Creating
Trauma
Informed
Schools
Frank Vidimos, LLMSW
Amy Mack, LMSW
Information
Change in Understanding
Change in Actions
Improved Regulation
Growth
Definition
Prevalence
Neurobiological Basis for Behavior
Impacts on Learning/Cognition
Secondary Traumatic Stress
Unique Needs/Supports
Resources
“The kids are very easy,”
says Gomes, a principal.
“The adults are a different
story.”
Dolphin Stress
 The next picture contains 2 identical
dolphins. It was used in a case study on
stress levels at St. Mary's Hospital.
Notice the two dolphins jumping out of the
water. The dolphins are identical. A closely
monitored, scientific study revealed that,
in spite of the fact that the dolphins are
identical, a person under stress would
find differences in the two dolphins. The
more differences found between the
dolphins, the more stress that person is
experiencing.
Look closely at the photograph and if you
find more than one or two differences, you
need to go on a holiday.
Do any of these look familiar?
The secret to success doesn’t
involve the kids so much as it
does the adults: Focus on
altering the behavior of teachers
and administrators and kids
become more interested in
school and feel safer.
Question #1
Have you ever wondered
why some children continue
to engage in the same
behaviors despite receiving
increased consequences to
change those behaviors?
Question #2
How come I have to spend a
significant portion of my time
dealing with the same students
repeatedly with little to no
apparent impact?
Question #3
Is my traditional perspective that
children willfully choose their
behaviors accurate?
Are you willing to consider
the following?
We must move from viewing the
individual as failing if s/he does
not do well in a program to
viewing the program as not
providing what the individual
needs in order to succeed.”
 —Dubovsky, 2000
Freedom Writers
 1:06 – 3:49
Trauma
&
Traumatic Stress
What is trauma?
Overwhelming event or events
that render a child helpless,
powerless, creating a threat of
harm and/or loss.
What is Complex Trauma?
 Traumatic exposure:
 Experiences of multiple traumatic
events that occur within a relational
system.
 Sequential occurrences of child
maltreatment
 Often chronic and early in childhood
The experience is
internalized, and
continues to
impact
development,
perception of self,
others, safety.
Traumatic Experiences of Barclay Hills
Population
Discussion
Traumatic Experiences
 Witnessing or




hearing of a
violent death.
Natural
disasters
Bullying
Neglect
Homelessness
 Invasive medical




procedures
Parental substance
abuse
Caregiver mental
health
Domestic
/community violence
Others?
SELF
CONCEPT
BEHAVIOR
CONTROL
ATTACHMENT
BIOLOGY
DISSOCIATION
SELF
CONCEPT
ATTACHMENT
COGNITION
AFFECT
REGULATION
BEHAVIOR
CONTROL
7 Domains affected by complex trauma
handout
Attachment
 The deep and enduring biological, social,
emotional, and mental connection children
and caregivers establish early in life.
Secure Attachment
 Parents Role
 Provide Secure Base
 Play
 Responsive
 ‘Good Enough Parenting’
Secure Attachment
 Children’s Characteristics
 Self: I am good, wanted, worthwhile, competent
and loveable.
 Caregivers: They are appropriately responsive to
my needs, sensitive, dependable, caring,
trustworthy
 Life: My world feels safe; life is worth living
Secure Attachment
 Child to Adult Characteristics
 Positive self-esteem
 Loving and respectful relationships with parents and






others
Able to trust, be emotionally close and feel empathy and
compassion
Effective coping skills, such as anger management,
impulse control, and frustration tolerance
Positive and hopeful view of self and others and life
(optimism)
Develop independence and resiliency
Successful in school behaviorally and academically
Grow up to be mature, loyal and caring partner and
parent
Insecure Attachment
 Self: I am bad, unwanted, worthless,
helpless and unlovable
 Caregivers: They are unresponsive or too
inconsistent to provide for my needs,
insensitive, hurtful and untrustworthy
 Life: My world feels unsafe, life is not worth
living.
