Tuesday Talks!

Trauma-Informed Teaching: Sparking Change in Schools

Dr. Tiffany Season 3 Episode 7

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As a teacher, when a student acts out or shuts down in your classroom, do you find yourself asking "what's wrong with this kid?" Trauma-informed teaching flips that question to "what has happened to this kid?" – a powerful shift that can transform your classroom environment and student outcomes.

Today's students bear burdens far beyond what children should handle. From personal traumas like abuse and neglect to collective traumas stemming from poverty, displacement, or systemic oppression, these experiences significantly impact how students show up in the classroom. What's crucial to understand is that trauma affects each child differently – what one student brushes off might deeply wound another.

In this week's episode, you'll learn the 5 key principles of Trauma-informed teaching,  what Trauma-Informed teaching is, what it is not and ways that you can transform your classroom by incorporating the key principles. 

Share this episode with teacher friends and administrators to advocate for comprehensive training that goes beyond one-day workshops. Together, we can create schools that serve not just as places to learn, but as spaces of healing and support where all students can thrive.

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Tuesday Talks is hosted by Dr. Tiffany. She has been a Speech/Language Pathologist for 20 years. She's also a speaker and educational consultant. Dr. Tiffany hosts webinars and in-person workshops for teachers and parents.

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Speaker 1:

Welcome to Tuesday Talks, your educational podcast, helping parents become strong advocates for their kids and teachers to make big impacts in the classroom. Here we go. Hey, hey, welcome, welcome, welcome. Thanks for joining me again for another amazing Tuesday Talks. If you haven't already, subscribe, like, share, follow, download all the social media stuff that I remind you of every weekend. It just helps me know that the content that I'm sharing is valuable and it's helping you in some type of way, so be sure to hit that subscribe button and download an episode if you're listening on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. So I have a really what I think is another fantastic topic.

Speaker 1:

Tonight we're going to be talking about trauma informed teaching and how this can spark change in schools Trauma informed teaching. So this is going to be an episode that you are going to want to get your notebook out and start jotting down some notes. Open up the notes app in your phone, because if you have a child that has any heightened anxiety, that has experienced trauma, they're your own child or their child in your classroom. I'm going to be sharing some really important information that I think will be super beneficial to you as a teacher and as a parent, so let's dive right in. There are so many kids that come into schools and classrooms every single day bearing more than what kids should have to handle. I think we can all agree on that. The world is a different place from when I was a kid. What's going on in our schools is way different than what was going on when I was in school. And so in the clinical world, all of these new things that kids are having to deal with to handle the burden they're bearing, is referred to as trauma, and that's where this term trauma-informed teaching originated from, because clinical professional people discovered that we're saying kids need to come to school ready to learn, but some of them can't get past the trauma to even be able to be ready to learn in the classroom.

Speaker 1:

And if you've been a teacher for a week or 20 years, you know that this is true. Whether you have identified what the kids are going through as traumatic or not, you know that there's something else at play that's impacting how the student is showing up in your classroom, and so trauma can be relative. The student is showing up in your classroom, and so trauma can be relative to personality, disposition, and it doesn't have to be severe all the time, because what can cause trauma in one child can have minimal effect on another and, conversely, what could have a minimal effect on one child could be very detrimental to another. So you have to understand who is the kid in front of you. Right, like even for my own child, I know that there are some things that I can just brush off or I see another kid just kind of brush off that my child really holds on to, and it could be something simple somebody calling him a name or a teacher giving a disapproving look where I'm like let that go. But that can stick with him sometimes. I have to understand that it could be different for him than maybe a friend of mine whose kid maybe experienced something similar.

Speaker 1:

And if you have multiple kids as a parent, you know that your kids can respond to the same situation very, very differently. It's that old adage that they say. Like there are two brothers in a home that grow up with an alcoholic dad and one kid grows up to an adult after experiencing the trauma associated with having an alcoholic parent. One brother grows up and says I'll never touch an alcoholic drink ever, because I see how it ruined my parents' life, how it impacted my life. And then the other brother says I became an alcoholic because of the trauma I experienced every day with my parent, who was an alcoholic. This was the only path for me. So same situation, two kids that went on very different tracks because of the way they processed what was happening around them every single day. So just know that trauma, as we talk about trauma-informed teaching, is not going to show up in every kid the same way, even if they come from the same household. So some of the types of trauma that trauma-informed teaching can address.

