- 39 participants. Is that right in?
Yep. So we're gonna get started.
For those of you who were able to get here on time.
And I know for all of you being in school,
sometimes it's hard to break away to get here right at nine.
So hopefully people will hop on very soon.
I'm Kym Asam, I'm gonna be presenting today.
I'm the Regional Director of Schools
and Clinical Programming for NFI Vermont.
I also work for the Vermont BEST Project
as a coach and trainer, and I'm excited to be here today.
Understanding developmental trauma is a passion of mine.
It's been the primary focus of my professional development
for a long time now.
So I'm always happy to share information
and hopefully information that's useful
and relevant to all of the work that you do.
So we are scheduled to go from nine to 11.
Amy Wheeler-Sutton is here to help.
She's got the materials in the chat box via a link.
And I'm sure she'll, whenever I,
usually, whenever I reference something,
she'll have it in the chat box
before I'm done talking about it.
So if I reference a book or something,
she often gets that in there.
The link has been put back in the chat box again.
And I think with that said,
I'll share my screen and we will get started.
And Amy, can you just confirm that you can see my screen?
- Yep. Looks great.
- Excellent news. Okay.
So developmental trauma, really,
looking at some of the core elements
of developmental trauma, the domains of impairment,
and also constantly integrating
throughout our time together today elements of MTSS.
So how do we use a tiered system of support
to implement intervention strategies,
modalities, et cetera?
And as far as the format for today goes,
I will have a short break
about halfway through the presentation
so we can move away from our screens
and maybe get up and move and walk in a circle or something.
And periodically I'll bring you all back on
so we can take a look at each other
if I have questions that I'd like people to answer
or just talk about.
- And Kym, we actually don't see your video right now.
I think you can share it. - [Kym] Yeah.
- [Kym] Do you want my video on?
- Yeah.
- Oh.
Okay. How's that?
- [Amy] Looks great. - Good.
So, what are we gonna do today?
We're gonna really focus on the importance
of adult wellness and workforce development.
That is a universal intervention
that can't be emphasized enough.
We'll talk about the four premises
of a trauma-responsive or informed school.
Just a quick differentiation
between post traumatic stress disorder
and developmental trauma.
We'll take a look at five out of the seven domains
of functioning or impairment
that are the result of developmental trauma
and really what interventions can we utilize
to help kids who are struggling
with those domains of impairment slash functioning.
And then just really increasing knowledge
about the alignment between trauma-informed schools
and multi-tiered systems of support and or PBIs.
So it's really important to name that
we often think about kids
who've experienced developmental trauma as of "them,"
something that's happened to someone over there.
And when we think about kids that way,
we further marginalize them as a group
where something that's happened to them that's unique,
but when we join with their experiences by understanding,
we have all experienced stressful events.
When you think about your intimate circle,
likely, you know someone who has been harmed,
who's experienced interpersonal violence.
So when we join with them about knowing,
with our knowledge
that everyone has had a stressful experience,
it increases our capacity to be empathic
and strengthens our adult assets to intervene.
And so we really gonna emphasize over and over again,
we have to focus on our wellness,
throughout the presentation.
I also wanna say that some of this content can be hard.
And so notice that.
Take a break if you need to. Drink some water.
Notice where it lands in your body, pay attention to that,
and do things that you need to do
to feel regulated throughout this time.
So this is the first polling question, Amy.
- Okay. And the participants should be seeing it.
- Great. Just to get a sense of
people who have experienced training.
So a lot of people have had a good deal.
Some people have extensive training.
- Okay. 100% of people have voted.
- Excellent.
So there's a few that haven't had any training
and a lot of you who have had a good deal of training.
So that's great.
Some of this will be repeat for you.
And so what we know
about repetition plus experience equals learning.
It reinforces what we know.
And hopefully there will be some new angles
and new ways to enhance your already,
your current, excuse me, knowledge base
on developmental trauma.
And I can close the poll.
Okay. I have that control.
So...
So the overarching principle
regarding developmental trauma is safety and security.
In order for children to feel safe,
adults need to feel safe.
And our safety and security is derived from our wellness.
And I can't emphasize that enough.
We'll talk a little later about emotional contagion,
but kids know when we're stressed.
So we have to pay attention and manage our stress
and enlist the support of our colleagues
and our administrators to help us feel safe and secure.
So I'd like you just to take a look,
I'm gonna actually shrink this over here,
at this progression.
