Get Your Students Hired
This is a general discussion forum for the following learning topic:
Teaching Secondary Students Affected by Trauma --> Trauma in the Classroom
Post what you've learned about this topic and how you intend to apply it. Feel free to post questions and comments too.
Teaching students who have experienced trauma can take an emotional toll on educators, leading to vicarious trauma or compassion fatigue. To mitigate its effects, teachers need to practice intentional self-care, seek support, and establish boundaries
Trauma creates many responses in children. The fawn response was new to me,. I have always heard of Fight or flight. I can understand freeze, but Fawn was new to me. I can see it now that it has been explained to me. We see students like this. I did associate it with a trauma response until now.
The high amount of vicarious trauma that teachers encounter, must be offset with resiliency techniques.
It is very helpful to learn about the different forms of causes, effects, and responses to trauma events.
It was astounding to me that 25% of youth will experience sexual violence before they turn 18. I had no idea the number was so high. This makes me look at my classes a lot differently.
My biggest takeaway from this is how I need to focus intently on doing a more focussed assessment of the behaviors I need to try to understand. This in order to better provide for my students.
Trauma can be labeled as follows: acute, chronic, complex, and vicarious.
75% of educators exhibit at least mild stress symptoms suggesting PTSD related to their teaching duties. All the more reason for the mental support provided by a number of districts as a benefit and resource.
I learned about the 4 F's of trauma response. I was familiar with the freeze, flight, fight responses, but hadn't heard of the fawn response before. I've seen and experienced the fawn response before. Now I know the name!
Understanding triggers from our students can be so challenging because they are often times so similar to other issues going on for the student. Creating a safe place for all students is so crucial!
Identifying the Four Fs in Trauma is important so that educators can respond accordingly
There are many ways that trauma can materialize in the classroom, in behaviors that seem disconnected to trauma, but are often behavior-based. Teachers can learn to recognize this as trauma-related and react accordingly.
at least 25% of students have experienced sexual trauma with the vast majority of these cases being unreported. It is crucial that we recognize this disconnect when identifying concerns about student experience.
Opportunities to recognize and respond to students at risk is a responsibility that carries a lot of weight for me. I want to be able to help as a side function of my normal duties, but so often I feel ill prepared to make informed assessments. I'm by no means a professional and these are very serious conditions to be an amature.
I've personally experienced some of the behaviors mentioned in the lesson, but can't recall if they are due to any specific type of truama. I'm certain that the misinterpretation of certain behaviors can go both ways. Maybe the behavior is tied to other issues (i.e., learning disabilities, laziness). As teachers we need to remember that it is not our place to make a diagnosis, but we can report troublesome behaviors that can be addressed by trained professionals.