.

 

Peek Inside a Classroom: Effective Education Reform

Co-Authors:

Sandra L. Bloom, M.D.  and Daun H. Kauffman M.Ed., M.B.A.

Classroom insights provided by Daun Kauffman  are true vignettes.

 

       

.

      “I feel hurt.  My dad told me that I wasn’t his daughter if I couldn’t read better.” (Kerrie)

.                              

I (Daun) always started school days with my class by sharing a personal greeting and an optional hug with each student, as they entered the door of our room.  They had a comforting routine with coats and backpacks and warmup work on the board ready for them.  They knew that someone who knew them had prepared especially for them.  Our personal, academic startup was paired with breakfast for everyone, courtesy of Title 1.  Their comfortable familiarity with morning routines helped students with self-regulation in the transition to a classroom environment.

 

Teachers can learn too!

 

It seemed that we had a positive, caring beginning to our day of academics, but I often pushed the pace, especially when days overflowed with Lesson Plans.

 

That is, I felt that way until a friend who pioneered the development of the “Sanctuary Model,” Dr. Sandra Bloom, M.D., suggested an addition.  With an ear-to-ear smile she pressed gently and politely and respectfully, but oh so firmly and confidently.  She pressed her case to “add one question,” add “just one question”.  Dr. Bloom waited for my response…  pointedly and expectantly.  She wanted me to try adding a “Community Meeting” to our daily startup.  “Go around the entire classroom so each student participates: My name is ___.  One word for my feelings this morning is ____.” Then listen.

 

I agreed, skeptically, thinking we already had a fine, “community” startup, and wondering where we’d find the time.

 

We started with learning the routine.  I added some options to Dr. Bloom’s question:  a) to ‘pass’, thinking that sometimes some of the kids would be dealing with weighty stuff, or b) to add a reason for their feeling or simply say “no reason”.

 

The first ten days, many simply shared “I feel happy.  No reason”.  Or “I feel sad. No reason”.  So, I began to incorporate “feelings words” into our other vocabulary work and I bought a large wall  poster with visualizations of feelings words.  The kids began to be intrigued about “feelings”.

 

“Knowing” is not the same as “Understanding”

 

The “Community Meeting” in the Sanctuary Model “Toolkit” begins similarly, as part of building trauma-informed practice in any organization.  Explicit acknowledgement of feelings as first priority, is embedded in establishing social norms of safety and caring for each person in the group.

 

In our classroom, “How are you feeling?” became central to developing community, to practicing clear oral communication, and to building class ‘norms.’.

 

It also generated undeniably invaluable learning about “feelings”.

Then, even more:  reflecting, composing and  communicating, those feelings.

 

But most importantly it moved us beyond factually “knowing” names.  It became understanding feelings, understanding each other as people.  Understanding ourselves better.  Understanding motivations;  our own and others.   Myself understanding children and their childhood traumas.  “Social literacy.”

 

If you haven’t heard of “developmental” or “childhood trauma”,  I understand.  I hadn’t heard of it either.  Not in any university class, nor from my District.  I had to discover it on my own.  (Click here for more on “The Elephant in the [Class]Room”).

 

Building understanding does require investments of time and labor.  We didn’t achieve it for free.  We invested about 20 minutes from our already packed schedule.  A real risk in context of the district’s tightly circumscribed regimen.  Nevertheless, we prioritized that time to listen to each other.  We had more learning to do.   We had to learn to listen: Not interrupting, not even politely questioning.

Simply listening.

Ultimately, it started with all of us being “in the moment”

 

Immeasurable, but invaluable

 

We progressed to “I have two (!) feelings.”    Kids asking “can I share them both?” (with much elaboration).

No one ever “passed.”

 

We progressed:  All of this investment steadily reinforced norms of a socially literate, caring, student-centered classroom culture with a common understanding of goals. The value becomes obvious when we move on to academic topics

 

We progressed to Kerrie, eyes brimming, “I feel hurt.  My dad told me that I wasn’t his daughter if I couldn’t read better.”

Should understanding Kerrie’s pain change how literacy was taught that day and beyond?  Could we be successful without understanding?

