What Are Trauma-Informed Practices? Six Basics for New Teachers

The numbers are staggering: Approximately two-thirds of children have experienced at least one traumatic event by the age of 16. Of that number, 1 in 7 children experience child abuse or neglect. As schools work to provide the best possible learning experience for these affected students, trauma-informed practices have become the norm.

How is trauma defined?

SAMHSA describes trauma as an event or circumstance that results in physical, emotional, and/or life-threatening harm.  Events such as abuse, neglect, witnessing violence, unstable housing or homelessness, or natural disasters are all examples of events that could cause trauma.  

Exposure to trauma can negatively affect a person’s mental, emotional, and physical health long after the initial trauma occurred.  

How can trauma impact our students?

Trauma is difficult for teachers to address because children often are not communicative about their pain or distress.  Rather, students who have experienced trauma will often display symptoms that are disruptive to or disengaged from the learning environment.  This creates unique challenges for teachers and school administrators.  

How can trauma manifest itself in your classroom?

• Difficulty with self-regulation   
• Difficulty forming relationships with adults (particularly those in authority)
• Difficulty expressing emotions in a healthy manner
• Difficulty in executive function skills 
• Excessive negative thinking or perseveration 

An added difficulty for teachers is that the behaviors could appear to come out of nowhere.  A sudden or angry outburst, refusal to do work, or bursting into tears could be what is presented outwardly due to a past or ongoing trauma.  Not inconsequentially, this causes stress and anxiety for teachers.  

Trauma-informed practices aim to provide a positive learning environment for the affected student, the rest of the class, and the teacher. 

Below are six tips if a student is struggling in your class.  Also, be sure to check out the accompanying checklist.

Six Trauma-Informed Practices for Teachers

1. Build trusting relationships

As is always the case when working with students, going out of your way to build a trusting relationship is the foundation of success. It is even more important to consciously build relationships with students who have suffered from trauma.

Students who have experienced trauma often lack safety and security in their environment.  As a result, many struggle to trust adults.  Building this relationship may take longer and will need to be more intentional.  The more you can build this foundation with your students, the more success you will see.

Trauma-informed practices for building trusting relationships:

• Spend a minute or two each day talking with the student about their lives and interests 
• Avoid discussing academics, at least initially 
• Focus on providing the student with positive attention, which may be missing from their lives
• Stay consistent and check in with them every day 

Even once you feel that you have a strong relationship with the student, try to consistently continue the practice of talking to the student.  It may be one of the few positive interactions that the student has with an adult all day.   

2. Stay consistent and predictable with classroom routines

Just as you should aim for consistent interactions with students who have experienced trauma, you should also stay as consistent and predictable as possible with your class schedule. 

Child Mind Institute explains that a common symptom of trauma is hypervigilance or being overly alert to potential danger.  Visually it can be seen as the student being jumpy, startling easily, or becoming irritable if they do not know what is going to happen next.  

Trauma-informed practices for classroom routines: 

• Have an agenda on the board every day 
• Keep the furniture in the classroom consistent, 
• Set up student check-ins (both academic and social-emotional) throughout the period 
• Alert the student before any large changes to the routine can help the student  feel more in control of the situation  

Taking measures to promote consistency and predictability in your classroom will help to create a safe environment where the student’s hypervigilance and potential for agitation decrease and the ability to focus on learning increases.

3. Manage student behavior without confrontation

Two common symptoms of trauma are poor self-regulation and excessive negative thoughts.  These symptoms often spring to the surface during interactions with adults and are where the outbursts or eruptions occur.  

Students who have experienced trauma are more likely to have hostile-attribution bias, which is the tendency to interpret a person’s behavior as harmful or aggressive.  This can translate to a teacher making a request or comment in a neutral tone and the student interpreting it as the teacher yelling at them or hating them.  The student can then become oppositional.

Trauma-informed practices for student interactions

• Write a behavior modification request on a piece of paper that can be left on the student’s desk 
• Preface a behavioral request by providing your rationale.  “It seems like a few students are having trouble concentrating.  Could you please stop tapping?” is less confrontational than “Don’t tap your pencil, please.”  

