“How Serious is This?”

Our Current Circumstance  

Over the past few years, educators have been reporting an uptick in the frequency and intensity of aggressive behaviour in their classrooms. The covid-19 pandemic caused a broad range of social and emotional impacts in students, youth and adults. While many are doing “ok”, others are struggling. For some, the pandemic triggered a profound trauma response. Understanding how trauma affects human systems is foundational for conducting violence risk assessment. Violence can beget trauma, and trauma can beget violence: a self-perpetuating dynamic more formally known as the Trauma-Violence Continuum. 

The Trauma-Violence Continuum is not new; however, this is the first time it is being applied following a global pandemic. One principle of human system (e.g. families, schools) dynamics to keep in mind is that trauma rarely creates new dynamics, rather, it intensifies already existing symptoms. The escalation and changes in behaviours that we are witnessing among some students is a delayed trauma response to the effects of quarantine. As parents/caregivers and their children tried to create distance during quarantine, many young people were on their devices until 4:00am with the adults being unaware of what their children were getting into. If a student was in a home on the cusp of abuse prior to the pandemic, quarantine intensified the existing dynamics (e.g. the frequency and intensity of abuse). Schools saw a range of behaviours when students first returned to the classroom following quarantine, from relatively few concerns to withdrawal and difficulty engaging in school tasks and routines, to dysregulated behaviours and violent outbursts.  

The relevance of this for schools is that some parents/caregivers, communities and media have been focusing on themes of “School Violence” or “Our Schools are Not Safe”. What often is not understood is that the shift in some student behaviour and attitudes is not caused by the school, it is simply our inheritance from the pandemic contributed to by two key factors: 

1. Quarantine intensified abuse dynamics within some homes but the students are manifesting the trauma at school, often because school is the safest place to do so.  
2. Quarantine provided some students with increased access to their drug of choice – social media – the results of which are often being acted out at school as well. 

The lead author is the pioneer of two distinct yet interconnected models that help explain the current dynamics: Violence Threat Risk Assessment (VTRA) and the Traumatic Event Systems (TES) Model of Crisis and Trauma Response. They are interconnected models because sometimes professionals in educational settings become concerned about a student because we know they have been exposed to grief, loss or a traumatic situation (e.g. Using a TES lens) while not considering that their current struggle may also be intensifying their risk to others (e.g. Using a VTRA lens). The opposite side of the same coin is that some professionals may become concerned with a student’s aggressiveness or violence potential (VTRA) without considering how undiagnosed or unresolved trauma (TES) may be a current and active primary risk enhancer. In order to do good risk evaluation and intervention we need to look through both risk assessment and trauma-informed lenses.  

The Sky is Not Falling 

Violence Threat Risk Assessment (VTRA) concepts and dynamics applied to our current situation help to lower professional concern about our children and youth because they provide structure to formal data collection and decision making that is supported by a team of school (and if necessary, community) professionals. Experience denotes that good data-driven assessments and data-driven interventions can save a lot of time and anxiety for the professionals trying to determine who is a risk, as well as provide far greater inclusive support for those we are concerned about. 

When individuals and entire human systems are under extreme stress people can regress. As we emerge from the pandemic, many students are, developmentally, two to three years behind what their chronological age would suggest. From this perspective, seeing Grade 10 students behaving as if they are in Grade 7 and the Grade 4 students behaving as if they are in Grade 1 begins to make sense.  

Regression can also apply to school staff, parents and caregivers. As human beings we only have so much emotional energy to expend in a single day. The many unresolved conflicts and personal burdens some are carrying can influence the workplace dynamics and reduce our tolerance. For instance, a student who has come from an intensified abuse dynamic at home (but has not told anyone) may be more unconsciously triggered by their favorite teacher who is less tolerant with them than before due to the teacher’s own undisclosed burdens.   

While conducting a VTRA we pay attention to contextual/dynamic factors that may have contributed to that student saying in anger “I could kill my teacher”. Many kids threat-related behaviour is more an expression of pain, or a related cry for help, than an indication of risk to others. Most people who make a verbal threat do not pose a risk. Another standard in VTRA is “the higher the anxiety the greater the symptom development” and so by strategically matching our human resources to perceived risk we can more effectively stop someone on a path to harming themselves or others. In both cases, building connection is essential. This is because many young people moving on a pathway to violence have become so disconnected from healthy mature emotional supports that just one meaningful adult connection can lower the level of risk.  

