Compassionate Educators and Children from Adversity

Trauma-informed practice is a term that has been much used in the education system and other systems for the past two decades, beginning in physical trauma in the 1970s then moving to emotional, psychological trauma in the 2000s. Yet for the time trauma-informed practice has been discussed, it is not well understood. I have spent the past 14 years presenting on aspects of trauma-informed practice for educators and staff throughout B.C. The presentations usually take place on a professional development day and in that three- or six-hour time frame if we are lucky enough to have a full day, I can just present a glimpse of what this system’s lens of practice and service provision is. This has resulted in schools and sometimes educators believing they are trauma-informed, rather than trauma trying, with just a glimpse of what is involved and uncertainty around how to practice within the paradigm. In her excellent article on the work needing to be done as systems become trauma-informed, Becker-Blease (2016) suggests that supporters need to protect the potential of trauma-informed practice by critically engaging with the details of defining what it is and then the details involved in implementation. 

Trauma-informed practice, or ACEs (Adverse Childhood Events) informed practice as many of us prefer to name it, is a lens of understanding and compassion intended to help to all children, youth and adults, especially those who have experienced early adversity and traumatic events. Trauma-informed practice in education is not about doing more in the classroom but rather about doing things differently, guided by the principles of safety, trustworthiness, choice, collaboration and empowerment. The hope and intent are that by each school team investing the time and energy into understanding how this would look for their school, then implementing ideas into practice, that the school environment will be more peaceful, enhancing students’ learning and lowering educators stress levels. Trauma-informed practice is not intended to be a one-shot training or an approach that does not help children understand clear expectations and positive boundaries (Fallot & Harris, 2009); instead, it involves the long-term work of transforming schools to compassionate learning communities that function with the level of physical, mental, emotional and cultural safety required for both students and staff. 

The main components of trauma-informed practice are in understanding that all behavior and action is done for a reason, with the development of the child formed around adverse events. This type of development affects how children see the world and usually results in survival-based behaviors informed by fear and mistrust.  It is up to each of us in our helping capacity to acknowledge current coping skills and assist children, youth and adults to find other ways of coping, learn what healthy boundaries are, and build personal capacity through supportive relationships and new opportunities.  Several guiding principles of trauma-informed practice include: 

1. understanding children’s behaviors related to survival-based coping as normal reactions to abnormal events, and  
2. understanding our own levels of secondary stress in our roles of co-regulators, and  
3. working hard not to retraumatize children. 

When researchers and practitioners think about the complexity of what is currently called complex trauma, resulting from prolonged interpersonal abuse, neglect and other traumatic events occurring with children, it makes sense that finding the best ways to support children, youth and adults is challenging, particularly in the education system. The effects of complex trauma may present as struggles with attachment, difficulty regulating emotions and resulting behavior, challenges with cognition and social relationships, dissociation, somatization (biology) and self-image (Cook et al., 2005).  

 Emotional regulation is considered paramount for children to learn. When caregivers are absent or injured from their own traumatic path or addictions, they often cannot model emotional regulation or share an emotional vocabulary. If a child cannot name and regulate their emotions, it is hard to regulate behaviour, the two go together. Children learn to autoregulate if no one is available to help them co-regulate, forced to compensate for the failure of caregivers’ protection through “an immature system of psychological defenses” (Herman, 1997, p. 96). Co-regulation is about someone attuning to the child, responding to their emotional and physical needs. This connection is preventative and proactive, the goal of all trauma-informed practice. This person, usually a caregiver, is attuned to when the child starts to become dysregulated and either downregulates or upregulates the child, meeting the need driving the dysregulation. When caregivers are currently unable to fulfill this role, then educators and school staff become critical to children from adverse environments, but this is not an easy job. 

Critically, children from adversity are showing up in schools without the foundation for emotional regulation. Children who struggle with emotional regulation are often difficult to work with due to the described immature psychological defenses, resulting in higher stress levels for professionals and paraprofessionals who themselves may have experienced adversity, resulting in their diminished ability to co-regulate with these children. When educators and staff cannot stay attuned and keep co-regulating with children who need this, then we see escalation and more heightened behavior.  In talking to educators and staff across BC, the number of helpers who have been affected by secondary stress is growing. Staff cannot operate as consistent co-regulators unless they have a safe working environment, and it is hard to ensure safety and wellbeing when both children and staff become dysregulated. Many educators have shared with me that they were prepared to teach in education, but often feel overwhelmed by the needs of children who are developmentally not at the stage of their peers and not yet in a place to take in new information, direction, or social interactions. Educators often identify their concern for unique children who have complex trauma symptoms with other presentations that set them in such a dysregulated state that they cannot yet safely be in the school environment until receiving additional support. 