Speaker 1:

The first category is personal trauma. There are adverse childhood experiences that could include physical abuse, sexual abuse, neglect. Any type of household dysfunction would be considered an adverse childhood experience. There could also be community violence. Witnessing or even being a victim of violence in a kid's neighborhood or their community can impact them in a way that could cause a traumatic response or reaction internally. Natural disasters or accidents even witnessing or experiencing a natural disaster or a serious accident, or even a war, can really impact kids as well, or even a war can really impact kids as well. Loss and grief I think this is one that we are all fully aware of that death of a close family member or a friend can really impact a child Serious injury or illness, from the student's own injury or illness to that of a family member or close friend as well. So those are some types of personal trauma that could impact a child.

Speaker 1:

Now there are what is termed collective or historical traumas as well, and those fall under two categories systemic oppression and socioeconomic stressors. So systemic oppression is a trauma experienced by groups due to widespread discrimination, prejudice, racism, like, for instance, you know, against African-American people, or historical trauma affecting Native Americans or descendants of Holocaust survivors. So those would be types of systemic oppression. This is something that's widespread, that is affecting an entire group of people, and then a trauma that's experienced by members of that group. The socioeconomic stressors these are traumas that result from chronic issues like poverty, homelessness, food insecurity, and these affect a community, affect a family. If you've been a teacher in a classroom, surely you've encountered at least one student who always came to school hungry. There was food insecurity going on in their household or homelessness that didn't give them the opportunity to eat anything or at least a balanced meal. Sometimes students may not have appropriate furniture at home to be able to sleep comfortably, so they come to school always tired and sleepy. And if you do a little digging you find out they sleep on the floor, they don't have a bed, they don't have a couch. So those are some of the socioeconomic stressors that can cause that collective or historical trauma.

Speaker 1:

The next type of trauma that can impact kids are global events. So this again is a collective trauma of a global pandemic. Think back to COVID-19. It impacted some kids differently than others. Some are like oh you know, I just get to stay at home and do school. Others had this weary outlook on the future. I'm never going to be able to get back out. If I do, will it be safe? And so that can have an impact again in different ways in kids from even the same household.

Speaker 1:

Other types of trauma can include displacement, so being forced to leave your home. If you have a family that has experienced a natural disaster or some type of conflict and so they have been forced to leave their home and now maybe they are living with friends or in a car or in a long-term hotel efficiency type setting, so that displacement being taken away from a home that you've known for many years, whether you're five years old or you're 15 years old, can have a certain level of traumatic impact on you. And then moral trauma. Sometimes educators can experience moral trauma when they are repeatedly exposed to situations where students and families lack necessary support and resources. So that is a type of trauma that can impact you as an educator when you maybe work in a school where there is a high level of poverty, and so you are experiencing over and over again families that lack the financial resources, the nutritional resources, just day-to-day basic resources, and so that can cause trauma on you as well.

Speaker 1:

Again, teachers are just like kids. In this situation it can affect one differently from another, and those are some of the ways that trauma can impact a student and can show up some of those situations that cause the trauma. And so what trauma-informed teaching is is it's an approach where educators understand how trauma impacts student learning, behavior, well-being, and it creates this shift from what's wrong with this kid to what has happened to this kid. Do you see even the nuance of how that those two questions are very different what's wrong with this child? And flipping that to what's happened to this child to cause this type of behavior, this type of reaction. And so this approach creates safe, supportive, predictable and empowering learning environments by building strong relationships, providing choice, fostering trust, collaboration and cultural competency to help students heal and thrive. And so I want to share some of the key principles of trauma-informed teaching.

Speaker 1:

If you have used trauma-informed teaching as a practice in your classroom, kudos to you. I encourage you to share what you have learned, what you have done for students in your classroom, with teacher friends, so then they can also do those things and try them out for students in their classroom as well. If it's something you found success with, then go into your administration to say, hey, this is something that I think can help the greater student body let's try this out. I think that's great as well. The greater student body let's try this out. I think that's great as well. If trauma-informed teaching is something new to you, then this is the perfect episode for you, or a teacher friend who maybe hasn't heard of it, or maybe just heard of it in topic and not really gotten deep into what the nuances are of it. So be sure to share this episode with friends, colleagues. So be sure to share this episode with friends, colleagues and even administrators.