This is from the Trauma Transformed Movement,
not movement but, sorry.
I'm having a hard time with my words this morning.
So the Trauma Transformed Program,
that's out of California Department of Health,
and they talk about three different areas
that you might land in.
And there's trauma organized,
which is when you're really living in a sort of fragmented,
us versus them reactive response to stressors.
There's trauma-informed,
which is fully integrating knowledge of trauma
into policies, procedures, and practices.
And then there's the healing organization.
And that's when we're really being reflective,
when we're growth and prevention-oriented or collaborative.
And that we have relational versus authoritarian leadership.
So just take a moment to maybe put in the chat,
where do you think you land in this continuum?
And notice too, that this continuum is not a checklist.
It's not, okay, we were trauma-organized,
now we're trauma-informed, now we're healing organization.
It's fluid.
You can move back and forth across this continuum,
depending on the level of stress
that you're personally experiencing,
or the level of stress of your building
or your larger SU or SD.
So go ahead and put in the chat kind of where you land.
Let me take a look at the chat.
- Is the question, "Where does our organization land,
"or where do we land personally?"
- Yeah. Thanks for that clarification.
Answer it in any way that feels most relevant to you.
Often I ask kind of where do you think you live
along this continuum,
but if it feels more relevant
to answer where you think your organization is,
that's fine too.
Informed to healing.
Wanting to move to growth and prevention.
Depends on which staff. That's always important.
You have informed and healing.
Trauma-informed on some levels, more work to be done.
Great. Trauma-informed.
I would say we want to be trauma-informed
and sometimes we are,
but we often are still trauma-organized,
especially in COVID.
Oh my gosh. Absolutely. Great.
Thank you so much for doing that.
And I don't know who asked the question,
but I also wanna be clear that if you have any questions,
please unmute yourself and feel free to ask them
if you need clarification
or just you have a question about the content.
Okay.
So when we think about where we land in this continuum,
and it can change based on our threshold of tolerance,
our own level of stress,
or as I said, organization level of stress.
We have the responsibility to address wellness,
not only individually, but organizationally.
So a big piece, again, of being trauma-informed is ensuring
that you have systems in place within your school community
that allow you to engage in wellness activities,
whether it's short moments throughout the day,
or larger opportunities through professional development,
or bringing in some providers
that can help with wellness activities.
And when you think about your wellness too,
it's also important to consider
who else needs to help you with your wellness.
So wellness is not an individual responsibility.
It could be a partner or it could be a child,
or it could be a good friend,
or it could be in my case, it's my partner,
but it's also my pets.
They help me a lot with wellness.
So our wellness is essential
and it's a universal precaution that fosters resilience
and protective factors in ourselves.
And again, to that umbrella of safety and security,
as we're promoting that in ourselves,
we then allow it to be promoted
in the students that we support.
So Nadine Burke Harris, who's the,
she's a pediatrician and the first Surgeon General
for the state of California,
wrote a book called "The Deepest Well."
And she talks about
how developmental trauma is a public health crisis.
And when we examine public health crises and how we respond,
we've often focused on the victims.
And designed policies and practices to aid in the recovery.
The focus, however, has rarely been on the provider.
And while we have lots of conversations about compassion,
fatigue, empathic distress, call it whatever you want,
we still don't, from the view of,
the trauma-informed view and from the research,
we don't spend enough time focusing on the providers.
In 2008 and 2009, there were approximately 100 students
that were served in day treatment schools.
And I happened to oversee four day treatment schools.
So I'm a part of that research as well.
In 2019, over 500 students were served.
And you know in Vermont,
our population hasn't increased that much.
And the reason that we're serving more and more students
in day treatment schools
is because the acuity of need has increased significantly.
It truly is a public health crisis in the state of Vermont
and in the nature.
Our students have far more intensive needs
than they've had in the past.
And schools, public schools are working really hard
to build capacity to prevent out of district placement,
which means that all of you are working
with students with more and more intense needs.
I'm gonna say it again.
Our wellness, our workforce development is critical
to being able to have the stamina and the tolerance
and the ability to support students with intensive needs
as a result of developmental trauma.
So I'm new to understanding and talking about this.
And it's a journey I'm undertaking in my work with NFI
and also with the BEST Project,
related to equity and inclusion.
And I know because I'm white and because I'm middle class
and I'm a middle-aged woman, my white nice...
