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Students who have experienced trauma can struggle to learn, pay attention, or even attend classes. Their reactions can range from just seeming more distant and closed off to full on panic attacks. As a teacher it can be very difficult to try to understand how to help a student who has experienced trauma so that they can feel safe in school and find some normalcy in their lives again.
Although certainly most common in areas with more poverty, trauma can happen to even the most well-to-do children if a parent has an accident, a natural disaster occurs, or disease strikes. It is also important to note that the outward signs may not be fully reliable in understanding the level of trauma the student is experiencing. Some students may be able to mask their feelings for a while, but then suddenly burst when they can no longer manage.
Research continues to come out confirming the dangers of trauma for the learning process, but a new study suggests a way that teachers might be able to help their students recover and get back on track. While teachers are not psychologists and don’t have the time or resources to heal a student’s trauma, there does seem to be a way that teachers can present class assignments that can help make each day a little bit easier.
Trauma Research
While each student may present their trauma differently, research suggests there is a pattern in the damage that occurs whenever a person experiences a traumatic event. (Early et al.) One of the main areas of the brain that consistently shows altered function in a traumatized person is called the Default Mode Network.
The Default Mode Network is actually not one part, but a series of connected parts near the center of the brain that work together to perform a variety of functions related to social processing. In particular it helps people understand themselves and how they are viewed by others and is also implicated in some of the differences in people with Autism.
Another network that is altered after a trauma is the memory network. This is one of the changes that can most affect schoolwork. Not only does this damage the recall system making it hard to pull up what the student knows, but often students who have experienced trauma will be more easily distracted and sometimes even re-experience their trauma making it sometimes impossible to learn new things and apply it to what they know.
Lastly, the other major area that is often altered in the event of a traumatic experience is the reward system. After a traumatic experience, students can often feel numb and are less able to feel emotions of satisfaction and joy in progress.
New research suggests that this last network is the one that could be targeted for intervention in order to help students who have experienced trauma in their recovery process. (Ireton et al.) The research was conducted at North Carolina State University on 440 adult participants who had experienced a traumatic event and used regular diary entries to analyze their results.
The study results showed a marked increase in the wellbeing of their participants who had what they termed “Uplifts”. Uplifts were moments of doing something that felt rewarding and brought satisfaction which ranged from talking to a loved one to completing a task they were responsible for.
Though the reward system is underactive in those who have experienced trauma, this does not mean it is useless to attempt to activate it. It is quite the opposite in fact. It seems that the reward system needs to be mindfully reactivated in order for the healing process to really begin.
The researchers said that despite everyone’s uplifts being different and having different effects, “people who have experienced the loss of a loved one may benefit from daily increases in uplifts because of the potential counterbalance” to the negative traumatic experiences they had before. In effect, these uplifts can serve as a bit of a shock to the heart, or in this case the brain, to help it get back to its old rhythms.
People who have experienced trauma can often struggle to move on from the event and feel numb to life moving around them. Because of this it is important to help students who have experienced trauma to see that they are able to feel safe to move forward again.
While this might seem completely insignificant in the face of the serious trauma that the person has experienced, the truth is that people need help refocusing, and renormalizing after a serious trauma. These small wins work both as a distraction and as a way for a person to help see progress in their life after a difficult experience that they may struggle to move on from.
Teacher Takeaways
It is important to remember that a teacher is not expected to be able to heal the student’s trauma and that the advice here will simply enable the teacher to do their part to help the student ease back into life after a difficult or traumatizing event. After assessing the student, the teacher will need to use their professional judgment on what is most appropriate for their specific students, and any serious concerns should be reported to the school psychologist or learning support team.
Poor mental health tends to lead to negative thought patterns that only reinforce and worsen the poor mental health. Instead, the teacher should focus on helping the student to see their successes and progress in ways that give them the space they need to heal.
While the teacher shouldn’t just completely ignore the student during class, it is also important to give them a little bit of extra space and avoid cold calling them in front of the class at least for the first day or two until the teacher has had time to assess the student’s abilities and condition. Once the teacher has a better understanding of how the student is reacting and has been able to establish safe boundaries, they should begin to focus on creating small wins for the student.
