Teaching with Poverty in Mind, stated, "the brain that is susceptible to adverse environmental effects is equally susceptible to positive, enriching effects." This means, you, as a teacher can help the student. While you may not be a therapist or cannot change the history of your students, you can help them to feel safe, valued, calm, and hopeful in your classroom. That's pretty powerful. Here are a few ideas to create that in your classroom using a mindful approach.

Above all, know that you cannot control the experiences, fears, and traumas with which your students enter your classroom. You can, however, influence how safe you help them feel with you and in your room.
Dr. Poonam Desai is a Certified Instructor of Mindfulness, with more than 300 hours of training completed. She has maintained a practice of Vipassana Meditation, as taught by S.N. Goenka, for over ten years and has completed six 10-day meditation retreats in addition to several other shorter retreats. Dr. Desai is a licensed psychologist and a licensed specialist in school psychology in the state of Texas. She has worked in the fields of education and mental health for over ten years and was a mental health trainer and psychologist at Momentous Institute. She believes mindfulness and compassion are the two things that will change the world, but also that the first revolution is always internal.
For more ideas, check out some of these great resources on trauma-informed teaching and trauma-informed classrooms.

To stay up to date on articles like this, for our monthly newsletter.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
How Teachers Can Use Trauma-Informed Mindfulness Practices to Support their Students - Mindful Schools

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The school year is under way and as educators, students, and families fall into a new, yet familiar rhythm, the business of learning begins. Despite many teachers' best planned lessons, best decorated boards, and most innovative stations, they may be dismayed to find that some of their students are simply not learning, are having trouble paying attention, or are even too emotionally dysregulated to engage in the basics of math, writing, and reading.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Posted in

Inspiration

The school year is under way and as educators, students, and families fall into a new, yet familiar rhythm, the business of learning begins. Despite many teachers' best planned lessons, best decorated boards, and most innovative stations, they may be dismayed to find that some of their students are simply not learning, are having trouble paying attention, or are even too emotionally dysregulated to engage in the basics of math, writing, and reading. There are a lot of good reasons this could be going on, and we often jump to ADHD, ODD, laziness, or any number of common "culprits" behind such behaviors. While we're quick to label, we often forget to investigate why those behaviors might be showing up in the first place, and frequently overlook the impact of toxic stress and trauma on our students.

Cortisol and adrenaline, stress hormones, flood the brain

The muscles contract and eyes dilate

Palms may get sweaty

Heart rate increases

When we think about our students' learning brains, we might imagine an upstairs and a downstairs. The upstairs brain, namely the prefrontal cortex (PFC), is our academic brain, and helps us with executive functioning skills like planning, organizing, regulating, and inhibiting impulses. The downstairs brain consists of our limbic system (including the amygdala), which is responsible for our fight/flight/freeze response and bypasses the PFC so our bodies can respond quickly to threats of danger (perceived or real). What does this look like?

The body is ready to fight, run away, or freeze to survive. The most critical thing to remember is that our brains and bodies are wired for survival. Even though we're not all necessarily facing predatory animals in the wild, our brains respond the same way to other events in our lives. When the brain is under stress and feels like it needs to be in fight/flight/freeze mode, the upstairs brain turns off, and the body relies on the downstairs brain. That means those higher-order, executive functioning skills are inaccessible. Usually, a stressful event results in a brief elevation of cortisol, and this can help us perform better (think: "getting in the zone" for a sports game, performance, or test). While good in small doses, large amounts of stress can be toxic for our brains and bodies. When we're faced with trauma, our brains are constantly in this state of toxic stress.

Emotional, physical, or sexual abuse

Neglect

A parent who is incarcerated, gets a divorce, has a mental illness, has experienced domestic violence, or abuses alcohol or drugs

Trauma can include one of the Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) identified by researchers in a CDC-Kaiser Permanente Study. These are:

Trauma can also include witnessing community or neighborhood violence, bullying, immigration/migration/refugee status, and institutional trauma (from the foster care system or juvenile detention), among other toxic stressors.

In the chronically stressed brain, the cortisol tap is always on, flooding the system, and acts like poison to the brain of a developing child. When cortisol is present, energy and resources that should be used to make new connections for learning are instead rerouted to the parts of the brain dedicated to survival. Meanwhile, the amygdala becomes even more sensitive once it is activated, meaning a traumatized child may have hair-trigger responses to unprocessed emotional memories related to their trauma or stressors.

