Everywhere you look, our schools are filled with traumatized children; children struggling not just to learn and succeed, but to survive. Too often, we think that trauma happens elsewhere. Not in our communities. Not in our schools.
I know firsthand the fallacy that is our collective assumption that trauma and abuse happen to other people, not the people we know, and surely not ourselves.
And, I’ve just finished a book that has changed the way I look at the world. It’s called “The Body Keeps The Score; Brain, Mind and Body in the Healing of Trauma,” by Dr. Bessel Van Der Kolk. This book needs to be read and discussed by every single teacher, school counselor, social worker, principal and pretty much anybody else who comes into contact with students.
Here’s why: abuse and trauma don’t happen to other people, other families, other students, other children, other schools. They happen in the homes of our families, our friends and our neighbors. [pullquote]All schools serve students who have been abused. All teachers teach students with trauma.[/pullquote]
Van Der Kolk unsparingly lays out the facts, so we can see trauma is everywhere:
These uncomfortable truths become even more alarming when compounded by the mid-1990s study into Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE). Participants were asked a series of questions about their having endured traumatic experiences. Each time they responded affirmatively, they scored a point on the ACE scale.
Survey questions included:
The higher a person’s ACE score, the more trauma that person has, which in turn drastically increases their susceptibility to struggle in school, attempt suicide and use IV drugs.
This is not about grit and resilience. And this isn’t about kids nowadays being soft.
It’s about a very simple fact.
“Trauma, by definition, is unbearable and intolerable.”
For so long, so many of us have collectively written off kids who needed the help the most. We have operated under the paradigm that students who check out or explode need to be removed from those students who want to learn.
But Van Der Kolk’s work informs us of a powerful, game-changing fact.
“Behaviors are not the result of moral failings or signs of lack of willpower or bad character— they are caused by actual changes in the brain.”
Our brains are built bottom-up, from what is called the reptilian brain to the limbic system and finally to the neocortex.
The reptilian brain is “responsible for all things that newborn babies can do: eat, sleep, wake, cry, breathe, feel temperature, hunger, wetness and pain; and rid the body of toxins by urinating and defecating.” Thank goodness for the reptilian brain.
The limbic system, or emotional brain, “is the seat of the emotions, the monitor of danger, the judge of what is pleasurable or scary … and preprogrammed escape plans like the fight-or-flight responses.” Thank goodness for the limbic system.
The neocortex, or rational brain, (not to be confused with the prefrontal cortex which doesn’t finish developing until the late 20s,) is located within the frontal lobes. These frontal lobes “enable us to use language and abstract thought, give us the ability to absorb and integrate vast amounts of data and make choice possible.”
Whereas the emotional brain of the limbic system zaps into action and makes us jump to avoid a snake, our neocortex allows us to understand that the snake is only a rubber toy put there as a prank.
Trauma gets in the way of precisely this process. Trauma “increases the risk of misinterpreting whether a particular situation is dangerous or safe … when the alarm bell of the emotional brain keeps signaling that you are in danger, no amount of insight will silence it.”
[pullquote]Trauma makes us perpetually defend ourselves from threat.[/pullquote] “As long as the mind is defending itself against invisible assaults, our closest bonds are threatened, along with our ability to imagine, plan, play, learn and pay attention to other people’s needs.”
Think about what that does to a student at school.
Here are some very common scenarios at schools across the country:
For some, these are examples of students who are misbehaving, out of control, disengaged, and taking learning opportunities and teacher attention away from students who actually want to learn. They can also be children crying out for help, trapped in a system that doesn't understand how to help.
Van Der Kolk provides a few salient insights:
This stuff isn’t easy to internalize.
I can empathize with a teacher who’s frustration boils over at these students. I’ve lost my patience with students more times than I care to remember.
To me, though, the bottom line is this. What we’re doing just isn’t working. Kicking kids out isn’t working. Yelling at kids isn’t working. Taking away recess isn’t working. And not only are these methods not working, they’re probably hurting.
So what do we do?
The first thing we need to understand is that there is no single silver bullet solution; there’s no gene to turn on or off, no medication to prescribe, no single intervention to roll out to staff.
Once we know that the process will be long and the work will be difficult, there are a few things Van Der Kolk urges to keep in mind.
[pullquote]Schools need trauma-informed training and they need it now.[/pullquote]
A whole retinue of resources can be found at The National Child Traumatic Stress Network.
If we don’t take action, another generation of children will grow up in trauma and, in all likelihood, continue the cycle themselves as parents because, as Van Der Kolk chillingly tells us, “trauma breeds further trauma; hurt people hurt other people.”
Zachary Wright is an assistant professor of practice at Relay Graduate School of Education, serving Philadelphia and Camden, and a communications activist at Education Post. Prior, he was the twelfth-grade world literature and Advanced Placement literature teacher at Mastery Charter School's Shoemaker Campus, where he taught students for eight years—including the school's first eight graduating classes. Wright was a national finalist for the 2018 U.S. Department of Education's School Ambassador Fellowship, and he was named Philadelphia's Outstanding Teacher of the Year in 2013. During his more than 10 years in Philadelphia classrooms, Wright created a relationship between Philadelphia's Mastery Schools and the University of Vermont that led to the granting of near-full-ride college scholarships for underrepresented students. And he participated in the fight for equitable education funding by testifying before Philadelphia's Board of Education and in the Pennsylvania State Capitol rotunda. Wright has been recruited by Facebook and Edutopia to speak on digital education. In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, he organized demonstrations to close the digital divide. His writing has been published by The Philadelphia Inquirer, The Philadelphia Citizen, Chalkbeat, Education Leadership, and numerous education blogs. Wright lives in Collingswood, New Jersey, with his wife and two sons. Read more about Wright's work and pick up a copy of his new book, " Dismantling A Broken System; Actions to Close the Equity, Justice, and Opportunity Gaps in American Education"—now available for pre-order!
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