School tasks may seem daunting and overwhelming to a student who has experienced trauma. Because of this, one easy way to create more wins for students is by further breaking down a task they have to do. Rather than “write a literary analysis paper on the novel” the teacher could give tasks like “write a thesis sentence on my analysis of the novel” and “pull 3 pieces of evidence from the text”, and “Take two quotes to support each piece of evidence of my thesis.”
With this strategy, each larger task turns from one single victory at the end of a long task into several victories after much more manageable tasks. This approach is not just useful for students who have experienced trauma, but for any student who has trouble with their reward systems such as in students with ADHD.
Teachers should help students to move their thinking away from what they’ve lost and onto something manageable that shows progress. The brain is not good at multitasking, so if the student is successfully engaged in a task, they’re not reliving their traumatic experience. It may not seem like much, but even completing a small task may allow the student’s mind to heal and see that they are able to keep going.
Another way that the teacher can be helpful is by ensuring they don’t do anything to accidentally retrigger memories of their traumatic experience. As mentioned above, one of the teacher’s focuses should be getting the students’ minds onto other things. If a topic or wording of a sentence could inadvertently cause them to remember these things when they’re not expecting it, it can lead to a stronger reaction.
So to avoid this, the teacher can simply look through the materials for each day quickly to scan for anything that might be able to be changed to avoid any strong reactions for them. While some may argue that shielding students from topics is coddling and they need to be reexposed to truly heal, and that may be true, but the teacher should make sure they have assessed the condition of the student over a few days.
They may need to be exposed to the topic again someday, but teachers should ask themselves is their classroom in front of many peers the right time, right now? Sometimes it may be better to re-expose students to triggering topics after a period of time or in a safe space with a professional to help navigate the experience.
If simply rewording a worksheet question or making sure they’re not doing the part of the reading with their trigger word could keep them from being entirely thrown off track for the remainder of the lesson and perhaps beyond, it’s worth it. While this may be a temporary measure for each student, especially when a teacher has a large student load, it can be a good idea to have some sort of system in place to remember any trauma notes in each class to not let something slip through the cracks and cause a scene.
Lastly, one other way teachers can help students who have experienced trauma is by communicating with their care team to ensure they are aware of any sudden mood shifts or drops in performance. While some people may assume that if a student is showing symptoms of depression that they are acting the same way at home and elsewhere but this is not always the case.
Sometimes students who have experienced trauma may seem totally fine at home but show depression symptoms at school. This can come from a variety of factors such as how safe they feel in each location, the possible triggers in each location, and their relationships available in each location.
Simply checking in when a teacher sees a downturn in a student can help put others on alert to be more aware of any more dangerous changes such as desires to hurt themselves. Doing this can also be a way to begin a discussion with others on ways to help and share ideas rather than trying to do the right thing alone.
often be a relief to other family members, who are often struggling themselves. Knowing they have someone else looking out for their child and trying to support them is often very helpful for everyone involved.
Conclusion
Helping students who have experienced trauma to get back to a semi-normal life after what they have experienced is beyond the scope of teaching, but a teacher can do several things to help students who may be struggling to reintegrate after a difficult experience. While the main way teachers should help is by communicating with parents and other caregivers, teachers can do other things to help students refocus from their negative thinking and get some small wins to help them get their spark back.
It is important not to rush things or force anything that doesn’t feel natural. The most important instinct is your professional judgements and the knowledge that time heals most wounds.
Making a few small changes to materials to make them a little more approachable or avoid any shocks in the first few days or weeks can help make a struggling student’s life much easier after a traumatic experience. Hopefully with time the student will again feel safe and can continue learning and rebuilding their life.
It can be important to remember to check in for at least a year however, as anniversaries of traumatic events can often bring up old painful memories. Teachers should try to be aware of any of these dates for their students to simply be a bit more aware on those days where it might be a bit more difficult for the student.
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References
Early, Alexandra S., et al. “Traumatic losses permeate daily emotional experiences: Roles of daily uplifts and subjective age.” Applied Psychology: Health and Well-Being, 26 Jan. 2024, https://doi.org/10.1111/aphw.12530.
Ireton, Rebecca, et al. “An FMRI meta-analysis of Childhood Trauma.” Biological Psychiatry: Cognitive Neuroscience and Neuroimaging, Feb. 2024, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bpsc.2024.01.009.