Imagine you have experienced a major trauma without a safe adult to help you process your feelings and experiences. Now, imagine that you are in a classroom with a new teacher, 25-30 new peers, and a lot of expectations to behave in a certain way. How would you respond?

Unfortunately, many of our students deal with this exact situation every day. An estimated 45% of children have one or more ACEs; approximately 10% have three or more. Yet, only about 20% of children with mental, emotional, or behavioral disorders actually receive care from a specialized mental health care provider, like a psychiatrist or psychologist. In the absence of support, children develop survival mechanisms that help them control their environments and feel safe. All individuals have very different methods of coping with difficult situations.

A good number of us are "internalizers," meaning we prefer to keep to ourselves. We might hide our feelings from others, or push them down and away. Others are "externalizers," meaning we seek to express our emotion outside of ourselves, perhaps through our behaviors, actions, and interactions with others. In either case, pure, unprocessed emotion or traumatic experiences can cause damage. Keeping things bottled up can lead to depression or anxiety. Spewing feelings out can lead to aggressive encounters and words or actions that feel out of control.

1. Take a deep breath, and shift your frame of reference for students. Rather than asking "What is wrong with this child?," ask, "What has happened to this child?" You may not get straight answers about this, but trauma-informed teachers don't need to know what the trauma is to know how to understand, support, and encourage a child.

2. Create awareness by understanding the trauma response. Hyper-vigilance, fear, shame, and guilt are typical reactions to trauma. Corresponding behavior is usually not purposefully manipulative, defiant, or avoidant. Rather, it is adaptive and functional for the child for him/her to get what they need. Understanding behavior this way can help you think through other ways for your students to get their needs met.

3. Practice self-awareness by knowing your own triggers and know how to regulate yourself. You can help a child regulate their bodies when you regulate yours. It's a bit like a superpower, and it has a fancy name: interpersonal neurobiology, but the concept is quite simple. When an adult is calm, regulated, and using their prefrontal cortex, students can co-regulate with the adult, helping to calm their own limbic structures and engage their prefrontal cortex. In other words, by being in the presence of a calm and regulated adult, children can become calmer and their brains and bodies can learn from the adult's regulation.

4. Build relationships with students not based on academics. Find out what they like to do, who their favorite pop or rap star is, and what movie they want to watch. You'll find that once your students know you care about them as people, they'll care about what you say and teach them.

5. Teach your students about their brains, their stress response system, and basic coping skills they can access in your classroom, like soothing themselves, breathing mindfully, and asking for help.

6. Create a space for calming down. A calm corner is a place in your classroom where students can go to de-stress or help regulate themselves after experiencing a big emotion. Calm corners should never be used as punishment, but only as a tool to help students. You can include stress balls, paper to tear up, sand timers, Hoberman spheres, mirrors to identify emotions, and other mindful tools.

7. Provide students with choices. This can be as simple as asking, "Do you want to use a pen or pencil?" or "Would you like to sit over here by me, or by the bookshelf where it's less distracting?" Most children, especially those who have experienced trauma, have had very few opportunities to make their own choices. By ensuring their voices are heard and giving them options, students can feel a greater sense of power and agency, thus calming their limbic systems down.

8. Be aware of potential triggers when practicing mindfulness with your students. For instance, give them the option to look down at their hands or the floor rather than closing their eyes, as keeping their eyes closed may be a trigger. Additionally, ensure that all mindfulness practices are an invitation and a choice. If a student is not able or willing to participate in a breathing exercise or mindfulness activity, do not force them to or threaten disciplinary action. Rather, take a moment to get below their eye level, let them know you are there for them, and give them a suitable alternative choice.

Luckily, as Eric Jensen, author of Teaching with Poverty in Mind, stated, "the brain that is susceptible to adverse environmental effects is equally susceptible to positive, enriching effects." This means, you, as a teacher can help the student. While you may not be a therapist or cannot change the history of your students, you can help them to feel safe, valued, calm, and hopeful in your classroom. That's pretty powerful. Here are a few ideas to create that in your classroom using a mindful approach.