Other tips for student interactions:

Putting the request at the end after providing context shifts the conversation to one that is more collaborative and provides the student with a degree of autonomy and power in the situation.  

Likewise, the potential for an escalated interaction increases when the demand is done in front of the class, in a loud voice, standing over the student at their desk, or as an either-or choice.  (“Stop tapping your pencil or leave class.”)  Non-confrontational working with the student helps create a situation where the focus stays on the issue and changing the behavior rather than on a power struggle.  

When you begin to see a student on the verge of an outburst or steadily escalating in emotions, you can help the student de-escalate by acknowledging their feelings, the way they are presenting themselves, and what they are telling you.  Name the emotion you think they are feeling and ask how you can work through this.  Opening a dialogue may help the child name their feelings and detach emotionally from them.  

4. Help students “change the channel”.

Another option is to help them change the channel.  Traditionally we may have suggested to an upset student that they take a walk to go to the bathroom to calm down.  While this may work for some students, the isolation could cause traumatized students to dwell on the issue and continue the negative thinking loop.  

Ideas for changing the channel that helps focus the brain on something other than the problem at hand: 

• Ask the student to focus on their favorite TV show or YouTube video and think through all of the details they can remember about the characters 
• Have the student read a book
• Providing a coloring page, word search, or crossword puzzle
• Trivia cards 

This option can provide the necessary time to de-escalate and then the student can come back to the problem, if needed, with a fresh perspective.

When you are thinking through de-escalation, remember that there are times when the situation escalates so quickly or the outburst is so extreme that you will not have time for these techniques.  In those cases, the safety of everyone in the classroom is the primary focus and administration should be called for support.  

5. Think through the lens of self-determination theory

In many ways, the techniques of working with students with trauma highlight the importance of self-determination theory.  Self-determination theory focuses on motivation and personality.  Without getting too involved (you can read more about self-determination theory here), self-determination theory says that a person’s well-being and intrinsic motivation are affected by their levels of competence, autonomy, and connectedness to others.  

In essence: How can you make students feel more competent, autonomous, and connected to the classroom? 

Tips for helping students feel more competent, autonomous, and connected:

• Authentically compliment the work product
• Elicit their expertise by helping others
• Providing leadership opportunities for the student 
• Offer choices to boost autonomy through prompts, work product, where they sit, the order they complete assignments, etc.  
• Providing choice also increases your interaction with the student and models collaborative working relationships with them.  

6.  Don’t take it personally

Try not to be surprised when a student’s outburst occurs.  Understand that even when you make a neutral statement, the student may interpret it as one that is negative.  Or, an outburst may occur when the student has been having a good day or was asked to do an activity they normally enjoy.  

The outburst is coming from their larger life content, not from the context of your class.  Students will exhibit poor self-regulation, negative emotions, and outbursts.  Along the same lines, while it is natural to take outbursts personally — particularly when they are directed against you — try not to. 

If you are noticing outbursts or erratic behavior and you are not aware of any background or context on the student, reach out to an administrator or counselor.  Confidentiality may limit how much information they can share. However, they should be able to provide you with tips for interacting with the student.

Lastly, it is important to reiterate that working with students who have experienced trauma can cause the teacher increased stress and hypervigilance.  Never knowing when a student is going to have an outburst or whether what you say is going to upset the student poses challenges and difficulties.  To that end, the more that you can build a relationship with the student and begin to understand the most effective way to work with the student, the more your stress will decrease.  

We sometimes think that building relationships comes at the expense of the learning environment.  However, in actuality the more you can interact with the student productively, the easier it will be for you to get the student on task and achieve your academic learning goals for that child. 

The accompanying checklist is designed as a way for you to quickly run through a list of best practices.  It will help you both proactively work with the student and reactively respond to an outburst. 

Amanda Melsby has been a professional educator for 20 years.  She taught English before working as an assistant principal and later as a high school principal.  Amanda holds an Ed.D. in Educational Practice and Leadership and is currently a dean of teaching and learning.