When We Address Student Stress First, We Begin to Impact Trauma. . . If It Exists
[CLICK HERE for the Full Blog Article]
Dear Colleagues,
Introduction
I hope that you, your families, and your colleagues are safe, healthy, and protected as the pandemic continues—somewhat unabated.
Over the past three weeks, I have been providing almost non-stop virtual consultations and professional development trainings with the different school districts that I work with nationwide. The primary focus has been getting the administrators, leadership teams, teachers, and support staffs (including bus drivers, secretaries, paraprofessionals, cafeteria workers, and custodians) ready to open their schools (in one form or another) for their students.
Many of the discussions have focused on addressing the students’ social, emotional, and behavioral needs. . . both relative to their pandemic-specific experiences, and to the more “routine” re-entry and transition issues that typically occur at the beginning of any new school year (e.g., having new teachers, classes, expectations, opportunities).
In latter area above, the different school staffs are making explicit classroom and school-wide plans to help students—on the first day of the new school year—to:
- Re-establish positive and proactive relationships with their teachers and peers;
- Learn and physically practice the social and behavioral expectations in the classrooms and across the Common Areas of the school (i.e., hallways, bathrooms, the cafeteria, playgrounds/common meeting spaces, etc.);
- Understand and commit to a progressive “Behavioral Accountability Matrix” that (a) facilitates positive and safe school and classroom settings by identifying and motivating students to make “Good Choices,” while (b) telling them what staff responses and consequences (including at the “Code of Conduct” level) will occur for different intensities of “Bad Choices;” and
- Recognize how their social and behavioral choices impact school and classroom climate, academic engagement, and learning and academic proficiency.
To address the former area above, the different school staffs are embedding the pandemic-related needs of their students into the plans above. . . beginning even before the first day of the new school year. These plans include the use of multi-tiered continua of services, supports, and interventions.
One significant part of the multi-tiered system, specific to the pandemic, involves district and school mental health support staff. Here, we are adapting the crisis-related approaches used by our schools in the days following a community, weather-related, or student/staff-specific catastrophe or crisis. Thus, every school plans to have mental health staff present on the first day of school, and to explicitly share the additional mental health resources available with students and parents—encouraging their use.
Beyond this, please feel free to read the previous pandemic-specific Blogs that I have written in the social, emotional, and behavioral areas during the past few months (see immediately below—CLICK the DATE to link to the original Blog).
May 16, 2020 Why is Education Week Sensationalizing Student Trauma During this Pandemic? Will Schools Re-Open Without Pathologizing their Students’ Emotional Needs? (Part I)
May 30, 2020 Preparing NOW to Address Students’ Social, Emotional, and Behavioral Needs Before They Transition Back to School. Let’s Use Caring and Common Sense as Our Post-Pandemic Guides (Part II)
July 25, 2020 Identifying Students with Back-to-School Social, Emotional, and Behavioral Needs: How to Screen Without Screening. In Uncommon Times, Uncommon Sense is Best.
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Differentiating Between Stress and Trauma
In the three Blogs cited above, we made a number of step-by-step research-to-practice implementation recommendations. They resulted in the following conclusions:
- Clinically and pragmatically, more stressed students than traumatized students will return to school this year—despite the recent plethora of popular and professional press publications, pronouncements, and promotions touting “traumatized students.”
- The current presence of student stress or trauma needs to be confirmed the same way as the presence of COVID-19. That is, through reliable and valid scientifically-proven assessments that occur as students re-enter the schools and engage in the transition activities and interactions noted in the Introductory section of this Blog.
- As part of these assessments, if students currently experiencing traumas are validly identified, the process needs to discriminate students with (a) traumas that existed prior to the pandemic and have not been affected by the pandemic; (b) traumas that existed prior to the pandemic, but have been exacerbated by the pandemic; and (c) traumas that did not exist before, and are fully related to the pandemic (e.g., a fear of getting sick) or events caused by the pandemic (e.g., the death of a parent, sibling, or friend).