Speaker 1:

So there are five key principles associated with trauma-informed teaching. The first is safety, so creating secure and stable environments where students feel safe to express themselves and take risks without fear of re-traumatization. So school as much as we talk about the impact that's driving teachers out of the field and things that go on day-to-day in schools, for some kids that school day is the most secure and stable environment that they are in all day within a 24-hour period. Think about that. That school, with everything that goes on in schools, is creating the most safe and secure and stable environment that these kids experience in a 24-hour period. The next key principle is trustworthiness building trust through consistent, predictable and transparent actions, as well as communication. Trustworthiness is something that helps any relationship right. We can think about relationships outside of school, relationships with parents, relationships with our students. But building that trust is something that students can come to rely on as consistent and predictable and very transparent. The quickest way to lose trust from a student is to hide something from them that they later come to find out you are aware of. It makes them weary of believing you going forward right. So it makes sense that that would be one of the key principles of trauma-informed teaching that trustworthiness piece.

Speaker 1:

The third key principle empowerment and choice Giving students agency in their learning and providing them with options to foster a sense of control and self-efficacy. Empowerment and choice. This is one that stuck out to me because the way that traditional school is structured, there is not a lot of empowerment and choice given to kids. We're doing this at this time. You have no other choices, right? And if you have a kid coming from a home where that's the same vibe at home, they might come into class and want to buck the system At home. They can't do it At school they feel like they can. And so if you're not allowing them to feel empowered and have some agency in their learning to choose what they want to work on, how long they want to work on something, you're not giving them that opportunity to have a sense of control, which a lot of kids really struggle with. That dynamic with teachers. They want to control what they do and when they do it, and that is just not the way that most public schools are structured to give them that sense of empowerment. That's one of the key principles here to trauma-informed teaching.

Speaker 1:

The fourth is collaboration. So working with students, families and communities to support student well-being and success. So that collaboration piece. I've said it here many, many times School cannot just be school and home cannot just be home. There has to be collaboration with students, families and the greater community. So if there's an expert in trauma-informed teaching in the community administrators, I encourage you to reach out. Offer this professional the opportunity to come into your school building on career day or volunteer day to talk to your teachers, to have a session with parents, to inform them. I think a lot of times parents aren't really aware of situations that could be causing trauma, that are showing up in school in different ways, and so then just enlightening them to some of the situations that can cause this traumatization for students is really important. It's an aha moment. And then the fifth principle is cultural competency, and this is really recognizing and addressing how culture, history and systemic factors can impact trauma in learning. So if you have students that come from different cultures, different historical backgrounds or there's any type of systemic factors that you know of that are impacting maybe not just one student but maybe the community that the student comes from, that is something that should also be taken into consideration and is one of the principles of trauma-informed teaching.

Speaker 1:

So, like I mentioned, in the traditional setting it can be really hard to manage all five of these key principles in the classroom right. We have overcrowding in classrooms, teachers haven't had the proper training. Parents are usually not part of the equation, even though they should be. Administration doesn't fully commit to their role in making it work in the classrooms, and schools might provide a one-day workshop with minimal follow-through or support or guidance, and this should be done at the start of each school year, because I can't think of a school that doesn't have at least one student who comes with some type of trauma that needs to be addressed in the classroom, not as a therapist, but as a teacher. And so what you can control as a teacher is not becoming their clinical psychologist, because you don't have a degree in that, but being able to empower them to make choices, establishing that trust with them, making them feel safe and secure, collaborating with others, and they are looking at the hottest, latest topics in what could set their school apart, and they launch these efforts half-baked. We're going to get all of our teachers across the district to this one location and they're going to hear this speaker speak about this huge topic, which could be trauma-informed teaching, and then we're going to check this off our list to say we provide our teachers with this information.

Speaker 1:

It has to go beyond that. It cannot just be a one-day thing. It can't even be a two-day workshop one-day thing. It can't even be a two-day workshop. This level of teaching is going to require a high overview of what it actually is to a large group could be, and then to smaller groups and then to grade levels. So you have to take this large concept and bring it down to meet the teachers on their territory, which is their school or their classroom. We can't just go to a civic center and listen to it for a half day workshop or a full day workshop and be expected to take this back to our classroom and implement it ourselves when we have a list of other things that are going on as well.

Speaker 1:

Not to say that this isn't important, but in the day-to-day things, when you know that you have to have your lesson plans ready, you know you need to have those standards written on the board. You know that you have upcoming IEP meeting, that you need to prepare for this level of teaching, this trauma-informed teaching, gets bumped down on the list of things that have your attention. Bump down on the list of things that have your attention. So really something that I think administrators lead the charge in in making sure that this level of teaching is as effective as it could be, enrolling the assistance of school counselors, school psychologists which, again, everybody is staffed to the guild but just making sure that there's space in their day, whether you have funds to allocate an additional staff member to come in to provide the support, taking it up the chain to superintendents, associate superintendents, whatever the case may be, if you feel like your school population and the greater community would benefit from this type of teaching. The reason why trauma-informed teaching matters so much is because, number one, it supports student well-being. It helps students recover from traumatic experiences and improves their overall well-being, which then reduces barriers to learning.

