Betsy Winkle, School Psychologist CLC Network Heartland Convention - - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

Betsy Winkle, School Psychologist CLC Network Heartland Convention Dordt College October 5-6, 2017

What is Trauma?

• An exceptional experience in which powerful

and dangerous events overwhelm a person’s capacity to cope. (Souers & Hall, 2016, p15)

• Complex trauma occurs when an individual

experiences multiple adversities over his or her lifetime

TRAUMA

Trauma: Adverse Childhood Experiences

• The relationship

between children’s emotional experiences (before age 18) and subsequent mental and physical health problems.

• 1:2 participants

experienced at least 1 ACE

• 1:4 participants

experienced multiple ACEs

• 1:16 experienced 4
• r more ACEs

Trauma in the Classroom

What do we see?

Flight Fight Freeze

• Withdrawing
• Leaving the Room
• Skipping class
• Daydreaming
• Sleeping
• Avoiding

classmates/teachers

• Hiding
• Disengaged
• Acting out
• Aggressive
• Acting silly
• Defiant
• Hyperactive
• Arguing
• Screaming/yelling
• Appearing numb
• Refusing to answer
• Refusing to get needs

met

• Staring blankly
• Appearing unable to

move or act

What do we see?

• Emotion Regulation

▫ Trouble calming down strong emotions ▫ Difficulties naming and understanding the emotions

• f self or others

▫ Disproportionate emotional response to an event ▫ Edgy-emotions always close to the surface

• Cognition

▫ Learning difficulties ▫ Difficulties with problem solving (frustration tolerance) ▫ Challenges with memory ▫ Difficulty with organization ▫ Perfectionism

What do we see?

• Social Relationships

▫ Difficulty forming and keeping relationships ▫ Unable to read social cues ▫ Difficult to take others perspective

• Physical Impact

▫ Hypervigilance: heightened sense of changes in environment ▫ Poor sense of attunement: don’t trust bodily senses (hungry, tired) ▫ Frequent illness, obesity, asthma, and speech problems

The Biology of Trauma

Brain Response to Chronic Stress and Trauma

The Thinking Brain vs. The Doing Brain

• Thinking Brain: Prefrontal Cortex
• Designed to think, reason, and maintain flexibility

flexibility

• Doing Brain: Limbic Area
• Designed for survival
• Controls arousal, emotion, and stress

response

• Smoke Detector: Amygdala
• Flips from Thinking Brain to Doing Brain
• When students are in a state of stress, they are in their Doing Brain

Emotional Keyboard

Taught Hard-Wired Taught

• Humility
• Forgiveness
• Empathy
• Optimism
• Compassion
• Sadness
• Joy
• Disgust
• Anger
• Surprise
• Fear
• Sympathy
• Patience
• Shame
• Cooperation
• Gratitude

Relationships Matter!

• The effects of trauma can be offset by the

presence of one dependable and caring adult (Paper Tigers, 2015).

Shifting Understanding: Looking at Behavior through the Trauma Lens

• Behavior as an adaptation, not a choice

▫ Behaviors have become a natural response because of trauma events ▫ More reactive, alarm system easily triggered ▫ Hyper-vigilant ▫ Don’t know how to manage emotions ▫ Difficult time reasoning ▫ Challenge understanding and responding to social cues ▫ Need to be in control because adults have not been reliable

Immediate Response:

Primary goal is to reduce student stress

• Manage your own stress response
• Soften your voice, facial expressions,

posture, and body language

• Practice skills that settle or release

energy

• Co-regulate students behavior if student

is not able to calm themselves independently

• Student will borrow your calm nervous

system

Short-Term Response: Skill Building

• Help create healthy neural

pathways (dirt-track)

▫ Research indicates that new pathways can be built to self-regulate and self-soothe

• Model healthy coping strategies
• Practice the correct response
• Teach emotional range: model, encourage, and

reinforce identification and use of complex emotions

Short-Term Response: Adapt the Environment

• Greet students at the door (take temperature)
• Be consistent and predictable
• Communicate and prepare for routine changes
• Identify and reduce stressors
• Create a quiet, safe place
• Allow opportunities for appropriate choice
• Increase home-school communication

Restorative Justice & Restorative Circles

▫ Use as a model for discipline ▫ Can be used to solve problems: individual incidents or

• ngoing behavior

▫ Seek to elicit the story of what happened, associated thoughts and feelings, and solutions for making it right ▫ Non-blaming and judgmental questions ▫ Also can be proactive: create classroom culture,

• wnership, trust, responsibility, equality, and

connection

Long-Term Response: Increase Understanding & Care of Staff

• Debrief after significant trauma events
• Develop common school language for calming

and coping strategies

• Pray, with and for each other.
• Stay current in the growing research regarding

the impact of trauma and the resilience of students.

Discussion

Resources:

• ACEs survey: http://www.ncjfcj.org/sites/default/files/Finding%20Your%20ACE%20Score.pdf
• TED Talk: Nadine Harris Burke:
• https://www.ted.com/talks/nadine_burke_harris_how_childhood_trauma_affects_health_across_a

_lifetime

• Hand Model of the Brain (Dr. Dan Seigel):
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gm9CIJ74Oxw
• As Real As It Gets, Amanda Barton and Natalie Hart, Joel Schoon-Tanis (Children’s Book)
• Fostering Resilient Learners: Strategies for Creating A Trauma-Sensitive Classroom, Kristin

Souers with Pete Hall

• The Little Book of Restorative Justice for Schools: Teacher Responsibility; Creating Caring

Climates, Lorraine Stutzman Amstutz and Judy H. Mullet

• Childhood Disrupted: How Your Biography Becomes Your Biology, and How You Can Heal, Donna

Jackson Nakazawa

• Teaching with Poverty in Mind: What Being Poor Does to Kids’ Brains and What Schools Can Do

About It, Eric Jensen

• Restorative Circles In Schools: Building Community and Enhancing Learning, Bob Costello,

Joshua Wachtel & Ted Wachtel

• Lost at School, Ross Greene