IT’S TIME TO TALK ABOUT TRAUMA: HOW COVID-19, RACIAL UNREST, AND CHRONIC STRESS SHOW UP IN THE CLASSROOM
By Tatiana Duchak
The COVID-19 pandemic and protests erupting from the murder of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor have thrust “trauma” into the public discourse.
For many youth and families in Chicago, however, “trauma” is not a new concept. In Chicago, the trauma of recurrent gun and community violence is concentrated on our south and westsides, where highly segregated communities also face the compounding effects of low income, health inequities, unemployment, housing and food instability, substance use, systemic racism, family disruption due to incarceration, distrust in the police, and an overall sense that Chicago’s leadership has long forgotten about them. For these children and families, the impact of this chronic stress and trauma has remained unseen, unheard, and untreated for generations. For these children, tragedy and loss aren’t newsworthy; they are normal.
As a city, Chicago has long neglected to verbalize and validate the impact of community-embedded trauma on these children’s educational outcomes. Education policymakers often wonder aloud about achievement gaps, test scores, and graduation and attendance rates. Periodically, programs pop up to try and target these issues, but to what effect? What more needs to be done?
Today, advocates Chicago Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights, alongside the Transforming School Discipline Collaborative (TSDC), have released a Trauma Toolkit to help answer those questions.
The toolkit is designed to guide school administrators and educators towards understanding the need for trauma-sensitive schooling and how to implement trauma-informed practices. Outlined in the toolkit concrete examples of adaptations schools can make to meet the trauma needs of their students. The toolkit also describes the unique impact remote and distant learning has on students’ emotional wellness and how trauma-related needs can be addressed in the virtual environment. Readers will begin to learn about the ways in which reactions to trauma manifest behaviorally in classrooms and will receive strategies to address these behaviors in a way that is conducive to healing and avoids re-traumatization. The Toolkit also offers suggestions and considerations for various educational roles, including those in classroom instruction and school discipline.
Trauma-informed schooling is not simply one intervention or policy to utilize when a student presents with behavioral problems. Trauma-informed schooling is a culture, a climate, and a connected community that wraps itself around students and each other. It promotes relationships and resiliency between teachers and staff as well as teachers and students. A trauma-informed framework does not require everyone to become a therapist. It is a perspective shift; a validation of peoples’ underlying experience and an acceptance that every behavior has a meaning. Schools must prioritize the emotional wellness of their students and staff. Learning, achievement, attendance, and test scores will all follow once those teaching and those learning feel safe, calm, and connected.
These may be unique and unparalleled times, but the need for trauma-informed schooling is not unprecedented. By picking up our Trauma Toolkit, administrators and teachers are taking the necessary step towards improving educational access and opportunities for Chicago’s most vulnerable students.