Trauma-Informed Teaching

It's the little things

Trauma-informed teaching is hip right now. I'm going to try and offer my take. Here, from my perspective, is the state of trauma-informed education:

• Teachers increasingly recognize that many students go through challenging things in their lives that make learning in school harder.

• Teachers want to do something to better support these students.

• A cottage industry of consultants has sprung up to meet this need. Some seem serious and thoughtful. Others less so.

• This field is young. We simply don't know very much about trauma-informed teaching, so it necessarily relies more on anecdotes and inferences than other parts of education.

• Advice about trauma-informed teaching is often vague. Lots of teachers and schools want to claim the "trauma-informed" label without actually changing much about their practice.

I want to offer three ideas. First, a mental model for thinking about trauma. Second, some general advice about common mistakes schools make when thinking about trauma. Third, a few very specific pieces of advice that any teacher can use.

A mental model

One simple mental model for the impact of trauma is that humans have a "fight, flight, or freeze" mode that we go into when our brain thinks that we are in danger. For some people that response continues long after the event, making it challenging for them to do everyday activities. The “freeze” rather than just fight or flight is an important point; a lot of students in schools who have experienced trauma respond to a trigger by freezing. Another piece of the mental model that is sad but true is that, for many students, the trauma they have experienced is related to abuse, neglect, or violence from adults in their lives. For these students it is often more challenging to build trusting relationships with adults in school. Their trauma response is often connected to a negative interaction with an adult, bringing back feelings from traumatic experiences. This last piece is helpful to understand why schools are more affected by trauma than some other institutions. Schools rely on relationships, and trauma frays some of those connections.

It’s also worth resisting the trend of labeling more and more experiences trauma. Do a lot of students experience trauma that affects their education? Yes. I don’t know exactly what experiences are and are not trauma. But I avoid calling something trauma if it’s really just an unpleasant experience. Trauma is real, and we don’t need to inflate it to understand its importance.

Some general advice

Teachers are not trauma detectives. Our job is not to figure out which students have experienced trauma. First, we aren't mental health professionals. Second, even if we were, a classroom full of students is not a place to practice mental health counseling. Don't give students surveys about their experiences, or ask questions trying to get them to open up. Do present yourself as an empathetic, caring adult who is happy to support students and can direct them to other resources the school has available. Here's a great comic I think about all the time:

In this metaphor, the goal isn't to figure out which students need the ramp. The goal is to make sure the ramp is clear. Again, I don’t mean that I close myself off and refuse to talk to my students about how they are doing. Students sometimes share their experiences with me, and I want them to see me as a trusted adult who will help them if they need it. But that’s different from digging around trying to figure out what students have gone through. I don’t need to know. Trauma-informed teaching doesn’t mean figuring out who has experienced trauma, it means adopting practices that help all students but are especially important for those who have been affected by trauma.

Not all people who experience traumatic events have a lasting trauma response. Some people who experience traumatic events have a lasting trauma response. Others don’t.¹ The takeaway for teachers is not to make assumptions. People are resilient. Assuming that a student will experience lasting effects from a traumatic event can lead to prying or lowering expectations in a way that is unnecessary or unhelpful. This connects to the last point — my goal isn’t to figure out who has experienced trauma or to make assumptions about the impact of trauma. My goal is to adopt some practices that support all students.

Have high expectations. This sounds obvious but schools screw this up all the time. The reality is that lots of students have hard things happen to them. The vast majority can keep on learning and participating in school. One “trauma-informed” practice I’ve heard is to create a room that students can always go to if they are feeling overwhelmed to take a break from class and work on self-regulating. I think this is a bad idea. It's easy for schools to learn about some hard thing Susie is going through and say, "oh, Susie should be able to take breaks from class, she's having a hard time at home right now." Maybe that's an appropriate accommodation — for certain students, for a short period of time. But it’s easy to put that accommodation in place, forget about it, and then Susie realizes scrolling TikTok is more fun than Mr. Kane’s math class, and all of a sudden she's built some bad habits that are hard to break. Have high expectations. Students are often capable of more than we think they are.