 

DeShawn, squirming with anticipation, “I feel excited.  We’re going to see my dad this weekend for my birthday.”  (Later sharing privately: “he’s “away” at the state prison.  He did something really bad…”).

Would Math or Social Studies lessons be different after that new understanding?  Would we be successful without understanding?

 

Starr, trying to appear nonchalant, “I feel sad.  I miss my dad.  He’s in the hospital again for figh.. [Starr cut herself off]… no he didn’t really fight this time.  He just banged his head on the car real bad.”  Long pause.  “My mom can’t pick me up after school, so my sister [3^rd grade] will.  We can walk by ourselves.”

Should my understanding of Starr’s behaviors and motivations be more aligned with the “Common Core” and ‘National Standards’ or should I adjust national standards to be aligned with Starr’s core?

More from the same classroom:  “I feel sad, I don’t know what to do!  My mom’s hair is falling out from the cancer”.  Or another: “I’m scared.  My tia was shot this weekend.  The bullet is behind her eye.”

 

Kerrie, DeShawn, Starr and the others are not unusual.  Childhood trauma affects 2 out of 3 students at some level.  That’s way too many (one is too many) to ignore.

 

Our School Reform Commission(SRC) in Philadelphia, and other “reformers” across our nation, command “standardized” learning —  an illogical,  inconceivable goal.  Be assured, from the reality of the front line in the classroom, that students are all unique….  people.  They each have a unique heart and a unique mind, attached intimately, inextricably to their whole, unique life.  Not better or worse than one another, just unique.

 

Children can not and do not learn in “standardized”, robotic fashion, or synchronized timing.

 

It’s clear to educators:  academic success in any classroom at any age has to be whole-student-centered, not “standardized”,  nor datapoint-centered.

 

Back to Community Meetings:  I usually shared my feelings too.  If a long weekend was coming, I shared two (!) contrasting feelings:  the excitement of the break and the sadness at missing each one in our class. I often shared explicitly that I loved each one in the class. Sometimes I shared feelings about my own children when I was going to see them soon, or sometimes how I missed them.  My students wanted to understand me as a father and as a grandfather, not just as a talking head “presenter”.

Let me paraphrase the quote attributed to Theodore Roosevelt:  Students don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care.

It does go both ways:

On the days I dared try to skip our Community Meeting, I was immediately, verbally hounded.   Even If I only forgot (or intentionally skipped) only myself, the kids raced, almost tripping over each other to ask: “Mr. Kauffman, how are you feeling today?…   No, really, How are you feeling?”

Powerful learning, powerful understanding grew all around our classroom.

 

Implications in our trauma-impacted world

 

Our learning was such a great story.  Really.

But I can’t stop here with a feel-good story.  The Community Meeting is only the first step in the Toolbox towards a trauma-informed system.

We all live in very violent, dysfunctional times.

Statistics tell us that 25% to 50% of students in all schools are dealing with life-changing levels of developmental, or “childhood”, trauma.

It’s urgent.

Neuroscience tells us that unaddressed developmental trauma and toxic stress change the architecture of the physical brain and secondly, social behaviors. 

Cognition, or learning, is impaired by developmental trauma. For some of those children in ‘survival mode’, academics are impossible, “in the moment.”

Experts call developmental trauma  a ‘national crisis’, an ‘epidemic’.   Yet, it’s the elephant in all our classrooms.  Developmental trauma is not a poverty issue.  It’s not a “color” issue.  It’s not a geography issue. It is not an income issue.

Developmental trauma is an education-equity issue.

Developmental trauma is an ‘achievement gap’ issue, given its skew to high stress, higher violence urban areas.

It gets worse.

Biological and social adaptations to childhood trauma will affect our health throughout our lifetimes, and can lead to early death.

It’s urgent.

Effective education reform   reform begins with recognizing the whole child and remains child-centered. The priority on National “standards” (funded locally) is in direct conflict with equity in a setting with real live, unique human children in so many ways….”

Effective reform will prioritize training and support (on-going)  for school-wide staffs, so they understand and can accommodate millions of trauma-impacted children nationally.   Community Meetings can be integral to becoming whole-student-centered and trauma-informed.

