Classroom Practices are Trauma Informed

Components of Trauma Informed Practices

Specific expectations are aligned with school-wide expectations.
Specific expectations are observable, measurable, positively stated, clearly defined, and prominently posted.
Teacher has a plan and schedule to teach.

All students thrive from established expectations. For students, who might be affected by trauma, high expectations show the student they are capable and worthy.
Consistent expectations help students differentiate purposeful and unpredictable expectations that may occur in other areas of their lives.
Consistent classroom expectations create predictable adult behavior across the school for all students. When established upfront, it may help students establish a sense of security.

Routines and procedures are aligned with school-wide expectations.
Routines and procedures are succinct, positively stated, and in age-appropriate language.
Routines and procedures are taught and practiced.

Clearly defined routines and procedures help students know what to expect.
Reducing the stress of unknown helps students to operate in a state of calm.
Clearly established routines also increases likelihood of adults identifying and prompting students of possible changes, which is likely to prevent or reduce impact the change may have on student behavior.

Specific positive feedback (state student name, school-wide expectation and appropriate behavior).
Contingent upon student or group accurately displaying desired behavior
Student acknowledgement is delivered four times as often as error correction

Specific positive feedback is a powerful tool for building a student’s self-esteem and positive sense of self.
Teaches new skills and the predictability of specific positive feedback allows for a sense of control and promotes brain development.
The recommended 4:1 ratio is even higher for students who might be affected by trauma, due to the predictability it creates.
Class-wide contingencies establish and maintain expectations. Limit setting and expectations are powerful for students who might be affected by trauma, when they are used for everyone without singling anyone out.
Acknowledging students class wide helps establish and strengthen a community in the classroom. All students are part of the acknowledgement system, which assists teacher in providing higher dosage of acknowledgement for students needing that and benefits everyone.

Error correction is an informative statement provided by a teacher or other adult following the occurrence of an undesired behavior.
It is contingent (occurs immediately after the undesired behavior), specific, and brief.
Effective responses includes: Praise other students, private re-direct, engagement strategies, proximity, nonverbal cue, instructional choice, attend/”wait”/praise, reteach expectations

Strategies need to empower the student and teach resiliency skills.
Re-teaching skills will help students replace learned responses which may not be appropriate.
A continuum of responses provides the student help regulating their emotions, provides staff the opportunity to relate to the students’ emotions before reasoning.

Movement: Constant, random, target predictable problems, proximity
Scan: Look and listen to all students, look for appropriate and inappropriate behaviors, make eye contact
Interact: Frequent and positive feedback and interactions to encourage, reinforce, and correct. Identify opportunities to pre-correct and provide additional instruction on appropriate behaviors.

Maintaining active supervision provides a sense of safety for students.
When the adult is constantly scanning the environment, it is more likely they will identify a trigger to a problem prior and prevent the problem behavior from occurring, especially known triggers for a student who might be affected by trauma.
Active supervision creates frequent opportunities to interact with students to develop, strengthen and maintain relationships.

Traffic patterns are clearly defined and allow movement without disrupting others
Desks and furniture arrangement are built around the types of instructional activities and are arranged for maximum student and teacher visibility and access
Materials are clearly labeled, easily accessible, and organized for ease of use

Setting up a physical environment to allow teacher to monitor all students and activities promotes feeling of safety and predictability for students.
Considering traffic patterns to avoid disruption supports students to respect personal space of others.

Identify opportunities within your lesson plans to increase opportunities for students to respond.
Increase whole class opportunities to respond (vs. an individual student)
Intentionally plan for student engagement

Multiple opportunities to respond is a way to conduct formative assessments in the classroom, which allows for differentiated responses to allow students who do not want much attention to find a way to engage.
Allowing frequent opportunities for students to respond provides time to process or apply what they are learning. This opportunity to process and apply allows neural networks to be strengthened.