Some specific advice

Use routines to make class predictable. If students know what to expect they are less likely to go into “fight or flight” mode. This is especially important at the start of class. It might seem fun and engaging to start every class with a different, off-the-wall activity. Don’t do that. Have some set routines so students know exactly what the first few minutes will be like. This doesn’t mean every class is the exact same. Routines are the building blocks, and teachers use those building blocks to adapt lessons to different goals.

Don't use threats to motivate students. That might sound obvious, but lots of adults in schools use threats all the time. "If you keep acting like this, we're going to keep you in 7th grade again next year!" or "If this behavior continues, there will be serious consequences!" That language emphasizes using power over the student, and is the type of thing people say when they're frustrated in the moment. It communicates to the student that we aren't on the same team. I don't mean that we can't communicate with students — for instance, "hey, I really want you to move on to 8th grade. Let's look at your grades and make a plan to improve them." Don't use threats or intimidation to get students to do things.

Follow through. If I say I'm going to do something, I do it. This means small things, like updating a grade when a student turns in an assignment late, to big things, like following through with a call home or showing up to a sports game if I say I'm going to. There are two things that support this. First, I write everything down. I forget stuff. All teachers do. If I write things down, I remember to do it. Second, I don't make commitments I can't follow through on. I don’t tell students I’ll come to their volleyball game unless I’m confident I can make it.

Give space. When I have 25 students in the room I often feel like I’m constantly rushing from one thing to the next. Maybe I’m asking a student to get started on a set of problems, or put their Hot Wheels toy away, or erase their mini whiteboard and put it in the stack. I often feel the urge to stand over them until they do what I ask. It’s a simple request, right? This puts a lot of pressure on students and can lead to a confrontation. A different strategy is to be really clear what I’m asking them to do and why, then walk away. I come back a minute later. If they still haven’t put the Hot Wheels away we’ll have another conversation. I’m not giving them a free pass. But when students have a little bit of space and agency, more often than not they listen and I can avoid that confrontation. Standing over students often creates a confrontation that was unnecessary.

Admit when you're wrong. A few weeks ago a student blew up in the middle of my class. All of a sudden he was yelling at another student, then yelling at me. I couldn't figure out what set him off. I asked him to take a break in a chair outside my room. I realized later that the student next to him had been making small sounds specifically to annoy him, and I had missed it. The student who made the outburst was upset with me. He felt like I was singling him out when another student had caused the problem, and it was unfair he was getting in trouble and the other student wasn't. This is a moment where lots of teachers take a "I'm right and you're wrong" approach. "It's never ok to yell in class, period. You can't act like that in math class, no matter what." And sure, he shouldn't have yelled. But I had also missed the needling from the other student. Instead, I started by saying, "That was my mistake. I'm sorry I didn't notice him trying to bother you. I'm going to pay more attention in the future. Also, I want you to work on letting a teacher know if something is bothering you. Yelling often isn't the best way to solve a problem." If I admit when I’m wrong, students are much more likely to trust me and listen to what I have to say. If I steamroll them, they’re more likely to write me off.

Final thoughts

This isn’t some magic toolkit where if you follow these steps every student who has experienced trauma will suddenly show up to class excited to learn every day. That doesn’t exist. The goal is to make some small changes in the ways teachers talk to students, build trust, and help students know what to expect.

If you teach 100% nice little middle class students who are perfectly well-adjusted and have had happy lives with lots of resources, you can get away with not doing these things. But for students who have trauma responses in school, who struggle to build trusting relationships with adults, every little thing helps. I can’t promise that if you adopt these practices — if you start class with routines, avoid using threats, follow through, give space, and admit when you’re wrong — that every student will suddenly be able to learn and your test scores will go through the roof. A different teacher could come up with a different list, and that list could be great too. My point is, being trauma-informed isn’t about making some big flashy change. It’s a lot of little things. Those little things add up. It’s often hard to tell what pieces make the biggest difference. But then, I see that student who is constantly getting kicked out of other teachers’ classes is willing to show up and learn for me. It doesn’t always happen. I come up short with lots of kids. But the little things are what move the needle, and help a few more kids learn math in my class.

1. The book The End of Trauma by George Bonanno explores the research behind why some people have a lasting trauma response to traumatic events and others don’t. It’s worth reading if you want to understand that distinction better.