20221102 trauma-informed schooling in a nutshell

There is a growing trickle of British schools turning to 'trauma-informed' schooling for the benefit of their pupils, especially the ones most likely to struggle. Trauma-informed means, in a nutshell, that the school's staff have been trained to understand the impact of traumatic events in children's lives. The school has collectively committed to shifting its thinking from 'what's wrong with this child?' to 'what's happened to this child?'

Parents and the children themselves can also be taught about the impact of adversity in childhood on a child's ability to sit calmly in the classroom and take in a steady flow of information. The big idea is to be able to help a child who has experienced a traumatic event – or, as is often the case with the kids most likely to be failed by the current system – who experiences multiple ongoing traumas in their everyday life.

How can staff help these children? First of all, by not making things worse. If you have ever taught a class, you will recognise the child who is ready to 'kick off' for being mildly told off (let's say they didn't do some homework, and you ask them why not). Well, there is a reason why that child was already 99% of the way to an outburst. There is also an effective way to help that child bring themselves down to 90%, 80%, 50%. 

Imagine the difference: you notice that this child seems on edge. You ask them how they are. Perhaps you have a chill out area in your classroom and you can respectfully invite the child to relax there until they feel like rejoining the class. Perhaps you can find a moment to take that child aside, ask how they are doing, listen to them, help them get into a better frame of mind. Perhaps a cleaner does – trauma-informed schools work best when all or most staff are trained, not just the teachers. 

There's a lot more to it than this – this is meant as the briefest of introductions. 

It's common-sense when you think about it: let's say you start your day by hearing a fight between your parents. You're listening, heart pounding in your throat, scared, upset, wanting to know what's going on, wanting this situation to be resolved. You then go to school, heart still beating fast, some huge unanswered questions rushing through your mind, possibly a state of panic about what this could all mean. Now: Shakespeare's Othello, Act 2, Scene 3. Can you remember where we left off? Of course not, you're wondering if your mum is OK. You're still in panic mode. You are trying to understand this conflict in your home.

It's just one example, and it's simplistic, but that kernel of wisdom has huge implications for our schools. Of course, there have always been amazing teachers who instinctively 'get it', care, ask, listen and give a child the trauma-informed support they need without putting a label on it. Isn't it a good idea to get a whole school to work like that?  

Studies of schools that choose this approach bear this out. It isn't uncommon for exclusion rates to plummet by more than half, for the least well-performing children to improve academic performance, for suspensions to be used far more infrequently, for behavioural incidents to drop sharply. All these metrics are heavily dependent on what a child is experiencing in their life. Helping a child to process and get past these things enables them to focus, behave and learn more effectively. A school that offers that child this support can change the whole future course of that child's life.