Trauma-Informed Practice

“If a child accrues a bunch of tardies, we must withhold judgment and show concern. If a child comes to school high, we must withhold judgment and show concern. Whatever a child does, the trauma-informed response is first to make sure everybody is safe, then withhold judgment and show concern.”

- Paul Gorski, How Trauma-Informed Are We, Really?

Trauma-informed practice includes the acknowledgement that students endure hardships and experience traumas both in and outside of the classroom, and that, as people in positions of power, it is our responsibility to disrupt harmful behaviors, policies, and practices inside the school, and work within understanding that impact of systemic issues may become visible as students exist in the educational space. 

I believe that, quite often, schools will say that they provide a trauma-informed experience for their students, while continuing to perpetuate harm via white supremacy and other forms of violence; the methods we’ve used often have the opposite effect from what we are hoping for. I believe in centering the voices of scholars whose research challenges the status quo around what is often continuous harm veiled as trauma-informed practice, and hope to center the needs of students over the needs of an institution. 

See:

  • https://www.ascd.org/el/articles/how-trauma-informed-are-we-really

  • https://www.learningforjustice.org/magazine/summer-2019/when-schools-cause-trauma

  • https://educate.bankstreet.edu/occasional-paper-series/vol2020/iss43/4/?utm_source=educate.bankstreet.edu%2Foccasional-paper-series%2Fvol2020%2Fiss43%2F4&utm_medium=PDF&utm_campaign=PDFCoverPages