Insecure Attachment








Negative sense of self
Distant and defiant relationship with parents and others
Lack trust, empathy, conscience and remorse
Poor coping skills, including inadequate control over impulses
and emotions and inability to handle frustration and stress
Pessimistic and hopeless view of self, family and life in general
Unable to function independently (pseudo-independence)
School failure, both behaviorally and academically
Severe relationship and parenting problems as adults
 perpetuate the cycle of maltreatment and disrupted
attachment in their own children. (generational)
Event
Traumatic
Impact
Shame
 Healthy Shame
 Socialization
 Teaches boundaries, rules and norms
 Children know that their caregiver loves and
values them
 The voice is from without – the behavior is not
acceptable
 Keeps us from being absolutely right all of the
time
Toxic Shame
 Comes from continual shaming experiences
that are not later repaired.
 Child believes they are damaged, unlovable,
incapable, and bad kids
 The voice is from within – I am not acceptable
 Inhibits healthy attachment – asking for help
and support
 Generally used by caregivers who have not had
their needs met as children and likely
experienced toxic shame as a child
Toxic Shame
 When adults try to address shame and tell
the children that they are not bad kids, the
children will likely do something to prove
the adults wrong (that’s why praise doesn’t
work)
IT WAS THAT ONE MOMENT POEM
“SHAME”
BY DANIEL HUGHES
PTSD can create
symptoms of:
 Re-experiencing
 Avoidance/Numbing
 Hyper-arousal/Anxiety and
Hypo-arousal
Reexperiencing
 Intrusive thoughts, flashbacks, or




nightmares that can impair the ability to
distinguish past trauma from present safety
The child is IN the traumatic event
Reexperiences the terror, horror, and
helplessness
Triggers are often sudden and
unanticipated
Leads to feeling out of control and fears of
re-occurance
Avoidance
 Numbing of general responsiveness
 The attempt to protect the self from
recollections of the trauma
 Deliberate or unconscious attempts to avoid
people, places, smells, and sounds that remind
them of the initial trauma
 May show diminished interest in activities
 constricted play activities in the younger children
 decreased involvement in academic or
extracurricular activities), socially withdrawn, or
experience a sense of detachment from others.
Hyperarousal
Distractible and unfocused
Difficulty completing assignments
May be highly active and restless
Notice every visitor who comes into the room
Get distracted by noise or by a change in schedule
Some children describe being preoccupied with
thoughts or memories of the traumatic event
 When the classroom is quiet, they may have
memories of the traumatic event(s)






 They sometimes work to avoid quiet time
 Disruptive and annoying to others
Freedom Writers 10:17-11:30
ACES STUDY
The Biggest Study You Never
Heard About (ACES)
 Adverse Childhood Events are
remarkably common
 What is uncommon is the recognition
and acknowledgement of them due to:
Time
Shame
Social Taboos
Secrecy
Dr. Vincent Feletti, ACES study
ACES STUDY
Compromised immune system affects
 Brain development
 Hormonal system
 Immune system
 DNA
3 X more likely to contract heart and lung
disease
20 year difference in life expectancy with
ACES
CTAC Trauma Screening
Checklist
Severely Emotionally Disturbed
Oppositional
Bully
Trauma
Lazy
Delinquent
Gang
Member
DSM Diagnoses
Emotionally Impaired
 Impacts of
Trauma/Chronic Stress
difficulty modulating attention
(CTAC Population: 92% moderate to major
attention problems)
learning difficulties
-
Impacts of Trauma/Chronic
Stress
executive functioning (inhibition, planning, organization)
verbal IQ/short term verbal memory
(CTAC Population: 80% had moderate to major receptive
language problems
-
Impacts of Trauma/Chronic
Stress
memory (88%)
sleep
regulation of behavior
interpretation of environment
relationships
Perception
is Reality
Through Our Eyes
(first 1:30)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z8vZxDa2KPM
Severe brain damage caused by
prenatal alcohol exposure
Severe
FAS
Normal
Brain
5-day old infants
photo: Clarren, 1986
Corpus collosum abnormalities in FASD
Mattson, et al., 1994; Mattson & Riley, 1995; Riley et al., 1995
Neglect: The Worst Offender
How differently would we treat
one another if the harm could be
seen on the outside?