Speaker 1:

We hear all the time kids aren't showing up to class ready to learn. They need to be ready to learn is causing the reaction that we see in class, whether it's tiredness, attitude outbursts, just a sense of apathy. We have to get to the bottom of it and that doesn't come with us just asking the kids questions, because kids are going to leave out information. What could be something that we feel is very out of the norm to a kid. It could be part of their norm. So talking to the kids, ask them about what's going on at home is great, but you're going to have to go beyond that and talk to the families as well.

Speaker 1:

And that takes trust, because think about the parent who is homeless, who's unhoused, who doesn't have a home to go to. They are not gonna be ready to tell the school, yeah, we don't have anywhere to live, because the fear is what happens next is now social services gets involved. Now my kid gets taken away from me and, as well-meaning as you might be as a parent, you might not be meeting the needs of your kids, but you also don't want somebody stepping in to take your kids away from you, right? So you have to think about that too. There may be some issues that you may never get to the bottom of, but even if you just scratch the surface to know, okay, they're not sleeping in the same place every night you might not know all the details associated with arriving to that point, but the kid has shared with you yeah, every night we sleep somewhere different. That, right, there is enough to let you know which of those five key principles you need to tap into with this student. Maybe they need a little bit longer in the morning. Maybe they need that empowerment and that choice to say, okay, I just need to lay. I'm going to let the student lay their head down on the desk in the back. Maybe I'll ask the school counselor if, in the morning, they can take their breakfast to their office and just have a 30 minute, 15 minute nap and then come to class, because we know that their living arrangement and sleeping arrangement is not stable. So do you see what I mean? You don't need to know all of the details all of the time, but even just knowing a little bit of it can help guide you towards which one of those key principles to really focus in on as it relates to that specific student.

Speaker 1:

And then, lastly, trauma-informed teaching really does foster healing. It aims to create schools that are not just places to learn but also spaces of healing and support for students, and that is a really lofty concept. If your school is situated in an area, a neighborhood where there's a lot of distrust between families and schools Because just that example I gave you about a family who may be moving around every day trying to find somewhere to sleep and eat each night parents in that type of situation they're not going to be as forthcoming with those types of details, because there's a fear there, and rightfully so. Some things that you want to avoid with trauma-informed teaching is you don't want to judge the trauma or compare traumatic experiences. Remember we talked about trauma can impact one kid one way and another kid another way, so it is not for educators to decide if an experience was not that bad. When you find yourself feeling that way, feeling jaded in that way, and thinking things like I've seen worse, come on, get over it. It probably means that you're feeling overwhelmed with all this on your plate and you're not at that moment ready to be as sensitive to the trauma. So just avoid that judgment piece.

Speaker 1:

It's easy to think like you know. You see this kid come in. They're so sad, day after day it's been two weeks now you finally decide, hey, what's going on? And they're like oh, my family pet died. Or, you know, last week my grandma moved out. And you might be thinking to yourself okay, how long ago was that? Six months. Okay, it's time to get over it. Move on, we're here at school, it's time to focus on school. You know, don't think about that. You know it's sad that your pet passed away, but maybe you'll get another one. You know, can you call your grandma, even though she moved out, and we can be kind of dismissive of it because we haven't we've judged it to be something that isn't that bad. But again, what is minimal to one could be detrimental to another. So definitely try to avoid that.

Speaker 1:

Also, you want to avoid taking any behavior personally. If a kid is refusing to open up to you, refusing to engage with you, if they're acting out in class, remembering as hard as it can be, remembering that it's not about you, and if you can avoid taking misbehavior as a personal disrespect or a front to your authority as a teacher, it'll be so much easier for you to respond constructively, because reminding yourself that the student is not giving you a hard time, but rather the student is having a hard time, flips the script totally right. So that allows you to look for ways to help the student deal with the challenges instead of adding your emotions more emotions into the mix. A couple episodes ago I talked about all of my frustrations with the first few weeks of school and a friend mentioning to me that at recess one of her students just bolted, took off running, and it was a scary situation. It was an unsafe situation, it was a traumatic situation in that moment for the teacher, because she is trying to ensure that this kid is not harmed. Also, making sure she's not harmed and chasing a kid down a sidewalk is not something that you just get over once the situation's done, but in that situation she could have very much been like you know what this student is giving me such a hard time. I don't understand why this student is giving me a hard time. He needs to be in somebody else's class. That wasn't the approach that she took.