At the school level, effective reform includes identifying, or in some way screening for, students’ trauma histories.  It’s too easy and too tempting to miss those who are quietly dissociating.  We should also be re-evaluating zero-tolerance discipline.  We should also be adjusting efforts against the “achievement gap” to areas with greater violence, stress and trauma.  We should also be understanding the disconnect between regimented, time-based national standards and infinitely unique human unique learning processes.  We should also be understanding the illogical impotence of “standardized” test-and-punish model for academics.

 

Without effective reform, students have valid claim that we haven’t given them equal access to learning.  Millions of students.

 

Listening is integral to effective reform. 

We all have much to learn, much to care about, much to understand.  

 

If you agree, ask someone else “How are you feeling?”,

 and then simply listen.

 

All student insights in the “Peek Inside a Classroom” series use pseudonyms in true stories.

 

 

.

 

 

.

“Like” us at  “Trauma-Informed Schools” on Facebook

.

 

For more on developmental trauma, in short, true vignettes, click on the narrative series below, “Nowhere to Hide”:

.

.

     “Nowhere to Hide” series overview

                                             click HERE

 

           

“Nowhere to Hide” series links

Each separate, individual article in the series focuses on a single component of the workings of developmental trauma, via real life examples in short “60 second” soundbites, akin to “Public Service Announcements” (PSAs).  They are designed for sharing in social media networks to grow public awareness.

Trigger warning: 

The children’s experiences in the vignettes are unvarnished.  Their traumatic responses may trigger painful memories.

.

 

“PSA” Links for social media

.

Nowhere to Hide:  Maria; Fight, flight or freeze

Nowhere to Hide:  Andre’s Fear; What are Adverse Childhood Experiences?

Nowhere to Hide:  Jamar’s Hyper-arousal 

Nowhere to Hide:  Roberto’s Dissociation 

Nowhere to Hide:  Danny’s Memory

Nowhere to Hide:  Ashley’s “Normal” Education?   Part 1

Nowhere to Hide:  Ashley’s “Normal” Education?   Part 2

More to come

.

“Like” us at  “Trauma-Informed Schools” on Facebook

 

.

 

Please share a PSA link to help grow public awareness of the impacts of developmental trauma. There are so many of us who’ve never heard of the overpowering life-long impacts.

.

“Peek Inside a Classroom” series overview

The second original series, “Peek Inside a Classroom”, provides much more detailed looks inside my classroom, primarily focused on specific students: Jasmine, Danny and José.

Other children are captured in broader looks at education reform concepts: “Failing Schools or Failing Paradigm?” and “Effective Education Reform”, co-authored with Sandra L. Bloom, M. D..

.

“Peek Inside a Classroom” series links

.

Peek Inside a Classroom:  Jasmine

Peek Inside a Classroom:  Danny

Peek Inside a Classroom: José

Peek Inside a Classroom:  Failing Schools or Failing Paradigm?

Peek Inside a Classroom:  Effective Education Reform (with Sandra Bloom, M.D.)

.

“Click for Resources…”  series overview:

“Click for Resources”  posts are the theory and research behind the narrative posts in  “Nowhere to Hide” and “Peek Inside a Classroom”.

Each post in “Click for Resources “ is divided in three parts:

1) general press articles,

2) Research Journals or academic papers

3) social media, often with video.

.

 

“Click for Resources” series links:

.

1.   Adverse Childhood Experience (ACE) Studies:   CLICK HERE

 2.  Impacts of Childhood Trauma: Overview               CLICK HERE

Click for Resources: Social Media on Impacts of Childhood Trauma

Click for Resources: Journal Articles on Impacts of Developmental Trauma

 3.   Trauma-Informed Schools                                               CLICK HERE

 4.  Trauma-Informed Social Services                                CLICK HERE 

 5.   Trauma-Informed Juvenile Justice                             CLICK HERE

 6.  Trauma-Informed Public Policy                                   CLICK HERE

 7.  Childhood Trauma Training and Tools                     CLICK HERE

 8.  Book and Publication selections                                CLICK HERE

9.   #800 phone numbers                                                         CLICK HERE

Developmental trauma,  still “the elephant in the  [class] room”  for many adults.

.

“Like” us at  “Trauma-Informed Schools” on Facebook