Navigating a difficult year where norms need reteaching
The last time a 7th grader had a full, normal school year they were in 4th grade. Current 2nd graders have never had a “normal” school year. The return to full-time, in-person learning has been a struggle for some of these students who lack the proper behavior skills for their ages, as they have not had the routine of proper classroom behavior for several school years. The adjustment continues to be a struggle, as students come to school with increased trauma needing support and conflict resolution skills. Here are some ways to help your students as you continue to navigate the school year.
Approaching Issues Using a Trauma Lens
When dealing with student behaviors it is important to ask yourself the following questions: Why did the student act this way? What lessons do you want to teach at this moment? How can I best teach this lesson? Understanding student behaviors, encouraging resilience, repairing harm, and handling challenges are all part of supporting students in need and properly navigating difficult behaviors in your classroom. To change your approach, alter your views when considering why a student is behaving in a particular way.
Disruptive behavior should be seen as an opportunity to understand where the behavior came from, help the child to recognize their emotions and help the child develop strategies for resilience.
Using A Trauma Lens
| Traditional View | Trauma Informed View |
| Student has anger management problems | Student is using non-adaptive responses to get needs met |
| Students has ADHD; is destructive and uncontrollable | Student has difficulty self-regulating; student was triggered |
| Student is choosing to act out | Student lacks the necessary skills |
| Student is non-responsive | Student doesn’t trust adults; student has negative view of the world |
| Student needs consequences or medication | Student needs to develop self-regulation skills and develop trusting relationships |
From Discipline to Management
While dealing with a conflict or difficult behavior it may seem easier to enforce discipline to get back to your planned lesson more quickly. However, it is important to shift gears from a discipline mindset to one of management.
Disruptive behavior should be seen as an opportunity to understand where the behavior came from, help the child to recognize their emotions and help the child develop strategies for resilience.
To develop those strategies, focus on the essentials of trauma informed care including:
- Connect: Focus on relationships
- Protect: Promote safety and trustworthiness
- Respect: Engage in choice and collaboration
- Redirect: Teach and reinforce skill building and competence
Student Relationships and Skills to Navigate Situations
A child who feels their school and classroom are safe places has better opportunities to grow and learn both as students and people. To foster a cohesive, safe, and peaceful classroom environment your students need to feel comfortable with not just you, the educator, but also each other. Creating cooperative teams, study buddies, or unique activities to help students understand each other’s backgrounds and ideals can help. Try these activities to both help everyone learn about each other and help create a safe, open space for discussion and conflict resolution.
Brown Bag Biographies
Send each student home with a brown paper bag and ask them to bring back small items in the bag that reflect their interests and personalities. This “show and tell” lets students take turns explaining their items, while getting to know each other better, fostering more respect between each student.
Restorative Circles
A group activity that helps students process their thoughts and feelings. Talking sticks can also help facilitate this process.
Guided Questions
These questions help to bring out the emotions and reasons that went into the student’s behavior, such as what were you thinking at the time, what have you thought about since, what do you think you need to do to make things right?
Peer-led Mediation
These trained peer leaders are students who then serve as impartial mediators.
These approaches, among others, help get to the root cause of student behavior. Plus, students learn accountability and how to navigate situations without resorting to name calling or violence. Students can also grow socially and emotionally.
It’s easy to fall into discipline traps that you’ve used in the past. Do your best to avoid these pitfalls as you work to manage your classrooms and the behaviors in them.
DISCIPLINE TRAPS IN THE CLASSROOM
- Discipline becomes consequence based rather than teaching based
- If we are disciplining, we can’t be warm and nurturing
- We confuse consistency with rigidity
- We talk too much
- We don’t focus enough on the “why” behind the behavior
- We don’t focus on how we say what we say
- We communicate that students shouldn’t experience big or negative feelings
- We overreact
- We don’t repair
- We lay down the law in an emotional moment and then realize we overreacted
- We forget students may need our help in making good choices and calming down
- We discipline in front of others, not privately
Maine Educator gathered information for this article from a professional learning module available to members called Strategies for Building Resilience: Creating a Trauma Responsive Culture Within Your Classroom created by the Delaware State Education Association. The entire training and many others are available as micro-credentials on our website.