Above all, know that you cannot control the experiences, fears, and traumas with which your students enter your classroom. You can, however, influence how safe you help them feel with you and in your room.
Dr. Poonam Desai is a Certified Instructor of Mindfulness, with more than 300 hours of training completed. She has maintained a practice of Vipassana Meditation, as taught by S.N. Goenka, for over ten years and has completed six 10-day meditation retreats in addition to several other shorter retreats. Dr. Desai is a licensed psychologist and a licensed specialist in school psychology in the state of Texas. She has worked in the fields of education and mental health for over ten years and was a mental health trainer and psychologist at Momentous Institute. She believes mindfulness and compassion are the two things that will change the world, but also that the first revolution is always internal.
For more ideas, check out some of these great resources on trauma-informed teaching and trauma-informed classrooms.

To stay up to date on articles like this, for our monthly newsletter.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
How Teachers Can Use Trauma-Informed Mindfulness Practices to Support their Students - Mindful Schools

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The school year is under way and as educators, students, and families fall into a new, yet familiar rhythm, the business of learning begins. Despite many teachers' best planned lessons, best decorated boards, and most innovative stations, they may be dismayed to find that some of their students are simply not learning, are having trouble paying attention, or are even too emotionally dysregulated to engage in the basics of math, writing, and reading.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Posted in

Inspiration

The school year is under way and as educators, students, and families fall into a new, yet familiar rhythm, the business of learning begins. Despite many teachers' best planned lessons, best decorated boards, and most innovative stations, they may be dismayed to find that some of their students are simply not learning, are having trouble paying attention, or are even too emotionally dysregulated to engage in the basics of math, writing, and reading. There are a lot of good reasons this could be going on, and we often jump to ADHD, ODD, laziness, or any number of common "culprits" behind such behaviors. While we're quick to label, we often forget to investigate why those behaviors might be showing up in the first place, and frequently overlook the impact of toxic stress and trauma on our students.

Cortisol and adrenaline, stress hormones, flood the brain

The muscles contract and eyes dilate

Palms may get sweaty

Heart rate increases

When we think about our students' learning brains, we might imagine an upstairs and a downstairs. The upstairs brain, namely the prefrontal cortex (PFC), is our academic brain, and helps us with executive functioning skills like planning, organizing, regulating, and inhibiting impulses. The downstairs brain consists of our limbic system (including the amygdala), which is responsible for our fight/flight/freeze response and bypasses the PFC so our bodies can respond quickly to threats of danger (perceived or real). What does this look like?

The body is ready to fight, run away, or freeze to survive. The most critical thing to remember is that our brains and bodies are wired for survival. Even though we're not all necessarily facing predatory animals in the wild, our brains respond the same way to other events in our lives. When the brain is under stress and feels like it needs to be in fight/flight/freeze mode, the upstairs brain turns off, and the body relies on the downstairs brain. That means those higher-order, executive functioning skills are inaccessible. Usually, a stressful event results in a brief elevation of cortisol, and this can help us perform better (think: "getting in the zone" for a sports game, performance, or test). While good in small doses, large amounts of stress can be toxic for our brains and bodies. When we're faced with trauma, our brains are constantly in this state of toxic stress.

Emotional, physical, or sexual abuse

Neglect

A parent who is incarcerated, gets a divorce, has a mental illness, has experienced domestic violence, or abuses alcohol or drugs

Trauma can include one of the Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) identified by researchers in a CDC-Kaiser Permanente Study. These are:

Trauma can also include witnessing community or neighborhood violence, bullying, immigration/migration/refugee status, and institutional trauma (from the foster care system or juvenile detention), among other toxic stressors.

In the chronically stressed brain, the cortisol tap is always on, flooding the system, and acts like poison to the brain of a developing child. When cortisol is present, energy and resources that should be used to make new connections for learning are instead rerouted to the parts of the brain dedicated to survival. Meanwhile, the amygdala becomes even more sensitive once it is activated, meaning a traumatized child may have hair-trigger responses to unprocessed emotional memories related to their trauma or stressors.

Imagine you have experienced a major trauma without a safe adult to help you process your feelings and experiences. Now, imagine that you are in a classroom with a new teacher, 25-30 new peers, and a lot of expectations to behave in a certain way. How would you respond?

Unfortunately, many of our students deal with this exact situation every day. An estimated 45% of children have one or more ACEs; approximately 10% have three or more. Yet, only about 20% of children with mental, emotional, or behavioral disorders actually receive care from a specialized mental health care provider, like a psychiatrist or psychologist. In the absence of support, children develop survival mechanisms that help them control their environments and feel safe. All individuals have very different methods of coping with difficult situations.

