As adoptive families I know many of you struggle with sharing your child's trauma with their teachers. Helping the teachers have compassion and understanding in how they approach your child, their student. The Seattle Times had a great article in the paper Sunday, May 17, 2015. There are many resources in the article...but I think it is so worth sharing with teacher/educators. Especially if you are struggling with discussing the issues.
‘You are more than your mistakes’: Teachers get at roots of bad behavior
Schools in Washington suspend thousands of elementary-school students
each year, but doing so rarely changes bad behavior. How to find school
discipline that works?
For years, Franky Price terrified his teachers.
As a third-grader, he pantomimed killing other students by sliding
his finger across his throat. In fourth grade, he swore at anyone who
angered him. The worst moment came one month into fifth grade, after
Franky wrote down his violent fantasies.
He
never planned to act on any of them, but the behavior alarmed educators
enough to get him suspended from the Clover Park School District, then
expelled from Tillicum — placing him among the thousands of children
statewide who are removed annually from elementary-school classrooms.
Franky never told anyone. He knew it would mean foster care.
Instead, he acted out, finally scrawling his inner world onto a piece of notepaper that another student showed their teacher.
“He
took one look at me and said, ‘You need to go,’ ” recalled Price, now a
senior at Chief Sealth High School. “Honestly, I’m surprised [Child
Protective Services] wasn’t called — how does a fifth-grader even know
about the things I was writing? I wish someone would have pulled me
aside and asked: ‘Why do you feel this way?’ I mean, I was only 10 years
old. But it was just ‘Go, get out of here.’ ”
Franky’s experience is not uncommon. In Washington, school suspension
starts with kids as young as 5 years old, often beginning a downward
spiral. Data show that certain children are punished again and again —
missing weeks of class without a noticeable change in behavior. A
third-grader from Seattle’s Highland Park Elementary, for example, was
suspended nine times last year.
Such trends, only recently tracked, are raising serious concerns
among legal advocates, parents and others who say schools rely too often
on punitive discipline, especially for the very young.
“They’re whole children and they have behaviors,” said Jennifer
Harris, policy analyst for the Education Ombuds, a state agency that
mediates between families and schools. “That’s what we’re supposed to be
teaching them — that there are rules. But instead, we’re tossing them
out of school. I’ve got a 5-year-old being written up as a sexual
harasser. I know about 5- or 6-year-olds who’ve hit their teacher’s
wrist and that’s cast as assault.”
Bad behavior as sign of child’s mental state
In general, elementary-school suspensions follow the same pattern as
discipline for older students: a surprising number of kids sent home for
lesser offenses like disrespect, and black children suspended at rates
that far outpace their enrollment.
Explanations
for the latter fall, roughly, into two camps: those who say
African-American kids, like Franky, more often flout schoolhouse norms;
and those who insist that mostly-white educators frequently escalate
misunderstandings into punishment.
But when it comes to suspensions, growing research suggests there is a
less contentious — and more productive — way to handle students, one
that views misbehavior not as a personal attack but as a language
signaling children’s neurological state.
Teaching through this lens has given educators a powerful new tool
for handling difficult outbursts, and it is getting results in schools
from Boston to Los Angeles, including 12 in Washington state. Teachers
in at least one Spokane school have watched suspensions drop by half.
Such
an approach could have been transformational for Franky. Because for
all the fear he caused in teachers, it is teachers he remembers most
fondly. Compared with his life outside of school, they were the safest
people he knew.
ACEs are common
About 2,100 students in
10 Spokane elementary schools were evaluated to determine their level of
Adverse Childhood Experiences. More than 75 percent of the students
were white. About half were poor. The results:
• Parents separated/divorced: 36 percent
• Residential instability: 9 percent
• Witnessed domestic violence: 9 percent
• Child Protective Services: 9 percent
• Family member jailed: 9 percent
• Substance abuse in family: 7 percent
• Lack of food, clothes, other basics: 7 percent
• Mental-health disorders in family: 5 percent
• Physical disability in family: 3 percent
• Exposed to community violence: 3 percent
• Death of parent/caregiver: 2 percent
Source: Washington State University Area Health Project
Put simply, certain experiences — including events as common as
divorce — can be traumatic for children and harm their prefrontal
cortexes, the part of the brain in charge of self-control and abstract
reasoning. As a result, kids who grow up in chaotic or unstable homes
may appear unfocused in class or react to off-the-cuff remarks as
threats — precisely the sorts of behavior coded “disruptive” or
“disrespectful” on school discipline spreadsheets.
