The Negative Effects Of Trauma In School

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Trauma, this is a word with many connotations. Typically, the word trauma is associated with appalling abuse or a terrible car accident, however the word trauma is beginning to take on a new meaning, in terms of its impact on school children. Trauma in this context can be loosely defined as any negative experience that causes a child psychological or emotional stress or damage. Trauma can come in many forms, including parent arguments, divorce, death of a family member, abuse, neglect, among many other adverse experiences that numerous children face daily.
I have taught multiple children who have experienced trauma that is unimaginable. To give a few examples, last year a student in my class had his house was robbed and ransacked while his …show more content…

Each of these students exhibited extreme misbehaviors and sometimes violence. I felt like my classroom was spiraling out of control. The five students who experienced the trauma were miserable and the rest of the class didn’t feel safe. I was so busy trying to manage behaviors reactively that teaching was no longer my top priority. The school counselor introduced me to the idea of trauma informed care and gave me some simple ideas to try in my classroom. I implemented them immediately. Slowly my classroom became more manageable and all of the students, not just those exhibiting behavior issues, were learning to more effectively self-regulate their emotions and behavior. I only implemented two simple trauma informed care techniques into the classroom and saw amazing results. I kept the same procedures in place for my second year of teaching, and again students learned to self-regulate. I rarely had students exhibiting the extreme behaviors that I saw the year before. I know there are many more trauma informed care techniques and philosophies, and I intend to use my action research to study their effectiveness in teaching students to self-regulate and to ultimately become more resilient people. I am also interested to see the effects trauma informed care can have on extreme behavior issues and

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