A good number of us are "internalizers," meaning we prefer to keep to ourselves. We might hide our feelings from others, or push them down and away. Others are "externalizers," meaning we seek to express our emotion outside of ourselves, perhaps through our behaviors, actions, and interactions with others. In either case, pure, unprocessed emotion or traumatic experiences can cause damage. Keeping things bottled up can lead to depression or anxiety. Spewing feelings out can lead to aggressive encounters and words or actions that feel out of control.

1. Take a deep breath, and shift your frame of reference for students. Rather than asking "What is wrong with this child?," ask, "What has happened to this child?" You may not get straight answers about this, but trauma-informed teachers don't need to know what the trauma is to know how to understand, support, and encourage a child.

2. Create awareness by understanding the trauma response. Hyper-vigilance, fear, shame, and guilt are typical reactions to trauma. Corresponding behavior is usually not purposefully manipulative, defiant, or avoidant. Rather, it is adaptive and functional for the child for him/her to get what they need. Understanding behavior this way can help you think through other ways for your students to get their needs met.

3. Practice self-awareness by knowing your own triggers and know how to regulate yourself. You can help a child regulate their bodies when you regulate yours. It's a bit like a superpower, and it has a fancy name: interpersonal neurobiology, but the concept is quite simple. When an adult is calm, regulated, and using their prefrontal cortex, students can co-regulate with the adult, helping to calm their own limbic structures and engage their prefrontal cortex. In other words, by being in the presence of a calm and regulated adult, children can become calmer and their brains and bodies can learn from the adult's regulation.

4. Build relationships with students not based on academics. Find out what they like to do, who their favorite pop or rap star is, and what movie they want to watch. You'll find that once your students know you care about them as people, they'll care about what you say and teach them.

5. Teach your students about their brains, their stress response system, and basic coping skills they can access in your classroom, like soothing themselves, breathing mindfully, and asking for help.

6. Create a space for calming down. A calm corner is a place in your classroom where students can go to de-stress or help regulate themselves after experiencing a big emotion. Calm corners should never be used as punishment, but only as a tool to help students. You can include stress balls, paper to tear up, sand timers, Hoberman spheres, mirrors to identify emotions, and other mindful tools.

7. Provide students with choices. This can be as simple as asking, "Do you want to use a pen or pencil?" or "Would you like to sit over here by me, or by the bookshelf where it's less distracting?" Most children, especially those who have experienced trauma, have had very few opportunities to make their own choices. By ensuring their voices are heard and giving them options, students can feel a greater sense of power and agency, thus calming their limbic systems down.

8. Be aware of potential triggers when practicing mindfulness with your students. For instance, give them the option to look down at their hands or the floor rather than closing their eyes, as keeping their eyes closed may be a trigger. Additionally, ensure that all mindfulness practices are an invitation and a choice. If a student is not able or willing to participate in a breathing exercise or mindfulness activity, do not force them to or threaten disciplinary action. Rather, take a moment to get below their eye level, let them know you are there for them, and give them a suitable alternative choice.

Luckily, as Eric Jensen, author of Teaching with Poverty in Mind, stated, "the brain that is susceptible to adverse environmental effects is equally susceptible to positive, enriching effects." This means, you, as a teacher can help the student. While you may not be a therapist or cannot change the history of your students, you can help them to feel safe, valued, calm, and hopeful in your classroom. That's pretty powerful. Here are a few ideas to create that in your classroom using a mindful approach.

Above all, know that you cannot control the experiences, fears, and traumas with which your students enter your classroom. You can, however, influence how safe you help them feel with you and in your room.
Dr. Poonam Desai is a Certified Instructor of Mindfulness, with more than 300 hours of training completed. She has maintained a practice of Vipassana Meditation, as taught by S.N. Goenka, for over ten years and has completed six 10-day meditation retreats in addition to several other shorter retreats. Dr. Desai is a licensed psychologist and a licensed specialist in school psychology in the state of Texas. She has worked in the fields of education and mental health for over ten years and was a mental health trainer and psychologist at Momentous Institute. She believes mindfulness and compassion are the two things that will change the world, but also that the first revolution is always internal.
For more ideas, check out some of these great resources on trauma-informed teaching and trauma-informed classrooms.

