Trauma Training For Educators (Free)

Thank you Kris for sharing this training video. I really liked the scenarios and visual examples as to how to interact with a student who is emotionally upset. I also liked the study guide for further opportunities to dive deeper into truly understanding trauma and the strategies that are most effective. When I was at Lincoln, I knew how important it was to provide time and space for students to de-escalate, but was not aware of the power of breathing as an effective strategy and tool to help the teacher and student to move to the thinking brain.  

I have seen how powerful breathing can be to help a student move back to calm and providing them with a sense of safety in the current schools that I am working with.  I would like to get your feedback as well as others as to how the video is introduced to the school staff. A trauma informed approach is so foreign to how many educators have been trained to deal with struggling students that it takes courage and a deep commitment to make that paradigm shift from punishment to using a trauma lens of empathy and support to teach our students how to self-regulate in a safe environment.  Do you have a trainer that guides the staff through the video and support for the administrator to effectively use the supportive guide to continue the conversation and staff development?

What I have seen in my work with teachers and supporting implementation of trauma informed practices, is that our teachers are triggering due to the pressure that has been put on them by punitive legislative mandates that creates a classroom environment that is academic and data focussed.  Therefore teachers want the disrupters removed... and in many situations, the teacher's own emotional upset escalates the student to fight-flight-freeze mode. 

Our CRI team is addressing the staff as our first priority to teach them how important it is for them to bring themselves to calm, so they can approach the student with positive intent...a teachable moment.  When the bullets start flying....many want to fall back into their traditional mode.  It's easier to remove students from the classroom or to suspend them from school.  As you know it takes a true understanding of trauma in order for staff to get over the hurdle and provide opportunities for the struggling students to feel valued, safe, and to know their voice has been heard.  The greatest feedback we can receive is when a staff member shares, "I can never go back to how I used to handle discipline in my classroom"  Then you know they get it!!

As momentum is growing for trauma informed practices in our schools, I think the ACE community needs to develop a coalition to confront the high stakes testing, teacher evaluation based on student's test scores, and the death grip we still have on traditional disciplinary practices that the research clearly tells us they don't work.  We have a lot of work before us, but it's encouraging to see champions such as yourself, out there advocating for our students who don't have a voice in our system.... a trauma-informed approach will give us everything that legislators are mandating if we can allow teachers to teach to the whole child, and get the testing profiteers out of our system.  Common Core, High Stakes Testing, Teacher Evaluation tied to student test scores have NO evidenced based research that supports the punitive mandates our teachers are working under.  They can't attack the teachers without having it filtered down to our kids....shameful. 

Thanks Kris for your work and being part of such a powerful training tool.