Speaker 1:

After calming herself down and reflecting on the situation, she dug deeper into why is a student having such a hard time? And come to find out the student was being raised by a grandparent and very much that grandparent needed support. We talked about that a few weeks ago, an episode about grandparents becoming parents second time around and that grandparent was having a hard time with the kid. And so then this teacher not taking the behavior personally, but actually looking into why the student is having a hard time helped avoid inserting additional emotions into the situation. Now, does the student still deserve a consequence for bolting off? Exactly, and we're going to talk in a little bit about what trauma informed teaching is not. It is not an excuse for bad behavior. It is not an excuse for poor choices. But when you're not taking the behavior personally, it helps you as the educator, reminding yourself that you are looking at the reasons why the student is having a hard time and not why the student's giving you a hard time.

Speaker 1:

And then one of the last things to avoid with trauma-informed teaching is don't take the burden of fixing the trauma on. Don't take that on. You are not responsible for solving the problem or restoring the child's wholeness right. That's a lot of pressure. If you try to do that, you're going to carry the emotional weight of that trauma and that does nothing really to help the student. It could, more so, impact your day-to-day life, your interactions with your own family. The student needs you to be emotionally available and strong, not in a ball of tears because you're so upset about what's happening. If that is your reaction, make sure that you compartmentalize that and don't let that lead to you trying to take on this white knight type of mentality where you're going to come in and save the day.

Speaker 1:

Make it your goal to be compassionate and caring while being lovingly detached. I love the way that that was put in the research that I did for this episode, lovingly detached from the situation. It's not yours so don't take it on. You are looking at what you can change in the student's environment at school, in your classroom, that can help the child. Again going back to those five key principles having the child feel safe, having the student feel a sense of trust, empowered and then collaborating with others and then also looking at that cultural competency. Your role in this is to establish that sense in your school building or in your classroom, not to fix the situation for the child that's outside. I love to say stay in your lane. That's outside of your lane, so don't take that on that burden of fixing it and don't take on the emotions that tie to it. Be lovingly detached from the situation and remember you can only control what you can control.

Speaker 1:

So what trauma-informed teaching is not? It is not a deficit approach. We are not focusing solely on student weaknesses or problems. It's the whole child. This trauma is not representing the whole child. It's a part of their lived experience, but it's not the whole child. So it's not a deficit approach. We're not looking at the child as this walking deficit and they can't do anything because of this. We are acknowledging it's a part of them, but also focusing on what they can do really well.

Speaker 1:

Behavior I mentioned that before. It's not about making excuses for a student's bad behavior. While the behavior may be triggered by trauma, it's not an excuse or a reason to avoid setting boundaries with the student and giving appropriate consequences. Trauma-informed teaching is not about lowering standards or excusing poor performance. The goal is to make students ready for more vigorous learning, not reduce academic expectations. I gave the example before the student who always comes to school sleepy. Maybe they need a quick little 15, 20-minute cat nap at the start of their day. You're not excusing the poor performance. You're giving them an opportunity to get that little bit of extra rest that they need, with the expectation that they show up in your class a little bit more ready to learn than they did if they didn't have that extra time to rest in the morning.

Speaker 1:

And then, trauma-informed teaching is not clinical therapy. It is not a substitute for professional therapy or counseling. Educators' roles are not to diagnose or treat the trauma. Your role is to shift the environment that the student is in. That's within your control. That is, the school building and your classroom. If you feel like a clinical professional needs to be involved. You need to reach out to a school counselor or to a school psychiatrist, but it is not your role to diagnose or treat the trauma at all. If you suspect something's going on, then getting that information to the appropriate school staff member and then working together with them to figure out which of those key principles really need to be focused on to make sure the student is really ready to learn in your classroom.

