What is Trauma-Informed Teaching?

The Importance of Trauma-Informed Education

Every day, we as humans face various stressors and vacillate between feeling safe and feeling stressed. Stress is a normal and even healthy part of life—and a key to resilience in small, temporary doses. But what happens when a child is exposed to repetitive or prolonged experiences of stress?

A well-researched field of study on Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) has found that stressors outside the home, such as community violence, natural disasters, racism, and poverty, or those within the home, such as physical and emotional abuse, neglect, untreated mental illness or addiction, and household dysfunction, can combine to increase the vulnerability of a child experiencing these adversities. When adversity overwhelms a child’s capacity to cope, this is called trauma.

When traumatic stress arises from inside a child’s “safe haven”—their home or community—or within their closest relationships, the places and people meant to buffer against stress and threat become sources of stress and threat. The impact of this can be profound and has even been associated with long-term development of physical and mental health struggles.

Pioneering researcher and physician Dr. Nadine Burke Harris asserts, “Twenty years of medical research has shown that childhood adversity literally gets under our skin, changing people in ways that can endure in their bodies for decades.” Trauma not only impairs our brain—it manifests in behavior.

This is a serious concern for all of us because almost half of American school children have experienced at least one trauma. Among the millions of children who have experienced multiple ACEs, many lack the buffering protection of safe, stable relationships.

Trauma-informed teaching is essentially a healing-centered approach that counteracts the impact of toxic stress by recognizing that creating a sense of safety is foundational for fostering learning and a cohesive classroom community. Dr. Stephen Porges, developer of the Polyvagal Theory, affirmed, “If you want to make the world a better place, start by making people feel safer.”

Trauma-Informed Teaching Strategies

Trauma-informed teaching practices not only benefit those experiencing toxic stress but also positively impact the entire classroom community and can even ripple beyond the classroom environment. This is because trauma-informed practices inherently reinforce positive relational experiences and are co-regulating. Examples of these strategies include:

• Explore your own history of trauma and toxic stress to keep from causing unconscious harm to the students you work with
• Cultivate secure attachment qualities in yourself to habituate nurturing and co-regulating responses
• Use an empathetic listening strategy called mirroring to support students in feeling seen and hard
• Provide predictability and consistency by previewing schedules and processes and design routines that can easily be followed
• Adapt lessons to be inclusive and welcoming for everyone in the group
• Normalize mistakes and challenges as opportunities for new discoveries and progress towards risk-taking, exploration, and a growth mindset
• Model healthy alternative ways to respond to challenging situations so students have concrete examples of what they can choose to do rather than focusing on what they can’t do
• Create plenty of opportunities for choice and voice, in which students have options and feel safe speaking up

These strategies disrupt maladaptive responses learned to cope with toxic stress and trauma, literally rewiring neurobiological responses from insecure attachment patterns to secure ones.

Training and Professional Development for Trauma-Informed Teaching

Trauma-informed practices require…practice! Today, many training and professional development opportunities focus on trauma-informed leadership and teaching. To ensure the quality of these opportunities, ensure they are rooted in up-to-date science, provide chances to learn and practice skills, and create space for fostering self-awareness.

At FuelEd, we offer the Whole Educator Collective (WEC) program for leaders, educators, and school partners working directly with youth (e.g., social workers, guidance counselors, mental health clinicians, paraeducators). The WEC curriculum incorporates research-based best practices from developmental and counseling psychology and social neuroscience, translating them into practical, applicable learning.

The program outcomes include:

• Greater self-awareness about your early experiences and their ongoing impact.
• Enhanced ability to recognize the effects of trauma and toxic stress in yourself and others.
• Increased capacity to regulate and cope with stress.
• Improved communication in secure patterns that promote regulation and connection.

Best Practices for Trauma-Informed Classrooms

• Use calm, empathetic communication.
• Adapt lesson plans to ensure inclusivity and accessibility.
• Incorporate mindfulness and emotional regulation activities.
• Encourage cooperative learning to build relationships and a sense of belonging.

Recommended Books and Resources for Trauma-Informed Teachers

Books

• Anchored: How to Befriend Your Nervous System Using Polyvagal Theory by Deborah A. Dana
• Atlas of the Heart by Brené Brown
• Daring Greatly by Brené Brown
• It Didn’t Start with You by Mark Wolynn
• The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel van der Kolk
• My Grandmother’s Hands by Resmaa Menakem
• The Power of Showing Up by Daniel J. Siegel and Tina Payne Bryson
• Toxic Childhood Stress by Dr. Nadine Burke Harris
• What Happened to You? by Bruce D. Perry and Oprah Winfrey
• The Whole Brain Child by Daniel J. Siegel and Tina Payne Bryson

Articles

• Cozolino, L. (2013). The Social Neuroscience of Education: Optimizing Attachment and Learning in the Classroom. W.W. Norton.
• Wiseman, T. (1996). A Concept Analysis of Empathy. Journal of Advanced Nursing, Volume 23, Issue 6, pp. 1059-1278.

Videos

• Brené Brown on Empathy
• Healing from Toxic Stress with Dr. Nadine Burke Harris
• Still Face with Dads