To stay up to date on articles like this, for our monthly newsletter.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
How Teachers Can Use Trauma-Informed Mindfulness Practices to Support their Students - Mindful Schools

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The school year is under way and as educators, students, and families fall into a new, yet familiar rhythm, the business of learning begins. Despite many teachers' best planned lessons, best decorated boards, and most innovative stations, they may be dismayed to find that some of their students are simply not learning, are having trouble paying attention, or are even too emotionally dysregulated to engage in the basics of math, writing, and reading.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Click the red "PLAY" icon below to view the training video. Scroll down for facilitator resources and information about the training.
Be sure to read the important notice below for best accessibility of the video.

Click here for the Facilitator's Discussion Guide & Handouts (WORD)

Click here for the Facilitator's Discussion Guide & Handouts (PDF)

This is a free training resource designed to give anyone who works with children important trauma-focused information about how student learning and behavior is impacted by trauma and how educators and support staff can help students develop a greater sense of safety at school and begin to build new emotional regulation skills. Click here to learn more.

Additional Video Resources:

Click here to read a new Research Brief on Addressing Trauma in Schools. It includes:

Information on CIS and Integrated Student Supports

Strategies to Address Trauma and Toxic Stress in Classrooms

Mitigating the Impact of Trauma in Schools: An Example from Communities In Schools

Important Notice: The Trauma Training for Educators video works best on Mozilla Firefox. You may encounter problems with Google, Internet Explorer, etc. If the direct link does not work properly - Copy and paste the URL address below into your Firefox browser, rather than just clicking on the link. The link may not bring up both the audio and visual portions of the video.

www.ciscentraltexas.org/resources/traumatraining/

Copy and paste this URL above in Firefox.

Trauma Training for Educators was developed by Kris Downing, LCSW, the Clinical and Professional Development Coordinator for Communities In Schools of Central Texas. Throughout her 25+ year career at CIS, Kris has been dedicated to helping at-risk youth overcome challenges related to abuse, trauma, and mental health needs. Kris has worked as a social worker, advocate, and clinician.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Click the red "PLAY" icon below to view the training video . Scroll down for facilitator resources and information about the training. Be sure to read the important notice below for best accessibility of the video.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.provider_name
Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Trauma Sensitive Schools (TSS) Online Professional Development System
Video transcript for the Introduction to TSS Professional Development System
Welcome to DPI's TSS Online Professional Development System. This is a free, online, on-demand system consisting of three primary components. Through this system, learners will understand the prevalence and impact of toxic stress on youth and those who care for them. Additionally, participants will understand how to infuse the values of safety, trustworthiness, choice, collaboration, and empowerment into various aspects of their existing equitable multi-level system of support. This infusion is what we call the trauma-informed lens.

The learning system is broken into Universal and Tier II and III modules. For each module set, you will find:

Foundations: These modules are meant to be viewed first and in order. They set the stage for the important prerequisite knowledge and skills needed before engaging in other individual strategies.

Strategies and Practices: These modules provide concrete ways to use the trauma-informed lens for various aspects of practice including social and emotional learning, self-regulation, relationship building and cognitive problem-solving. These modules can be viewed in any order, though we recommend the listed order.

Systems & Policy Approaches: Finally, these modules focus on the systems and policy changes that are necessary to fully implement and sustain a TSS. They support areas such as school-wide behavior supports, discipline, and family engagement.

At the end of every module, learners will have the ability to email a certificate of completion to a staff person of their choosing. Length of the modules varies based on both topic and individual factors of the learner. View the average length of time for each module.

Trauma Sensitive Schools Module Resources

The following document provides direct links to the module readings, resources, and implementation tools in one handy location: Trauma Sensitive Schools Module Resources. Good luck on your journey!

Trauma Sensitive Schools Action Planning Guide

The following document guides school or district teams through creating an action plan for work around trauma sensitive schools with specific action items, linked to objectives, linked to goals that align with the overall vision: Trauma Sensitive Schools Action Planning Guide

Trauma Sensitive Schools Modules

Please click on each gray bar below to see the modules in that section and implementation tools.

NEW MODULES ADDED (3/19/2020)

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Trauma Sensitive Schools Online Professional Development

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Trauma Sensitive Schools (TSS) Online Professional Development System Video transcript for the Introduction to TSS Professional Development System Welcome to DPI's TSS Online Professional Development System. This is a free, online, on-demand system consisting of three primary components. Through this system, learners will understand the prevalence and impact of toxic stress on youth and those who care for them.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
I hate the first week of school. It fills me with anxiety and dread. I once loved the smell of new crayons and was excited over the new backpacks and folders. Now I worry. I parent children from hard places; children who have experienced trauma. I've been lucky the last two years. I had a teacher that "got it". I had a teacher that listened to me and studied up on trauma and it's effects on the child's brain. She understood that unaddressed trauma generates lifelong impacts that can end in early death.