“It’s as if their hair’s on fire, and you’re asking them to write
their name,” said Kristy Wilkinson, who teaches third grade in Spokane,
where research suggests at least 45 percent of students are growing up
in homes riven by alcoholism, mental illness, domestic violence and
other types of family dysfunction.
The
light bulb came on for Wilkinson when she learned that kids from such
households exist in a simmering state of emergency — which shows up in
school as impulsivity, edginess and aggression.
“I realized that my students’ behavior wasn’t about me — it was about
their story,” she said. “Taking that personal aspect out of the
equation was huge.”
Wilkinson’s epiphany came not via feel-good theorists, but brain
science spurred by the findings of two physicians who in 1997 discovered
a link between what they called Adverse Childhood Experiences — or ACEs
— and adult health problems.
Factoring in trauma’s effect on learning
The original study, by Drs. Robert
Anda, with the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and
Vincent Felitti, of Kaiser Permanente in San Diego, focused on 17,000
patients — most of them white, middle-class and educated, who reported
rates of childhood trauma that surprised investigators: Nearly
two-thirds had experienced at least one ACE (often, parental divorce),
and 22 percent noted three or more, including substance abuse and
domestic violence.
Those findings intrigued Chris Blodgett, a public-health researcher
at Washington State University, who began examining school results
through the ACEs lens, and believes racism could also be added to the
child-trauma list. Poverty, too, is absent from the nine life events
officially tracked. But it often exists alongside them.
Either way, the upshot was clear: trauma interferes with brain
systems essential to learning, and the more ACEs, the more trauma. In
2014, Johns Hopkins University published similar results.
“If this data was coming from middle-class white adults, we knew we
had it in our schools,” said Wendy Bleeker, director of student support
in Spokane. “It’s clear that kids are experiencing trauma. It’s clear
that it’s affecting their attendance and learning. So it made sense for
us to get ahead of it.”
The notion of Adverse Childhood Experiences resonated loudly at
Bemiss Elementary, which is largely white and sits in one of the poorest
ZIP codes in Washington. Until recently, Bemiss suspended more than 100
kids each year.
Discipline that works: A community conversation
Education
Lab invites you to a conversation on school discipline this Wednesday
at South Seattle College. Speakers are Garfield High Principal Ted
Howard, Kentwood High teacher Jay Maebori and Seattle student Dayöne
Florence. Light dinner at 5:30 p.m.; program at 6:30 p.m. Registration
required at seati.ms/disciplineforall. Free.
“Suspension was huge here,” said Jen Moore, a school psychologist. “It was just, ‘Get this kid out of my class.’ ”
In 2008, Bemiss became one of Blodgett’s early laboratories. First,
his team educated teachers about the effects of early trauma, then
helped them come up with ways to mitigate it.
Predictability, they learn, is helpful for kids with chaotic lives.
At Bemiss, this shows up as daily schedules posted with large, colorful
letters; student-behavior charts that progress from “super job” to
“think about it” to “parent contact”; and secluded corners where
children can sit and calm themselves.
You are more than your mistakes, says a poster in the quiet area just outside Wilkinson’s classroom.
Forging genuine relationships — among teachers, and between students
and adults — also works. That may sound obvious, acknowledged Principal
Jennifer Keck, but in many teacher-training programs it comes as an
afterthought.
“So much is focused on instructional strategies — how to teach
reading, how to teach math or science — but I firmly believe if we
haven’t built the relationships, you won’t have instruction as rigorous
as you want,” she said.
After five years of incorporating these and similar approaches, Keck
watched suspensions drop by 33 percent in 2014, without forcing teachers
to simply endure disruptive students. Indeed, school records show that
defiance plummeted between September and April this school year.
From concept to classroom
That climate is evident in Bemiss Elementary’s cheery hallways, where
teachers routinely throw an arm around students — even the most
obstreperous. While test scores have bounced up and down, Bemiss is the
first high-poverty school in Spokane to make it to the state finals in
robotics last year.
Keck and her team walked a long road to get to this point. It took
four years of monthly training and a team of teachers willing to
collaborate on trauma-sensitive approaches.
“Early on, they used to ask: ‘Give us that silver bullet. Show us
what to do.’ But it was not about me as a school leader deciding that,”
Keck said. “It was about coming together as a staff and pooling what we
knew about kids. It takes a while.”