- Significantly, despite the popular press pronouncements, no objective, controlled, large-scale epidemiological studies have yet been published (a) validating the number, kinds, or intensities of pandemic-related traumas currently present in U.S. children and adolescents; or (b) demonstrating that such traumas are widespread or disproportionate to the population as a whole.
But to fully understand the points above, it is important that educators, parents, and the population at-large understand the clinical and diagnostic differences between stress and trauma.
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Stress versus Trauma
According to the U.S. Office of Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) and the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5, 2013), there are significant differences between stress and trauma.
[CLICK HERE for the Full Blog Article that Describes These Differences]
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Given these definitions, and as different students separately experience anxiety, stress, or trauma, there are a number of critical conclusions that educators must understand to provide the best settings, environments, and interventions (as needed).
Critically, many schools utilizing “Trauma-Informed Practices” are missing or emphasizing elements that either are not helpful to students, or that may be making some of their issues worse (because they are not getting appropriate interventions).
[CLICK HERE for the Full Blog Article with this Important Discussion]
The “bottom line” is schools need to establish the positive climate, safety, prosocial relationship, and multi-tiered service elements that first and foremost prevent or respond to student stress. For trauma-involved students, schools need to have multi-tiered assessment and interventions services available— something missing from most trauma-informed programs.
Said a different way: Schools and educational staff need to be more broadly trained and expert in Stress-Sensitive or Informed Practices, while school mental health professionals (e.g., counselors, social workers, school psychologists) need also to be clinically trained and expert in Trauma-Sensitive or Informed Practices.
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Moreover, there are virtually NO Trauma-Informed Programs, currently marketed around the country— including those affiliated with federal or state agencies—that have been soundly evaluated such that these programs can claim that they produce clear, consistent, sustained, and meaningful student results over time and across school districts nationwide.
Indeed, Maynard and her colleagues (July, 2019) reviewed over 7,000 studies published during the last ten years that evaluated school-based trauma-informed programs. NONE of the studies reviewed were methodologically sound enough to validate the efficacy of any of the trauma-informed programs analyzed.
We discussed this study and these conclusions in a two-part Blog Series this past January (CLICK on the DATE to link):
January 11, 2020 Trauma-Informed Schools: New Research Study Says “There’s No Research.” Schools “Hitch-Up” to Another Bandwagon that is Wasting Time and Delaying Recommended Scientifically-Proven Services (Part I)
January 25, 2020 Mindfulness & Meditation Will NOT Change Students’ Emotional Volatility or Immediate Reactions to Trauma. The Neurological Science Does Not Add Up—Another Fad & More Wasted Time in Pursuit of a Silver Bullet (Part II)
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In summary, school staff need to be educated about stress, anxiety, and trauma, but student stress should be the primary and predominant focus for all administrative and instructional staff.
With stress now as the focus, schools need to consider ways to progressively teach, develop, and reinforce students’ emotional self-management skills. Indeed, if students learn and use these skills, they will be more prepared to minimize the social, emotional, and behavioral effects of stress, and/or be more responsive when needed services, supports, or interventions are provided.
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Emotional Self-Management: Students,
Teachers, and Support Staff
Emotional self-management skills, which some call “emotional self-regulation” or tangentially “emotional intelligence,” involves teaching students—from preschool through high school—skills and interactions related to emotional awareness, emotional control, and emotional coping.
These three interdependent areas are the research-to-practice areas that result in students being able (a) to understand, manage, and deal with the emotional events in their lives—and how they interpret them; and (b) to demonstrate prosocial interpersonal response and conflict prevention/resolution skills and behaviors.
These three areas are explained in the Full Blog message from Student, Teacher, and multi-tiered Support Staff perspectives.