Sound extreme?

It's not.

Parenting my child is life or death and I decided to write this post to explain. I was once a 3rd grade teacher, so I know that you might be thinking this is all a bit dramatic. However, I am now the mother of 7 and I live with the effects of childhood trauma every day. These are the things that I understand as a mother, a former educator and a nurse.
Trauma impacts the children in your classroom.
We have sanitized trauma in our lives. Opioid crisis. Food insecurity. Sirens and fights in the night. We don't really think about the smallest victims. We don't read about the child hiding in the backroom during a drug bust, or the baby left in an apartment tended by his 11 year old sibling with only ramen and cereal to eat. Instead we protect anonymity to the detriment of these children who end up in the classroom struggling with a story that is never told. We end up treating the traumatized by ignoring the trauma.

If you are a teacher, you WILL teach children who have been traumatized. The CDC ACE study tells us that more than 50% of students in the classroom have experienced one or more adverse childhood events (ACE). The time in life when the brain is the most sensitive to experience is infancy and childhood.

In the CDC's ACE Study, the ten types of childhood adversity measured were:

physical, sexual, verbal abuse

physical and emotional neglect

a parent who's an alcoholic (or addicted to other drugs) or diagnosed with a mental illness

witnessing a mother who experiences abuse

losing a parent to abandonment or divorce

a family member in jail

Trauma Changes the Brain
Studies show chronic stress or unaddressed ACEs can change the chemical and physical structures of the brain. In the classroom, children can display traumatic stress through aggression, anxiety, defiance, perfectionism, and withdrawal. And here's the biggie, signs of trauma often times look very similar to ADD, ADHD, ODD and autism spectrum disorder.

Think on this... inattentive, hyperactive, and impulsive behavior may in fact mirror the effects of trauma or adversity. Children show their emotions through behavior.

What might seem like random, nonsensical or manipulative behaviors in a child, might actually be rooted in a space called 'FEAR' and pain. The emotional backpack they carry to school each day is one that they cannot set outside your classroom door, and it will remain heavy and forefront in their brain.

It's important to understand that 25% to 50% of the students within your classroom, will be affected by adverse childhood events. Trauma undermines attention, executive functioning and working memory. When trauma causes emotional or psychological damage to children, they may adopt a set of behaviors or patterns of thinking that put them on a path for further trauma. Trauma begets trauma.

Set the TONE - you need to use the environment to regulate the brain.

Your students who have experienced trauma in their lives are often operating from a primal state - always ready to fight or flee. They have learned that the world is not a safe place. They are living in a state of hypervigilance; their little minds have been hijacked by their basic instincts and impulses which renders them unable to concentrate.

Your classroom environment and schedule is your greatest weapon. Clear expectations and schedules are everything. You can create a safe environment that actually helps regulate the brain. Think schedules and procedures. If a child can anticipate routine, they can feel safe.

2. Recognize that a child is going into survival mode.

When you notice that a child might be having a difficult time, start by asking yourself, "What's happening here?" rather than "What's wrong with this child?" For example, the student might:

Get a "deer-in-the-headlights" look

Looks angry

Breathes more rapidly

Becomes fidgety and squirmy

Bursts into tears or looks about ready to cry

When survival mode occurs, you are not going to be able to talk and correct the child. You need to provide a safe space and help them regulate. This might mean sinking down to eye level and saying, "You are safe." and then simply step away for a while. The cure for trauma is a safe relationship and you are going to give the child space and environment to feel safe.
3. Self-Regulation through Co-Regulation
School is not easy for my children and every year I walk in praying they have a teacher that 'gets it'. A teacher that can see how self-regulation doesn't exist with a child from trauma. Yes, it sounds crazy, but this is important. Regulatory skills live in the highest part of the brain. Dysregulation lives in the lower parts of the brain. Trauma in a child's life causes children to live in the lower part of the brain and this means dysregulation, and this looks like a child who is either hypervigilant or disassociated. As a former teacher, I would have described this as the ADD child or the daydreamer. I would have used stickers, rewards, and consequences to curb this behavior...and it never worked.