Domains affected by complex trauma
handout (discussion of other domains)
BIOLOGY
DISSOCIATION
SELF
CONCEPT
ATTACHMENT
COGNITION
AFFECT
REGULATION
BEHAVIOR
CONTROL
 Impacts of
Trauma/Chronic Stress
difficulty modulating attention
(CTAC Population: 92% moderate to major
attention problems)
learning difficulties
-
Impacts of Trauma/Chronic
Stress
executive functioning (inhibition, planning, organization)
verbal IQ/short term verbal memory
(CTAC Population: 80% had moderate to major receptive
language problems
-
Impacts of Trauma/Chronic
Stress
memory (88%)
sleep
regulation of behavior
interpretation of environment
relationships
School Bus Exercise
Paradigm Shift:
Reframing Our Understanding of
Behavior
Perceived “bad” children do NOT have the
skills of flexibility/adaptability, often have low
frustration tolerance, and also have significant
difficulty applying these skills when they are
most needed. (Greene, 2001)
Freedom Writers Classroom Line
40:45 – 45:23
Embracing a
Paradigm Shift
“An entirely different way is being
developed of viewing all kinds of
individual and social misbehaviors
and maladaptation's, moving from
viewing as “sick” or “bad” or (or both)
to injured”. (Bloom, 1997)
How differently would we treat
one another if the harm could be
seen on the outside?
Lunch break 12:00-1:00
Questions/ Secondary Traumatic Stress
 Agenda for PM
STS
 Target
System Change
Strategies
OT room, student conflict resolution group, etc
 The Passion to do this
work began it all!
 First Year: Energy,
Idealism, Passion
Second Year: Reality Hits
Recognizing
Limitations
Fifth Year: Exhaustion,
Frustration, Decision Time
Current Year: Today
You’re Still
Here!
So where
are you at
with your
energy,
idealism,
passion?
Secondary
Trauma/Compassion Fatigue
 “The natural and consequent behaviors
and emotions resulting from knowing
about a traumatized event from a
significant other, the stress from helping
or wanting to help a traumatized or
stressed person.” (Figley, 1995)
“He only watched it happen.”
“It happened years ago, they’ll grow out of it”
“She’s young, she won’t remember.”
“What did you do to bring this on?”
“What do you mean you can’t remember what he said?”
I
Adult
“If you tell, people will believe there is something wrong with you.”
“I don’t think this ever happened."
“Are you sure it happened this
way?”
Avoidance
Secondary Traumatic
Stress: Risk
Factors/Causes
personal trauma or exposure to traumatic
events or other individuals who are coping with
their own reactions to trauma
direct contact with children’s traumatic stories
helping others and neglecting yourself
traumaawareschools.org/secondaryStress
Individual Indicators of
Distress
Emotional: feeling numb, detached,
overwhelmed, hopeless
Physical: low energy, fatigue
Behavioral: changing your routine, selfdestructive behaviors
Professional: low performance of job tasks,
low morale
traumaawareschools.org/secondaryStress
Individual Indicators of
Distress
Cognitive: experiencing confusion, diminished concentration,
and difficulty with decision making; experiencing trauma
imagery – seeing images over and over again
Spiritual: questioning the meaning of life or lacking selfsatisfaction
Behavioral: changing your routine, self-destructive behaviors
Interpersonal: physical withdrawing or becoming emotionally
unavailable to coworkers or your family
Traumaawareschools.org/secondaryStress
Organizational Stress
“Complex interaction between
traumatized children, stressed staff,
pressured school districts, and
oppressive social and economic
environments.” (Bloom, 2005)
Parallel Process
“Our educational systems frequently
recapitulate the very experiences that
have proven to be so toxic for the
children we are suppose to educate.”
(Bloom, 2005)
How does this happen?
Four Corners
Activity
Impact of STS on Staff
Cognitive effects
Social impact
• Negative bias,
pessimism
• All-or-nothing
thinking
• Loss of perspective
and critical thinking
skills
• Threat focus – see
clients, peers,
supervisor as enemy
• Decreased selfmonitoring
• Reduction in
collaboration
• Withdrawal and loss
of social support
• Factionalism
Emotional impact
• Helplessness
• Hopelessness
• Feeling
overwhelmed
Physical impact
• Headaches
• Tense muscles
• Stomachaches
• Fatigue/sleep
difficulties
Questions
 1. Do we have an urgency
to become a trauma
sensitive school?
 3. What actions will
address staff priorities
and help us become a
trauma sensitive school?
 2. How do we know we
are ready to create a
trauma sensitive action
Plan?
 4. How do we know
whether we are becoming
a trauma sensitive school.
Empathy video
6
5
4
Series 1
Series 2
Series 3
3
2
1
0
Category 1
Category 2
Category 3
Category 4
Building Resiliency
Collaborative Alliance
 “We are in this together!”