Violence Threat Risk Assessment (VTRA) Practice 

The good news is you do not need to guess whether or not someone making a threat poses a risk to do it! Many schools and districts/divisions in Canada are VTRA trained with varying degrees of experience with the process. However, if you are concerned with a situation then consult with your district leaders, community agencies and local police. 

VTRA and student discipline are not the same thing. VTRA is meant to identify risk enhancers and intervene to lower the risk and therefore the anxiety of all involved. Student discipline can elevate the anxiety of students, parents, caregivers, etc. and may increase risk if it is present. If there are concerns about safety, then assess and intervene first and always ask for help. In most cases keeping those we are worried about closer to us is an intervention in and of itself; working to understand how someone got to the point of posing a risk in the first place is where the real difference is made in a child’s life.  

While this paper is not a substitute for formal training in Violence Threat Risk Assessment (VTRA) and Intervention, we will include two areas of consideration for initial threat assessment screening. The first we call “Triple C” (Cute-Concerning-Critical) and the second is called “PBA’s” (Plausibility-Baseline-Attack Related Behaviours).  

Triple C” (Cute-Concerning-Critical) 

Cute: For a variety of reasons young children are sometimes allowed to get away with certain problematic behaviours because it is “cute”, such as a three-year-old throwing a temper tantrum or a five-year-old using an inappropriate sexual term. If the adults closest to them find it entertaining or otherwise excusable, they may unintentionally reinforce the behaviour.  

Concerning: As the child gets older, the same behaviour that was “cute” when they were young becomes “concerning” to some of the adults.  

Critical: As the child becomes a teenager or is physically bigger than their peers, that same behaviour that was once seen as “cute” can be perceived as “critical.” Throwing a temper tantrum in the classroom now feels very different then when the child was five years old. An employee working with this individual for the first time may see them as ‘very dangerous’ but if they scream, hit the wall and storm out of class in exactly the same way they did as a young child then from a VTRA perspective they are not moving on a pathway to violence. Instead, the case would be assessed as static risk with recommendations to introduce social emotional learning and self-regulation supports to help youth develop and maintain the knowledge, skills, and attitudes necessary to develop healthy identities, manage emotions, and foster personal relationships. 

On the other hand, if in elementary school the temper tantrum was typically once every two weeks and they always tearfully apologized to the teacher within the hour, and now (in high school) it is several times a week and when they return to class they glare at the teacher, then that denotes escalation.  

PBA’s (Plausibility – Baseline – Attack-Related Behaviours) 

Plausibility: Notwithstanding how scary a threat seems, we must ask ourselves is the threat is plausible. A grade five student threatening to bomb the school with an F18 jet fighter is different than threatening to bring a knife to school and attack a peer. 

Baseline: Consistent with Triple C, in VTRA we determine if what the student said or did is typical for how they have behaved in the past. For instance, a neurodiverse student may blurt out a detailed threat (that may even be plausible) but if they have been making that type of threat for years then it is viewed as typical for them and not an escalation. But if the same student has never drawn violent pictures of a human target before and now hands one to a peer whom they have verbally threatened, then we would say that is a change in their baseline. Any significant shift in baseline denotes escalation.  

Attack-Related Behaviours: It is one thing for someone to threaten to attack someone with a pipe, but it is another thing to engage in behaviour consistent with their threat such as having a pipe in their backpack, locker, etc. Therefore, attack-related behaviours consistent with the student’s threats are evidence that the individual of concern is moving from thought to action.  

Conclusion 

In Canada, the majority of school districts and several of their community partners are trained in VTRA and have community protocols that involve police, child protection, mental health, probation and others. Some non-VTRA school districts may have other reasonable internal practices that guide data-collection and immediate intervention. If you are unsure of your regions current practice and protocol ask your leaders. Coming out of the pandemic some regions have drifted a bit in their collaborations, so now is a good time to reboot before we get fully into the coming academic year. 

Photo: Canva Teams/@dimaberlinphotos