What works isn't teaching self-regulation. It's giving children experiences of co-regulation over and over and over again. Until their brains literally take in and imprint the regulated adult. Children from trauma or from hard places, cannot self-regulate because they were never given the experience of co-regulation. They need YOU. Yes, you may be the only co-regulating adult in their life.
4. Relationship not Attachment - See the Goldfish
It is crystal clear that relationships are the counterpoint to traumatic stress in childhood. Dr. Bruce Perry

My children need you to have a teacher relationship with them, not an attachment. Attachment is the bond that develops between a primary caregiver, usually the mother, and her infant. This attachment ensures survival for the infant. My child should not attach to you as the means to survive. However, they should have a relationship with you as a 'secure base' within the school system. My child needs you to navigate the world of school, and to point to me for attachment.

This relationship you have, will help you teach to my child's emotional age and not chronological. It seeks to understand how history can cause learned helplessness and behaviors that you do not understand.

The goldfish shark is how I best describe my child and last week I shared it with a group incarcerated mothers who "got it" when it comes to trauma. Here's the story -
How to SEE the Goldfish -

Consider all extreme behavior within the context of survival to better understand 'why he keeps doing that?'

Repetition is important because with every positive experience the impact on the brain grows.

Traumatized children expect the worst and focus on the negative. If you understand this, you will be better prepared for it.

Childhood neglect is the most damaging trauma. The child must not have basic needs threatened in any way or survival will be all they think about.

At the point the child was abused, the brain was focused on survival not learning. The development the child missed due to abuse will need extra attention.

Traumatized children will often score lower on IQ tests than their true ability. Retest when their environment is helping them heal and watch the scores go up.

The goal in healing trauma is when the child becomes agitated to help them learn skills to reduce the agitation. This repeated cycle is what most helps the child.

Promote play with traumatized children. Play is very healing to the brain and the emotions.

Don't give up hope! The human brain is capable of healing in ways we do not yet understand. It may be a long road to healing and the child may not get there while still in your classroom, but every situation makes a difference. (excerpts from Traumatic Experience and the Brain, A Handbook for Understanding and Treating Those Traumatized as Children.)

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
The Trauma Informed Teacher - Silent Front Line

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
I hate the first week of school. It fills me with anxiety and dread. I once loved the smell of new crayons and was excited over the new backpacks and folders. Now I worry. I parent children from hard places; children who have experienced trauma. I've been lucky the last two years.

# data[].attributes.headline
Great Article about Turning ACE into a positive Acronym

# data[].attributes.subject
Great Article about Turning ACE into a positive Acronym

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Photo: rhinopic.info

Adverse childhood experiences are incredibly common, and a local organization is looking to spread the word about what are commonly referred to as ACEs.

According to a Centers for Disease Control study conducted from 1995 to 1997, ACEs can affect not only a person's behavior and physical health later in life, but also how their offspring are wired. The study looked at more than 17,000 Californians' childhood experiences as compared to their health and behavior as adults, and it focused on 10 adverse childhood experiences grouped into three categories: abuse, neglect and household challenges. Specifically, ACEs include emotional abuse, physical abuse, sexual abuse, seeing the mother treated violently, household substance abuse, mental illness in household, parental separation or divorce, having a household member who engages in criminal activity, emotional neglect and physical neglect.

The study found that those who had experienced adverse childhood experiences before age 18 had a higher chance of not only developing lifestyle issues such as alcohol abuse, smoking and drug use, but also physical effects including heart disease and liver disease. Almost two-thirds of participants reported at least one adverse childhood experience, and more than 1 in 5 participants reported three or more. The more ACEs a person had experienced, the more intense the negative health outcome.

A group called ACE Nashville has repurposed the acronym to stand for All Children Excel. The organization offers online discussion and informational resources as well as action groups, all seeking to raise awareness about adverse childhood experiences in Nashville. Ingrid Cockhren's job as chair of parent and community education for ACE Nashville is to give presentations on ACEs to area companies, deepening understanding of ACEs and their ongoing effects. The Scene spoke with Cockhren about those ongoing effects, the possibility of reversing or preventing them and more.
Are the effects of ACEs reversible in any way?
Yes. Reversible is a strong word, but definitely. So let's say you have ACEs - it doesn't mean that you're automatically going to get cancer. People can definitely heal themselves. The earlier the intervention the better. You can make changes in the brain easier the younger you are. It's better to have interventions younger, which means that if someone has these things going on as a child, then hopefully that child gets counseling. If that child has an adult who is there for them, or a school counselor or someone of that nature who helps them, those things will help.

