Teaching Into the Challenge: Increasing Students' Opportunity to Learn Through "Trauma-Sensitive" Practices in the Urban Classroom

• In Event: Linking Care With Justice for Institutionally Marginalized Students

Abstract

Exposure to trauma-inducing, adverse childhood events is pervasive and has a powerful negative effect on a child’s readiness to learn, most observable in school attendance, behavior, and performance. Because academic and social stressors are frequently interpreted as threats by students who have experienced trauma, their singular goal is to escape, whether by fleeing, fighting, or freezing. This results in cumulative academic deficits for students. Drawing on observational data, we provide detailed accounts of expert teachers to illustrate how their daily instructional practices decrease the likelihood of students’ flight and, in turn, increase students’ opportunity to learn. We argue that trauma-sensitive teaching is particularly important in high-minority, high-needs schools where efforts to increase test scores already limit students’ opportunity to learn.

Authors

• Stacy Agee Szczesiul, University of Massachusetts - Lowell

• Megin Charner-Laird, Salem State University

• James H. Nehring, University of Massachusetts - Lowell