Not to say that Bemiss students no longer challenge their teachers.
I realized that my students’ behavior wasn’t about me — it was about
their story. Taking that personal aspect out of the equation was huge.”
A fourth-grader sitting outside Keck’s office — arms crossed hard
across his chest, hoodie zipped over his head and body pretzel-twisted
into a tight little line — provided a recent example. He was a
bottle-rocket about to explode, a live wire of rage.
Years ago the boy almost certainly would have been suspended. He had
scribbled on another child’s work, thrown a marker at his teacher and
stormed from the classroom.
Peggy Slotvig, who knew the child and happened to be on a break, did
not immediately grill him about why he’d been sent out of class.
Instead, she ushered the youth upstairs, away from front-office traffic
and into an empty classroom where the two sat close together.
“We were just messing around,” he began in a high voice, describing
his fight with the art teacher. “Then she said, ‘That’s no way to get a
girlfriend,’ and it set me off.”
“Very good — it did set you off. Because it embarrassed you,” nodded
Slotvig, aware that the student had been diagnosed with post-traumatic
stress disorder, and no longer speaks to his mother.
“She started it,” the youth insisted, rocking slightly in his chair.
“You know what? I’m going to agree with you — she did start it,”
Slotvig said. “But not to be mean. She was trying to be funny. She just
didn’t know your triggers.”
It would be the boy’s responsibility to explain them, just as he had
with the librarian and gym teacher, and to answer for losing his temper.
Consequences are essential, notes Natalie Turner, a trainer on
Blodgett’s team who worked with the Bemiss staff.
“There is a place for suspension,” she said. “There has to be
accountability. But too often, that response is purely reactive. It’s
not about problem-solving.”
Back in Seattle, this organic approach to addressing behavior
intrigued Vicki Sacco, principal at West Seattle Elementary, which has
the highest rate of public-housing students in the city and suspended 13
kids last year.
That places it sixth among Seattle elementary schools, a significant
improvement from 2010, when Sacco arrived to see children lining the
hallway outside the principal’s office. But she wants more.
Last summer, teachers at West Seattle invited Blodgett’s team to
begin schooling them, work funded through a $650,000 grant from the Bill
& Melinda Gates Foundation. (Note: The Education Lab project also
receives support from the foundation.)
“I felt that the staff was ready for this kind of
self-reflection,” Sacco said. “Programs come and go, but they don’t
really require you to grow as a professional. This was different. It was
helping teachers look within themselves. You know, we do take things
personally — we’re human. But reacting that way can make things so much
worse.”
Turner, the trainer, now makes monthly visits to West Seattle. After
working with teachers she visits students, showing each class the
relationship between feelings, actions and ways to manage them.
In a roomful of fifth-graders last month she made a fist to model
their brains. Her thumb, tucked inside, was the hippocampus, the center
for emotions.
“Show me where you feel your feelings,” she told the kids.
Some pointed to their heads, others to their hearts. One poked at his stomach.
“That’s right,” said Turner, seizing an opportunity. “Our brains are
giving our bodies clues that we’re about to have a really big feeling.
Raise your hand if you ever get stressed out.”
Every child in the room shot a hand in the air.
“Raise your hands if there is someone outside of school you can talk to about those feelings,” Turner continued.
Half the class sat motionless.
Seattle Times staff reporter Justin Mayo contributed data analysis for this story. Claudia Rowe: crowe@seattletimes.com or 206-464-2531. On Twitter @RoweReport
Education Lab
is a Seattle Times project that spotlights promising approaches to some
of the most persistent challenges in public education. It is produced
in partnership with the Solutions Journalism Network,
a New York-based nonprofit that works to spread the practice of
solutions-oriented journalism. Education Lab is funded by a grant from
the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
To Franky, the punishments barely registered. Raised in a family of
drug users and dealers, he wandered with them from one dingy apartment
to the next. Often, there was no bed to sleep on and nothing but plastic
covering the windows.
Related stories
This is the third in a series of Education Lab stories exploring the
problems of school discipline and how school districts are working to
alleviate them. The first two:
Education Lab
is a Seattle Times project that spotlights promising approaches to some
of the most persistent challenges in public education. It is produced
in partnership with the Solutions Journalism Network,
a New York-based nonprofit that works to spread the practice of
solutions-oriented journalism. Education Lab is funded by a grant from
the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