But if not, say you get into adulthood and you want to resolve the issues from your childhood, you can go to counseling, you can do yoga. There are lots of things you can do to help with past traumas. It is work. You would have to work at it. Lifelong, after you've had a traumatic childhood, then you need to make sure that you're taking care of yourself to combat the issues that you've had in your childhood. If you don't, then you might have the lifelong repercussions, which would be the health issues and the mental issues.
Are there things we should be looking for to prevent adverse childhood experiences from happening in the first place
Parent training is a good preventative. So you have a new family, or expectant mothers. If they give training around ACEs, that would be good, or how to be a responsive parent. Another example would be going into high schools, before people become parents, to talk about how to interact with children or be the best parent they can. There's preventative measures like home visits for new families - when people first have their children, to do home visits from social workers. Home visits are the most successful interventions for families in general. Then also, prevention looks like overall awareness of ACEs in our community - everyone knowing that this is a thing.
Are there particular signs of trauma that we should look for in ourselves or with other people to try to help them?
When it comes to little kids, what [studies have] found is a lot of kids who are diagnosed with [Attention Deficit Disorder] or have what we call "ADD-like symptoms" of being very hyper or having negative behavior - a lot of that type of behavior is actually trauma in children. It leads to a lot of misdiagnoses of ADD when they're really just dealing with a traumatic situation at home.

As with anything, especially when it comes to mental health, is your life going the way you want it to go? So if you are constantly sad or anxious or depressed, or you can't handle your affairs, if you can't keep up with yourself financially, or you can't maintain your friendships, relationships - those kinds of things are an indicator that you may have some trauma in your background that is unresolved. It's about quality of life. Some people have trauma, and it may not affect them in the way that it would another person. It just depends on the person.
What else should we know about ACEs?
When it comes to ACEs, the data is pretty compelling. It's a pretty solid study. What we're finding is a lot of our chronic ailments in society - with heart disease being our No. 1 killer - is really deeply rooted in childhood trauma. And what does that mean? There's lots of different ways that happens. First, the trauma itself is changing our bodies and changing our brains, so changing our physical selves. But trauma is also changing our genetics. Trauma can be passed along to future generations. It's important to know that it's a real thing, it's really impacting our society. Childhood trauma is really adversely affecting people's lives, and their health, not just whether or not they go to jail or if they live in poverty. I'm talking about actual health and also those future generations.

Our distant ancestors learned very quickly that spiders and snakes are very dangerous, so now we still have a fear of snakes and spiders that's innate, and it's in our DNA. DNA has memory for the purpose of survival. Trauma changes us so that we are trying to be better suited to survive in our environment. If you have a neighborhood that's dangerous or you're living in a war zone or experiencing racism everyday, then you're going to adjust to survive in that environment. And you're going to pass that information on in your DNA to your offspring, so they'll be more likely to survive.
So ACEs affect both nature and nurture.
That's exactly what it is. So when we think nature and nurture, in the past we've been thinking of them as two separate things. But when we think about ACEs, we learn that there is a gray area in there, that one generation's nurture can become the next generation's nature.
What do you think is the biggest misconception surrounding ACEs?
First is the misconception that it cannot be changed. It's kind of like fate, saying, "Oh, I have these ACEs, now I'm going to have these poor health outcomes, and that's it." You can do things to impact your health. You can change your lifestyle to eat healthier, get more sleep, things that would help you to deal with any type of childhood trauma. Counseling and therapy do work to resolve childhood trauma.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
The Weight of Adverse Childhood Experiences

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Photo: rhinopic.info Adverse childhood experiences are incredibly common, and a local organization is looking to spread the word about what are commonly referred to as ACEs. According to a Centers for Disease Control study conducted from 1995 to 1997, ACEs can affect not only a person's behavior and physical health later in life, but also how their offspring are wired.

# data[].attributes.body
Nadine Burke Harris

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
How childhood trauma affects health across a lifetime

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Childhood trauma isn’t something you just get over as you grow up. Pediatrician Nadine Burke Harris explains that the repeated stress of abuse, neglect and parents struggling with mental health or substance abuse issues has real, tangible effects on the development of the brain. This unfolds across a lifetime, to the point where those who’ve experienced high levels of trauma are at triple the risk for heart disease and lung cancer. An impassioned plea for pediatric medicine to confront the prevention and treatment of trauma, head-on.

# data[].attributes.body
Daniel Siegel