Secondary stress has been conceptualized under many different terms including burnout, compassion fatigue, secondary traumatic stress, vicarious trauma and more recently from the nursing profession after Covid, as empathic distress. For the past two decades, the professions of social work, counselling and nursing have been discussing ways to mitigate the effects of engaging with clients and patients who are suffering adversity, but the education profession and what is happening to educators and staff has not always been considered. For children to be well, the adults around them, including caregivers, educators and school staff and other professionals need to be well. So often wellness is put back on the individual (make sure you sleep, go to the gym, eat more leafy green vegetables), but the research points to better results when organizational change happens. Wellness for children from adversity is dependent on safer environments and lessening moments of retraumatization, most often inadvertent, when educators and staff are pushed beyond capacity, a definition of classic burnout. 

Working with an inner-city school staff in trying to fully understand the structural changes required for education to be fully trauma-informed, the staff and I struggled to present to the administration how many layers of the school system needed to be considered in becoming a trauma-informed school. Becker-Blease (2016) suggests that we often focus on individual pathology and issues rather than change in broader systems, and this is evident in many schools. To try and stay with a broader systems perspective, the staff and I adapted a rubric from the Puget Sound Educational Service District on developing compassionate learning communities as a working document that schools could customize in their on-going process of becoming a compassionate learning environment. The ten categories described in the rubric include: 

1. Understanding Trauma 
2. Safety/Assurance of Wellbeing  
3. Cultural Competence  
4. Supportive School Climate  
5. Social-Emotional Skills/Personal Agency 
6. Emotion/Behaviour Regulation 
7. Positive Boundaries 
8. Family Partnerships  
9. Community Partnerships  
10. Student/Learner Partnerships 

The work required for schools and districts to address each of these areas is immense, requiring policy changes and additional resources. Educators that I have worked with describe how they thought being trauma-informed was just understanding trauma, a potential seismic shift in how our high-flying children are viewed, from what is wrong with them to what may have happened to them. Safety and assurance of wellbeing may include details of tone of voice, personal space and quiet spaces used as children’s strategies to regulate. It is about being proactive and preventive to the best of staff abilities so that de-escalation is not required. Carello and Butler (2015) suggest that students with complex trauma don’t feel safe when they feel overwhelmed, ashamed, belittled or powerless. Social and emotional skills and regulation require more co-regulators until children can self-regulate enough to engage with learning. Without a doubt, the area prioritized by every school I have been to and requiring the most work is positive boundaries and school discipline policies. Children and staff need boundaries to stay safe. Educators try to ensure boundaries; rules are frontloaded and, ideally, all children participate in developing the rules. The issue is that many children have never had safe boundaries so it is a developmental process to get them to a regulated state where they can understand where the line is and that it is there for not just other children and staff, but for them as well.  

Without adequate resources in the classroom to support their efforts in developing compassionate learning communities through trauma-informed practice, children’s unregulated affect leading to unregulated behavior is taking a toll. The work goes far beyond delivering curriculum, initially adding stress and time commitments to educators and staff already working at capacity and beyond, but the eventual payoff is less stress and improved learning in peaceful, enriched environments. 

To reach the goal of enriched learning environments and less educator stress, school leadership needs to start working with staff and parents to determine what a trauma-informed, compassionate learning community would look like for each unique school. If this lens is better understood and valued, the hope is that educators and staff will be provided with the resources they need to be well and stay well while changing the lives of the children they work with. Trauma-informed practice is intended to include not just the people served, but also the service providers; assurance of wellbeing is a hope for everyone. In the trajectory of a child’s life, especially those who have experienced complex trauma, the most important service providers are educators and school staff. Acknowledging their value through adequate support to sustain their practice is essential in developing compassionate learning communities.

References 

Becker-Blease, K. (2016). As the world becomes trauma-informed, work to do. Journal 

Of Trauma and Dissociation, 18(2), 131-138 

Carello, J., & Butler, L. (2015). Practicing what we teach: Trauma-informed education practice. 

Journal of Teaching in Social Work, 35, 262-278. 

Cook, A., Spinazzola, J. Ford, J., Lanktree, C., Blaustein, M., & Cloitre, M., et al. (2005). Complex trauma in children and adolescents. Psychiatric Annals, 35(5), 390-398. 

Fallot, R.D. & Harris, M. (2009). Creating cultures of trauma-informed care. Community Connections, Washington, DC. 

Herman, J. (1997). Trauma and recovery. New York: Basic Books. 

van der Kolk, B. A. (2003). The neurobiology of childhood trauma and abuse. Child & Adolescent Psychiatric Clinics North America, 12, 293-317. 

 van der Kolk, B., Pynoos, R.S., Cicchetti, D., Cloitre, M., D’Adrea, W., Ford, J.D., Wieberman, A.F., Putman, F.W., Saxe, G., Spinazzola, J., Stolbach, B.C., & Teicher, M. (2009). Proposal to include a developmental trauma disorder diagnosis for children and adolescents in DSM-V. Brookline, MA: The Trauma Center.