Abstract
The purpose of this chapter is to provide the reader with an understanding of how trauma can set up challenges and obstacles to student academic success and realistic responses by educators and schools to assist students. The chapter begins with an overview of the adverse childhood experiences (ACE) study by Felitti et al. and explores the correlations between experienced childhood trauma and negative medical and social problems. The chapter will discuss the neurologic changes that can occur from childhood trauma and/or toxic stress and the common behavioral manifestations that create educational problems for students. The chapter will discuss the need for school social workers, as they can provide significant benefits to struggling students, educators, and school administrators. Additionally, the use of posttraumatic growth techniques to increase efficiency in classroom behavior, curriculum mastery, and lifelong coping will be discussed with final ideas proposing future research needs.
TopIntroduction
More schools are striving to be trauma-informed, which means that educators, staff, and administrators are trained to appreciate the negative fallout of childhood trauma and how it might create educational challenges (National Education Association, 2021). As a result, these schools have adopted school-wide initiatives to assist students with moving past their trauma and learning positive skills to decrease future negative consequences of trauma. Being a trauma-informed school offers an additional layer of social services that educational systems are increasingly asked to provide to their student body. When compulsory education for all children slowly became law by individual states, beginning with Massachusetts in 1852 and ending with Mississippi in 1917 (FindLaw, 2016), the focus of education was to provide basic curriculum to students to increase literacy rates, employable skills, and fair wage payments. With basic math skills, workers could count their money and not be taken advantage of by corrupt bosses. An additional latent function of education was socialization of appropriate behavior, values of the day, and increased social control, as children were in school rather than loitering about and committing petty theft and other misdemeanors (Schaefer, 2018).
Today’s schools, however, have taken on an increasing responsibility for the holistic health and wellbeing of students. School systems commonly provide breakfast and lunch for students to help offset malnutrition and assist with healthy growth and development. Schools often provide daily take-home snack bags and weekend food backpacks for students identified as struggling with food securities (Fletcher & Frisvold, 2017). During the COVID-19 pandemic when students were unable to attend school face to face, school programs went to great lengths to ensure their at-risk students and families had needed food rations (Benevenuto de Amorim et al., 2020). Additionally, schools commonly provide clothing, school supplies, and mental health services for students to help ensure their basic needs are met so they can learn (Reinbergs & Fefer, 2018). Some schools have established on-site medical clinics to provide students with numerous medical services needed, including basic medical care, reproductive health counseling, ongoing professional mental health services, treatment groups, substance use disorder services, and access to psychotropic medications at free or reduced costs (Jackson, 2019; McCalman et al., 2019).
Providing an increase of social services through school programs has shown to be highly successful in increasing student retention, educational levels, and standardized test results (Baez et al., 2019; Naik, 2019). However, this creates considerable demands on the faculty. Additionally, research indicates that once school systems start to provide additional social services to their student body, the need quickly exceeds the services provided (Shultz, 2020). The presence of need is constant, with community and nation-wide events increasing the need. Nationwide recession, the COVID-19 pandemic, and resulting unemployment have caused more and more students to request services from schools, and schools struggle to keep up with the demand (Prothero, 2020). Research indicates that the prolonged duration of COVID-19 has increased mental health issues in school age children (Henderson, 2020). Due to on-going shutdowns and limitations in educational and face to face services, provisions for mental health issues are lacking. This gap is likely to continue to grow. Educators will be compelled to address these issues in the coming years, along with the educational deficits that have resulted from the lack of structured education. Consequently, it is vital that educators have additional help with mental health issues and the potential unresolved issues from the trauma COVID-19 has left in its wake, so they can focus on helping students gain the knowledge they may have missed during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Key Terms in this Chapter
Trauma-Informed School: Educators, staff, and administers are trained to appreciate the negative fallout of childhood trauma and toxic stress and how it might create educational challenges. As a result, these schools have adopted school-wide initiatives to assist students moving past their trauma and learning positive skills to decrease future negative consequences.
Classroom Environment: The physical, social, and emotional climate of the physical or virtual teaching space.
Coping Skills: Healthy, maladaptive, emotional, or purposeful techniques used to tolerate and deal with difficult situations.
School Social Worker: Specially trained professional who has graduated from a Council on Social Work Education accredited program to provide clinical services to students and families, support academic staff with accomplishing educational goals, provide interventions for behavior management inside and outside the classroom, provide consultation to the educational multidisciplinary team, and connect students with community resources.
Poverty: Deficits in one or more of the following categories: food securities, housing, education/employment, health care, and/or economic assets.
Cognitive Restructuring: A strategic method of assessing thinking errors and replacing them with productive and healthy cognitions.
Posttraumatic Growth: Cognitive philosophy and methods used to purposefully transform negative experiences into something that allows one to thrive positively.
Resiliency: The ability to adapt to negative events through coping skills and cognitive approach.
Toxic Stress: Intense adverse events that occur consistently over a long period of time, causing an unpleasant and prolonged physical and psychological response that can be corrosive to the host.
Trauma: Any experience that creates an intense physical and psychological stress reaction in a person and has the potential for negative aftermath.