[CLICK HERE for the Full Blog Article with this Important Discussion]
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In summary, the clear questions implicit in here are:
- Are schools focused on students’ social, emotional, and behavioral self-management are the primary goal of their SEL and Stress-Informed systems?
- Have they included and staffed, in that system, a multi-tiered continuum of services, supports, and interventions?
- Are they systematically teaching all of their students, in general education classrooms from preschool through high school, the emotional awareness, control, and coping skills needed through an evidence-based social skills program?
- Does the school have the related service and mental health professionals trained and available to provide the small group and intensive supports and interventions needed by students with high levels of stress, anxiety, and trauma?
If the answer to any of these questions is “No,” then schools should take this pandemic-specific opportunity to establish this system, differentially train their staff, and serve their students—especially those in need.
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Summary
Before finishing this Blog, I was skimming through my LinkedIn feed and saw the following quote:
Relationships before Rigor. Grace before Grades. Patience before Programs. Love before Lessons. (Brad Johnson)
As reflected in this (and past) Blog(s)—focusing on students’ social, emotional, and behavioral status, learning, mastery, and self-management— these sentiments are clearly always relevant, but especially relevant in our pandemic-ridden world.
But as important as it is for educators to “walk the walk above,” it is similarly important for our students.
Indeed, they will be more successful if they understand that:
- Their school and peer relationships will mediate the rigor in their academic worlds;
- Their grace and humility will put their class grades into the proper perspective;
- Their patience will help any instructional program to work; and
- Their love of learning will guide them as they undertake their lessons.
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As summarized in a past Blog, as our students return to physically and/or virtually, schools and educators need to:
- Plan from a strength-based perspective that recognizes and utilizes students’ social, emotional, and behavioral strengths. . . leaning in and building on these assets;
- Recognize the importance of creating immediate and sustained safe and supportive climates—from staff to students, students to students, and school to home;
- Allow students to discuss and debrief the pandemic’s past and present effects on their lives, to socially and emotionally re-connect with their peers and staff, and to (re-)establish the supportive interpersonal and academic routines and protocols that will help them successfully navigate the re-entry process and beyond;
- Realize that we will still be living in the shadow and context of the pandemic, that students (and staff) will need ongoing understanding and support, and that everyone has their own “timeline” relative to emotional response, recovery, and “normalization;”
- Identify students in social, emotional, and/or behavioral distress... but ensure that the identification process involves multiple, objective data-based assessments (including student interviews and observations) representing multiple school settings that are shared from multiple validating sources;
- Have a continuum of in-school and community-based social, emotional, and behavioral services, supports, strategies, and interventions prepared for students who demonstrate significant or persistent challenges (before and) during the post-pandemic transition back to school; and
- Understand that this “new normal” post-pandemic school and schooling world includes a “new normal” relative to the social, emotional, and behavioral status and needs of students (and staff)—and that these new norms will vary by students’ age, gender, culture, race, socio-economic backgrounds, home and family supports, and presence of medical conditions and other disabilities.
We are all experiencing different social, emotional, and behavioral reactions and responses to the current pandemic and its impact on our lives. But we, as adults, understand what is happening far better than our children and adolescents.
We need to wrap-around and support our students . . . strategically, planfully, collaboratively, and empathically.
While I understand that some students have experienced academic losses these past few months, I also know that—if we do not address (once again) the needed instruction through relationships anchored by grace, patience, and love—we will be hard-pressed to get the academic outcomes that we all want.
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I hope that this Blog message has been helpful to you. However, as part of the underlying message here, I want to emphasize that—as you prepare for your students’ social, emotional, and behavioral needs this new school year, you also need to take care of yourself.
I appreciate your investment in reading these Blogs, and your dedication to your students, your colleagues, and effective school and schooling practices—especially given today’s difficult personal and professional challenges, competing priorities, and decisions.
Please feel free to send me your thoughts and questions.
And please know that I am always available to you through Zoom calls. . . if and when you need me. Contact me at any time.
Best,
Howie
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