Working with Traumatized Students

This is an interesting reminder of some of the areas we may need to pay special attention to in our classrooms with students that are at-risk.

Ten Classroom Strategies That Help Traumatized Students Succeed

            “Domestic violence is a serious and widespread national problem that affects all economic, educational, social, geographic, racial, ethnic, and regional groups,” says Colleen Lelli (Cabrini College) in this Kappa Delta Pi Record article. “While living in their own homes, children are witnessing violence and experiencing trauma daily and, in turn, are expected to go to school and learn… These children have been called the silent, forgotten, and unintended victims of adult-to-adult domestic violence.”

Educators need to watch for warning signs and not mistake them for other learning problems, says Lelli. They can also use the following teaching strategies to help traumatized children succeed in school. [It’s striking that these strategies also benefit non-traumatized students – a classic example of Universal Design for Learning in action.]

            • Sequencing – Traumatic experiences can interfere with children’s ability to organize things sequentially, says Lelli, so it’s helpful to use timelines, comic strips, story lines, and other step-by-step formats to get students to verbalize and organize sequences. Children also benefit from orderly classroom transitions and a predictable schedule.

            • Problem-solving – Making predictions and choosing the most effective solution from a brainstormed list are useful skills for children who live with caregivers who are inconsistent and unpredictable.

            • Receptive language – Traumatized children may have a heightened state of arousal or anxiety and find it difficult to get out of themselves and take another’s perspective, says Lelli, all of which limit their ability to process classroom language, focus on a text, visualize what they are reading about, and complete assignments. Task cards can be helpful – students turn over each one as they complete each step. It’s also good for a student to act as “summarizer”, orally recapping what’s just been learned.

            • Expressive language – Speaking and writing in class can be difficult for traumatized children, and graphic organizers can help them structure and scaffold information. It’s also effective to provide vocabulary that can resolve problems and conflicts. Some teachers have students fill in speech bubbles to describe what’s happening in a well-known painting.

            • Information storage – Concept maps can help students recall important information and connect key ideas and store them in long-term memory. For example, students might read a story about plants, perform a play about seeds growing, plant actual seeds, and observe them turning into plants.

            • Memory retrieval – A positive classroom climate helps traumatized students relax, which frees up space in working memory and facilitates moving learning to long-term memory. Teachers can also teach specific memory techniques.

            • Emotional and behavioral – “Traumatized children often are chronically tense and consistently hyper-aroused,” says Lelli, “which makes them overly sensitive to perceptions of threat or danger.” It’s helpful if teachers rehearse and role-play with students and have them practice self-talk about how they will behave in new situations. A good mnemonic is STOP: Shhh, Think quiet thoughts to calm down, Organize a plan, and Practice the plan.

             • Focus and attention – Incorporating physical activities and movement, written and oral directions, and stress management techniques all help students to improve their performance.

            • Sense of security – Providing warm, nurturing, consistent adult relationships is key, as is consistency with classroom expectations and procedures.

            • Collaboration – “Guidance counselors, social workers, and community partners should collaborate and work as a team to ensure that children are receiving the best help and support for their academic and emotional success,” says Lelli. “Teachers need to know their school policies and protocols, and build relationships with other colleagues in their schools and communities.”

“10 Strategies to Help the Traumatized Child in School” by Colleen Lelli in Kappa Delta Pi Record, July-September 2014 (Vol. 50, #3, p. 114-118), http://bit.ly/1sOM6zi; the author can be reached at CL724@cabrini.edu.

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Kristi Berlin

Director of Curriculum and Technology Integration

kberlin@isd2142.k12.mn.us

St. Louis County Schools, ISD 2142

Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire. William Butler Yeats