Speaker 1:

So how does all this work in the classroom? We talked about how the traditional public school setting can be really challenging to empower students to have choice about what they do and when they do it, because it's such a regimented day. But what you can do in the classroom is shift your mindset. So again, instead of judging the student's behaviors, seek to understand what the underlying cause is, asking what has happened to the student to trigger that type of behavior. Remember, you don't have to get granular in all of the details. You can just know surface level details and still have a big impact in the way that you're teaching them from this trauma-informed perspective. Also in the classroom, building those strong relationships, building that supportive and trusting relationship with the student, goes a really long way and try as hard as you can not to break that trust, because it's really hard to repair it. Another thing that can be done in the classroom creating those predictable environments. Again, we talked about how, for some kids, that school day is the most safe, secure, consistent and stable part of their entire day. So implementing those routines, predictable schedule, clear prompts that can help a student feel safe and secure and give them that sense of consistency as well.

Speaker 1:

Providing flexibility, allowing for flexibilities in response to student needs, opportunities for rest, like we talked about here, or a different approach to a task. If it is a writing assignment and the kid is just like falling asleep, can't focus. Allow them to maybe do a voice recording of what they want to write and then later transcribe it. Google Docs has a voice to text option as well. Have them, allow them that opportunity to maybe the first paragraph, to speak their words. Have Google type it out for them on the screen in the second paragraph or the second half. Have Google type it out for them on the screen in the second paragraph or the second half of the writing assignment. They need to write it out. Give some flexibility there, because if you're so firm and set in how it needs to be for every single student. You're going to bump up against this brick wall that could be rooted in trauma that the child has experienced, and now this has blown up into something huge, when a little flexibility would have really gone a long way.

Speaker 1:

Utilizing social emotional learning the acronym for that, sel these strategies really help students manage their emotions and build resilience. We've talked about social emotional learning on previous episodes of Tuesday Talks, and so it's something that we'll explore more of in upcoming episodes as well. So if that's not something you're familiar with, a quick little Google search will give you a whole lot of information. If that's not an avenue that you want to go down to get the information, talk with your school counselor, talk with your school psychologist to give you the highlights of it, so then you can learn how to implement it in your classroom.

Speaker 1:

And then, lastly, empowering voice. Students are given a voice in their learning. They should be I should say Students should be given a voice in their learning and decision-making. When you empower their voice, it changes things. It also helps them learn that not every time will you get exactly what you want, but there are instances where you can use your voice to speak up for yourself, explain a need that you want met, a need that you want met, and giving students that empowerment helps them in your classroom, feel like this is a safe place for me to be able to voice that and I feel that I can do it constructively, respectfully, but also that it's received by the teacher as well. So if you're an educator and you're like I feel like students in the class could really benefit from trauma-informed teaching.

Speaker 1:

I encourage you highly to talk with us about your administration, about training courses, webinars, whatever the case may be, just making sure that all of it comes with some type of supplementary support. It cannot just be a one-day training. This is too nuanced and too layered of a topic and too important of a topic, I should say, to just be a one-hit wonder. It can't be that You're going to need support in your classroom on a daily basis initially, maybe on a weekly basis, quarterly, also going throughout the school year, so that you can implement it well and just know, the start of a new school year, you get a whole new batch of kids and guess what? You might not be able to use the same key principles with that new batch of kids. So it is something that you need to pour into over and over again. I think that the difference that you see in your classroom will really make it worth it Acknowledging that, yes, this is something else on your plate as an educator.

Speaker 1:

Maybe you are connecting in certain ways with particular students in your class and, in other ways, other students that fit more into your rigorous day-to-day learning schedule in your classroom. If you feel like this could be beneficial to a student, mention it in their IEP meeting. If they have an IEP, pose it as a question to the team. Hey, do any of us think that trauma-informed teaching would be something to help this student that perks in the parent's mind, or it should? Well, I don't know what that is, but if the teacher's suggesting it, it must be something that could possibly be helpful.

Speaker 1:

Come with some facts or thoughts on how it could possibly impact the student, the classroom culture and your experience as a teacher with that student.

Speaker 1:

So pop that into the minds of the IEP team members and have them chew on it, and if it's something that you're really adamant about, then I say keep pushing the issue to make sure that this is something that the student is afforded the opportunity to experience you, I think this is a really big topic. So share this with colleagues, share this with friends. If you're a parent and you feel like this could impact your kid positively, share it with your kid's teacher or your kid's principal, because until we can all get on board with really recognizing what is impacting how kids show up in classrooms, I think we're going to continue to see some of the same issues that we have seen over the years. So thanks again for joining me for another Tuesday Talks. Be sure to continue to like, follow, subscribe, download all the things so that others can enjoy this content and learn from it as well. So I'll see you next week with another episode. Have a good night, bye, be sure to share this episode and join me next week for a brand new Tuesday Talks. See ya.