Supporting Students and Staff After COVID-19: Your Trauma-Sensitive Back-to-School Transition Plan

Supporting Students and Staff After COVID-19

Your Trauma-Sensitive Back-to-School Transition Plan

Excerpted from Supporting Students and Staff after COVID-19 by Jen Alexander, M.A., NCC, SB-R

Contents

Section I: Preparing for Back to School: Focus on Staff and Families

Section II: Making the Transition: Set Up Your School for Success

Why Understand Trauma?

COVID-19 and Its Effects on Students

I miss my friends and teacher and think I’d like to redo my goal for the year. Maybe just stay alive and keep other people alive too. I don’t really need to move up a bunch of reading levels or finish workbooks. —Aisha, an almost-9-year-old

Aisha is missing connections with the people she values at school. Although she is only a child, Aisha is reevaluating educational priorities during the COVID-19 pandemic—focusing less on academic goals, more on safety as well as people and connection.

Learning Goals

This chapter will guide you to:

What is Trauma?

Individual responses to this global crisis will be different, but at the very least we, as educators, know that many children have experienced social isolation during what may also be times of prolonged, unpredictable, and uncontrollable stress, fear, family illness, grief, and trauma.

As defined in Building Trauma-Sensitive Schools: Your Guide to Creating Safe, Supportive Learning Environments for All Students, trauma is a distressing experience or set of experiences that threatens a person’s actual safety or perceived sense of felt safety to such a degree that it exceeds an individual’s capacity to cope in healthy ways.

While everyone experiences stress, not everyone experiences trauma. Trauma overwhelms the body’s biological stress response system, resulting in negative effects upon life functioning.

What Causes Trauma?

A number of adverse events can cause trauma, including accidents, natural disasters, medical trauma, separation from or loss of parents, neglect or abuse, violence, oppression, racism, poverty, or war. Two-thirds of children in the United States experience a potentially traumatic event by age 16. Furthermore, at least one in four students in all schools has been traumatized to a degree that negatively affects school success.

How Does Trauma Affect Learning?

All humans have a stress response system that is activated during times of challenge. In order for our bodies to be healthy and for us to feel well, we need to acquire more energy than we expend on any given day. An activated stress response system expends energy, which is why it is critical for all of us that stress states be temporary, manageable in intensity, and quickly soothed.

When any person experiences stress that is too much or goes on for too long, especially if relational support is not enough, trauma can cause changes in how the brain and body function. Trauma responses affect people physically, emotionally, behaviorally, cognitively, interpersonally, and spiritually.

Understanding Your Own Response

The COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted students’ lives and potentially resulted in multiple traumatic experiences. Going back to school may create even more stress or trauma. Importantly, these traumatic experiences interact with any other stressors and traumas that students were experiencing before.

Educators must prioritize their own feelings and needs to support their students effectively. Journal assignments are included throughout this book, prompting reflection on personal experiences, thoughts, and emotions as one prepares to understand their students.

Dolphin Journal: What You Do—and Do Not—Miss

Reflect on what you (and others) might miss and don’t miss about how school used to be before COVID-19. Consider what has been lost, what has been gained, what might be desired from the past, as well as what needs to be transformed.

By addressing the unique experiences of each student, educators can promote emotional and social support as schools reopen.