 “We are not our role but human beings.”
 The organizational culture significantly affects
the “collaborative alliance” in the school
 Recognition that we all are engaged in a
similar process of managing pain and
navigating educational demands
 The tap system
 “Contact between people stimulates two
important neurotransmitters, dopamine which
enhances attention and pleasure and serotonin
which reduces fear and worry. When people
are in pain connecting with another can
physiologically reduce fear and worry and help
them function effectively again” (Hallowell, 1999).
PACE: building relationships
 Playfulness
 Acceptance
 Curiosity
 Empathy
Self-Care Strategies for
Combating Secondary
Trauma
Physical – sleep well, eat well, dancing,
walking, jogging
Emotional –see friends, cry, laugh, praise
yourself, humor
Bruce Perry/The ChildTrauma Academy, “The Cost of Caregiving”
Self-Care Strategies for
Combating Secondary Trauma
 Psychological-self-reflect, pleasure
reading, say “no”, smile, solitude
Workplace: take breaks, set limits, peer
support, get supervision, use vacations
How Can We Help?
Become Trauma Informed/Get Input
-shift from frustration to understanding
and compassion
-sense of agency among caregivers
Two simple rules for helping
troubled students
 Rule No. 1: Take nothing a raging kid says
personally. Really. Act like a duck: let the
words roll off your back like drops of water.
 Rule No. 2: Don’t mirror the kid’s behavior.
Take a deep breath. Wait for the storm to
pass, and then ask something along the lines
of: “Are you okay? Did something happen to
you that’s bothering you? Do you want to talk
about it?”
Safety Plan handout and discussion
How Can We Help?
safety (feeling of)/safety plans
-access to places, people, activities that
promote feeling of safety and neurobiological
regulation
Developing a Safety Plan
How Can We Help?
self-awareness
non-contingent, consistent positive
regard
sense of connection/relationship
How Can We Help?
Social-Emotional Learning
tools to understand, label and share their
internal experience
help interpreting interpersonal experiences
teach and model ways to regulate,
connect, communicate, repair
Trauma Affect Regulation: Guide for
Education and Therapy
 Real life experience with Target Groups
 Challenging
 Building safety with kids who don’t trust
 Shift from rule based system to learning selfregulation
 Attention and impulsivity in groups
 Successes
 Building common language for students and teachers
 Building a safe environment and developing trust
 Building positive community and peer support
Window of Tolerance
Hyperarousal activation
Exceeds capacity to integrate
The work is here
Regulated Arousal
And here…….
Hypo-arousal: Insufficient ability to integrate
Ogden 2008
Way too wound-up (wild Tigger)
Wound-up
Balanced
Bored / Low energy / Tired & sleepy (Ee-yore)
Think of Your Fist
Regulated
Alarmed
SOS
Regulated
FREEDOM
 Focusing
 Recognizing Triggers
 Emotional Self Check
 Evaluate Thoughts
 Define Goals
 (Identify Positive) Options
 Making a Contribution
Transforming REACTIVE or ALARM emotions,
thoughts and goals.
MAIN emotions, thoughts, and goals
TARGET MATERIALS
Copyright © 2001-2007 by the University of
Connecticut Health Center.
All Rights Reserved. No part of this work may
be copied or distributed without prior written
permission.
How Can We Help?
focus on regulation
our approach matters – a lot
agency/competence/success
connection
predictability/routines
choices (true choices)
patience/repetition
movement
calming response
help organizing/remembering
Questions
 1. Do we have an urgency
to become a trauma
sensitive school?
 3. What actions will
address staff priorities
and help us become a
trauma sensitive school?
 2. How do we know we
are ready to create a
trauma sensitive action
plan?
 4. How do we know
whether we are becoming
a trauma sensitive school.
