Where to Start?

So you have some kids in your life with trauma backgrounds.  You are probably facing a lot of chaos, a lot of challenging behaviors.  Where do you even begin to address all of the difficulties?  You may have kids that are fighting, cussing, ripping things off of walls, flipping tables, running away, and refusing to comply with any direction.  And in the middle of all of that, you are supposed to be educating them?  Where do you even start?

When working with children with trauma backgrounds, I've found that the key is to develop a positive, cheerful environment and simultaneously hold space for their big emotions.  Easier said than done, and of course there will still be behavioral challenges, but if you can excel at these two aspects, you will be beginning on the best possible footing.  

Creating a positive environment: Make the physical space a nice place to be.  Often, when constantly dealing with children who destroy things, all attempts to make the space attractive and pleasant are abandoned.  However, I have also seen that behaviors reflect the expectations, and environment silently but powerfully communicates expectations. The facility school that I inherited had all dark gray walls in every classroom, mismatched wobbly furniture, and very little typical classroom academic and decorative additions to the walls (and ceilings). Lighting was terrible and institutional (half the rooms have no windows, the other half have one small window). It honestly felt like a prison.  If the space feels like a prison, kids will act like they are in prison.  Over the summer before school started, I painted the walls cheerful pastel colors, (ok so someone said it looked like the Easter bunny threw up, but it was still so much better than the gray and darker gray that it was), we procured donations of better furniture, and installed a small library.   If it feels like a school, kids will be set up to behave like they are in a school.  Ok, ok, I hear the eye rolls and the frustrated sighs.  You don't want to put up posters or ceiling decor just to get them ripped down. My approach here is to make it cheerful, but don't invest anything I'm not willing to lose.  If a child destroys it, we'll deal with it, but we are not going to descend into settling for a gray, hopeless environment.   

A positive environment includes not only the paint and decor, but also the vibe the adults bring into the space.  When the adults in the room are negative, what hope do students with trauma have?   Our adults have to be consistent, calm and positive and students need to know that they are cared about. The goal is to persist with calm positivity even when the kids are behaving their worst. This sounds impossible, I know, and this topic could be an entire book, and I am aiming to expand on this in later posts, but the bottom line is that the adults need to set a positive, cheerful tone in order for kids to feel safe and relaxed.  The quote below embodies this idea -- we are creating a calm, positive vibe that the kids can enter into.  WE set the tone and leave the door open for the students to join us.

When a student with all kinds of big emotions enters a space that feels happy and positive, they will be so much more calm and settled.  

Holding space for big emotions: The kids we deal with have a lot of baggage.  It's hard enough being a kid but it can be absolutely soul-crushing to have to deal with the kinds of things these kids handle.  So no matter how amazing you set up your space, no matter how loving and compassionate your adults are, you will still see big, difficult emotions come out as these kids grapple with the realities in their lives.  Emotions often manifest in the form of behaviors.  

The goal is to give them space and support to grapple with the emotions before it becomes a bigger behavior issue.  So having some options available to students for coping and calming is key. Think of this like providing a pressure valve.  Give a way for students to blow off steam before the whole thing explodes.  Teachers can give choices about the order of tasks, seating options, whether to complete a task alone or with help, or choosing which type of assignment.  We also build in a lot of breaks to give time to blow off steam.  As a principal, I like to make sure every student knows that they have the option of coming to my office at any time to cool down if they feel themselves starting to get upset.  There are boundaries around this -- they need to communicate to their classroom teacher where they are going so that they aren't just leaving a room any time they want to.  But I encourage my teachers to let them come to me, and then I can gauge if they need to be sent back to class or if they truly need a break or someone to listen to them.  There is a designated chair in my office where a student can take a break, cry, read, color, or do a marble maze I have on hand.   If a student is fidgety, another option is to take a walk around the building with an adult.  This gives an outlet for physical energy and also some opportunity to talk it out. Whatever the outlet, students need a way to handle their stress and emotions without punishment, before it becomes a bigger issue.  

These two aspects of establishing the culture and systems of your school are paramount.  If the environment and relationships aren't positive, then you've already lost.  If there is no space for students to release the emotional pressures, then you are just setting yourself up for explosions. But if you get those two things right, you will have created a foundation that you can build on with success.