Trauma Informed Teaching

Welcome to the Research Guide for Trauma-Informed Teaching! Here you will find resources, videos, and tips for beginning your research on the topic. Use the tabs at the top to navigate the guide. 

• Trauma Informed Teaching Strategies

  A brief guide of tips on how to navigate students who have been traumatized individually and within the classroom.

• Novice Teachers’ Perceptions Of Their Preparedness To Teach Students Experiencing Trauma: A Mixed Methods Study

  This dissertation explores how graduates of traditional teacher preparation programs perceived their preparedness to teach students experiencing trauma stemming from adverse childhood experiences (ACEs).

• Trauma-informed Teaching in the Early Childhood Classroom: Teachers’ Perspectives on Supporting Students Exposed to Trauma

  Teachers play an instrumental role in supporting preschool students’ recovery after experiencing trauma. The problem addressed through this study was that teachers are often not equipped to effectively teach preschool children who have been exposed to trauma, thus impacting the preschool students’ achievement. Some preschool teachers are not certain what their roles and responsibilities are in effectively teaching children who have been exposed to trauma.

Trauma informed teaching, another component of social-emotional learning (SEL), encompasses how you as an educator can cultivate a safe environment where students can thrive. It requires the ability to create strong relationships while maintaining professional boundaries.

Trauma-informed pedagogy is a pedagogical practice that keeps trauma, its prevalence, and how it affects an individual. These practices are very similar to Universal Design for Learning (UDL) and include practices such as:

• Providing content information in advance
• Using content descriptions, especially for potentially triggering media
• Creating a safe and inclusive framework for discussions
• Checking in on students
• Encouraging community building and sense of belonging
• Allowing for multiple ways to engage with course content
• Building flexibility into assessment and absence policies
• Valuing student input and feedback

• Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs)

  Adverse childhood experiences, or ACEs, are potentially traumatic events that occur in childhood (0-17 years). ACEs are linked to chronic health problems, mental illness, and substance use problems in adolescence and adulthood. ACEs can also negatively impact education, job opportunities, and earning potential.

• Common View v. Trauma Informed View

  The descriptions below can be used to help determine to what extent a particular school policy, protocol, procedure or document is or is not trauma-informed. The contrasting views
  are designed to draw attention to language, both verbal and non-verbal, that does not support a trauma-sensitive school environment and may trigger students with trauma histories.

• Trauma Response

  All kinds of trauma create stress reactions.

• Helpful Hints for Recovery

ISBN: 9781416631279
Publication Date: 2022-08-30

A guide to the intersection of trauma and special needs, featuring strategies teachers can use to build resilience and counter the effects of trauma on learning and behavior. Childhood trauma is a national health crisis. As many as two out of every three children in any classroom across the country have experienced some form of trauma.

ISBN: 9781416621072
Publication Date: 2016-01-30

In this galvanizing book for all educators, Kristin Souers and Pete Hall explore an urgent and growing issue-childhood trauma-and its profound effect on learning and teaching. Grounded in research and the authors' experience working with trauma-affected students and their teachers, Fostering Resilient Learners will help you cultivate a trauma-sensitive learning environment for students across all content areas, grade levels, and educational settings.

ISBN: 9781681252452
Publication Date: 2019-01-01

In the United States, at least one in four youth experiences trauma severe enough to negatively affect their school success.* Give hope and help to these students with this reader-friendly how-to guide, your springboard for building responsive, trauma-sensitive preK-12 schools. Drawing on her extensive experience as a school counselor, trainer, and mother, trauma expert Jen Alexander delivers a comprehensive framework for building a safe, supportive school environment that helps all students learn and thrive.

ISBN: 9781787752672
Publication Date: 2020-12-21

Covering both theory and practice, this book will teach educators everything they need to know about developing restorative practices in their education settings, in a way that is also trauma-informed. The first part of the book addresses the theory and philosophy of restorative approaches, and of trauma-informed and trauma-sensitive schools. The second part outlines the five restorative skills (mindfulness, honest expression, empathy, the art of asking questions and the art of requests), what they look like in practice (including using circles, respect agreements and restorative dialogue), and how to implement them.