#1 Trauma Sensitive Schools
leadership and staff share an
understanding of trauma’s impact on
learning and the need for a school-wide
approach
Trauma and Learning Policy Initiative
#2 Trauma Sensitive Schools
the school supports all students to feel safe
physically, socially, emotionally, and
academically
Trauma and Learning Policy Initiative
#3 Trauma Sensitive Schools
the school addresses students’ needs
in holistic ways, taking into account
their relationships, self-regulation,
academic competence, and physical
and emotional well-being
Trauma and Learning Policy Initiative
# 4 Trauma Sensitive Schools
the school explicitly connects students
to the school community, and provides
multiple opportunities to practice
newly-developing skills
Trauma and Learning Policy Initiative
# 5 Trauma Sensitive Schools
the school embraces teamwork,
and staff share responsibility for
all students
Trauma and Learning Policy Initiative
# 6 Trauma Sensitive Schools
leadership and staff anticipate and
adapt to the ever-changing needs of
students
Trauma and Learning Policy Initiative
Foster Resilience
Resilience: a class of phenomena
characterized by good outcomes in
spite of serious threats to adaptation
or development
Dr. Ann Masten, American Psychologist v 56
Resiliency
3 Factors for Resiliency
 Relationship
 Affect Regulation
 Mastery
The Short List of Resilience Factors for
Children and Youth
-effective parents and caregivers
-connection to other competent and caring adults
-problem-solving skills
-self-regulation skills
-positive beliefs about the self
-beliefs that life has meaning
-spirituality, faith and religious affiliations
-socioeconomic advantages
-prosocial, competent peers and friends
-effective teachers and schools
-safe and effective communities
Dr. Ann Masten- pbs blog, Ordinary Magic
Examples of Basic Protective
Systems for Human Resilience
-Attachment Relationships
-Human Intelligence and information processing (a human
brain in good working order)
-Motivation to adapt and opportunities for agency
-Self-control and emotional regulation
-Religious and cultural systems that nurture human
development and resilience
-Schools and communities that nurture and support human
development and resilience
Dr. Ann Masten- pbs blog, Ordinary Magic
Schools are where children:
connect: with teachers, staff, peers, community
feel competent: academic tasks, sports/extracurriculars, in
relationships, volunteering
practice regulation, problem-solving, repair
can experience a return to routine
Think of One Teacher You had
 Punishment doesn’t change behavior; it
just drops hundreds of thousands of
failing kids into a
 school to prison pipeline.
Two Schools of Thought
 School of Thought No. 1. We can point the
finger at parents and wait for them to
change. Counseling might help, but they’d
have to agree to participate. And,
counseling would take months, if not
years to change the family dynamics. In
the meantime, the kids continue to suffer
and behavior gets worse.
Two Schools of Thought
 School of Thought No. 2. Change the schools to
become safe and nurturing, so that kids can
learn no matter what’s going on at home…or in
their neighborhoods…or in their extended
families. The reality is, a school’s traditional
response – suspending, expelling or putting a
child into special education classes – further
traumatizes already traumatized children.
Framework for Intervention
AGGRESSION
Survival Behavior
Could if wanted too
Spontaneous Fight or Flight
TENSION
Willfully Disobedient
Power Struggles
Increase
Frustration
Enforcing
More Rules
Cycle of Conflict
Reinforced
More
Resistive
Oppositional
Behaviors Increase
Social Problems
Rejection
Alienation
PEERS
Developing Personal Safety
Through Prevention & Skill Building
Affirm Feelings
Reduce Frustration
Create Awareness
Provide Appropriate
Expression
Recognize Child’s
Limitations
Cycle of Conflict
Reduced
Recognition of Fears
Alternative
Language/Behavior
Expression
Action Steps:
Trauma Informed
Ancillary Staff
 Trauma screening
 Psychoeducation
 students, teachers and parents
 Develop and practice strategies that
calm the body and increase
emotional and behavioral regulation
REMEMBER!!!
The five to one ratio
“Many of the district’s 23 schools
have adopted trauma-informed
improvement plans.
Suspensions and expulsions have
plummeted.
Arnone Elementary, for example,
which has 826 students from K- 5 ,
86 percent which are minorities, has
seen a 40 percent drop in
suspensions”. Huffington Post 6-27-12
Children’s Trauma Assessment
Center
NCTSN
www.nctsn.org
Resilience Guide for Parents and Teachers
http://www.apa.org/helpcenter/resilience.aspx
www.traumaawareschools.org
http://acestoohigh
http://www.cdc.gov/ace
Thank you
Michael Zivsak, LMSW
Ingham Intermediate School District
mzivsak@inghamisd.org
(517)281-5935
CTAC (269) 387-7073
Frank.d.vidimos@wmich.edu
Amy.mack@wmich.edu
E-mail: CTAC@wmich.edu
Web site: www.wmich.edu/traumacenter/ace