• Resources for Responding to Trauma and Tragedy

  Guidance for supporting students who have experienced trauma or grief and for coping with violence and disasters.

• ACEs and Toxic Stress

  ACEs research shows the correlation between early adversity and poor outcomes later in life. Toxic stress explains how ACEs ”get under the skin” and trigger biological reactions that lead to those outcomes.

• Yes, You Can Do Trauma-Informed Teaching Remotely

  Remember that education transcends test scores and curricular continuity. Sing out in your own way–fostering connections across generations, time, and space. We need each other, now, and our joining together is itself a defense—an inoculation—against that which seeks to divide us.

• Attachment & Trauma Network, Inc.

  At the Attachment & Trauma Network, it is our mission to promote healing of children impacted by trauma through supporting their families, schools, and communities.

• Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs)

  Adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) can have a tremendous impact on future violence victimization and perpetration, and lifelong health and opportunity. CDC works to understand ACEs and prevent them.

• Trauma-Informed Schools

  Supporting students who suffer from childhood trauma requires whole school involvement and transformation. NEA and its affiliates are actively engaged in finding ways for schools and educators to address the issue of trauma and its implications for learning, behavior, and school safety.

• Grief and Loss Resources for Educators and Students

  The experience of personal loss weighs heavy on all of us, especially now as we continue adapting to a new way of life.

• What is Trauma-Informed SEL?

  Trauma-informed SEL is an approach to fostering youths’ social-emotional development with practices that support all students, but is particularly inclusive and responsive to the needs of children and youth who have experienced trauma.

• Addressing Trauma in Schools

  Research examining the widespread prevalence of childhood trauma continues to accumulate. This article provides examples from the literature via a narrative review of
  assessment, intervention, and practitioner support options related
  to childhood trauma.

• Supporting Students Who Have Experienced Trauma

  Traumatic experiences have important consequences for children’s
  identity development, attitudes about learning, and the way they
  engage in relationships with others.

• Teaching through Collective Trauma in the Era of COVID-19

  The COVID-19 pandemic has had an unprecedented impact on education and the ways in which teachers
  engage their students.

• Trauma-Informed Practices in Schools Across Two Decades: An Interdisciplinary Review of Research

  Attention to childhood trauma and the need for trauma-informed care has contributed to the emerging discourse in schools related to teaching practices, school climate, and the delivery of trauma-related in-service and preservice teacher education.

• Trauma Informed Teaching Strategies

  Small changes in classroom interactions can make a big difference for traumatized students.

• Potentially Perilous Pedagogies: TeachingTrauma Is Not the Same as Trauma-Informed Teaching

  This article explores why and how trauma theory and researchare currently used in higher education in nonclinical coursessuch as literature, women’s studies, film, education, anthropol-ogy, cultural studies, composition, and creative writing.

• Trauma Informed Teaching & Learning

  Mays Imad discusses trauma-informed teaching and learning on episode 335 of the Teaching in Higher Ed podcast.

• Trauma Informed Education with Dr. Kay Ayre

  Practical, Evidence Based Strategies for Challenging Students.

• Trauma Informed Educators Network Podcast

  Podcast by Mathew Portell exploring trauma-informed educational practices.

According to the CDC, Adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) can have a tremendous impact on future violence victimization, perpetration, and lifelong health and opportunity.

“ACEs” comes from the CDC-Kaiser Adverse Childhood Experiences Study, a study that discovered childhood trauma leads to the adult onset of chronic diseases, depression and other mental illness, violence, being a victim of violence, as well as financial and social problems. The ACE Study has published about 70 research papers since 1998. Hundreds of additional research papers based on the ACE Study have also been published.

• CDC: Center for Disease Control and Prevention: Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs)

• Aces Too High

In 2020, CDC announced funding for the Preventing Adverse Childhood Experiences: Data to Action cooperative agreement to support adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) monitoring and prevention. The following videos were published by the CDC to help educators and community members better understand ACEs and prevention of ACEs.