White, excuse me, white,
whiteness is inculcated in my practice and being.
And it's no doubt going to influence
how I present information regardless of the training topic,
but in particular about trauma.
It's important to keep that in the forefront of my thinking.
So I can heighten my awareness about my biases,
and understanding our biases is a critical element
for workforce development.
It's about discovery.
And our discovery can only help us work better
with kids who have experienced developmental trauma.
And while this isn't an equity and inclusion training,
I'd be remiss
if I didn't have a little bit of conversation about this.
So we think about insidious trauma,
it's this looming and sometimes concrete threat
that one person's safety
is not as important as another person's safety.
Dr. Ken Hardy, who is an international, well known speaker
on equity and inclusion on racial sensitivity,
talks about, there's this myth of sameness out there
that somehow we all are the same in many ways.
And as he says, it is a myth.
Insidious trauma is like acid falling on a stone.
It's microaggressions
that sometimes we inadvertently commit,
things like, I don't see color,
or we're all a member of the human race,
we're just one race,
things like waiting for another elevator
if we see a person of color on the elevator.
And microaggressions are like
that acid falling on the stone.
One drop, it's not enough to damage,
but over time, a fissure forms.
One more drop, one more microaggression
can have a really big reaction from people.
Because perhaps for the umpteenth time,
that person has felt that they don't belong there.
And they might have what's a seemingly big reaction,
but we don't know how much damage and injury has been caused
prior to something we may have said or done.
So our reframe here is just asking
rather than "why'd you do that, what's wrong with you,"
we're asking "what's happened to you?"
And being aware that we may be inadvertently contributing
to someone's incredible distress.
It's also important that we include
in our repertoire for thinking, historical trauma.
Trauma is rooted in oppression.
Therefore, our wellness, being well,
creating that safety and security becomes a social justice
and an equity issue.
If we're going to uproot oppression,
we have to be well enough to examine our own biases.
And our biases are elicited
when our threshold of tolerance is lowered,
when our stress is lower, our implicit bias can be raised.
And again, to quote Dr. Hardy,
"The person with the power
"has the most responsibility for the relationship."
So whether we're in power
because of differences in our race and ethnicity,
difference because we have, we're an adult with a child,
wherever our power differential exists,
we have to be aware of that.
Being responsible for the relationship also means
that we have to be addressing our own needs
and our own health.
That's our obligation to our students.
It's our obligation to our colleagues,
and it is a universal intervention.
And finally, the legacy of trauma lives on.
Like slavery and genocide.
It lives on in the behaviors,
interactions, and even our genes.
So this awareness is critically important
to understanding all types of trauma,
historical, insidious, and developmental trauma.
So we know that trauma is,
developmental trauma occurs
within the social fabric of children's lives,
and it's a social injury.
And so therefore it requires social healing.
And I wanna note that
the person that coined that phrase is Dr. Sandra Bloom.
And she wrote an excellent article
called "Creating Sanctuary in School."
It was actually written in 1995.
And it's still as relevant today as it was back in 1995.
So if you're interested in reading it,
I would encourage you.
You can just Google it and you'll find it.
Or you can always email me and I can share it with you.
It's not in our materials for today.
So trauma is a social injury.
(clears throat) excuse me,
whether it's racial, insidious, historical or developmental.
And so we have to really sustain our compassion and empathy
when faced with chronic challenges.
I can't emphasize that enough, our wellness,
(clears throat) excuse me, allows us to rejuvenate
and revitalize our compassion and our caring.
Our kids, they sit in the world of shame.
So kids who've experienced developmental trauma are,
what's armor-plated for them is shame, not guilt.
Guilt is, "I did something bad." Shame is, "I am bad."
That's their sense of self.
And often these kids
who have experienced developmental trauma
are more afraid of living than dying
'cause living causes them harm.
And so they engage in behaviors that are confounding,
perplexing, and maladaptive, although survival-based.
They use destructive forms of personal empowerment.
And if we're truly gonna hear their stories,
if we're truly gonna use our relationship
and our social environment to help them heal,
we have to enter into the darkness with them.
We've got to be willing to be fully present,
and willing to sit with the discomfort,
listen to their story rather than trying to solve a problem,
tolerate the rupture
and repair of the cycle in the relationships,
as a method of social healing.
I'm gonna move on now to
four premises of trauma-informed schools.
Amy, is there anything in the chat
that I need to pay attention to?
- Nope.
- Okay. Thank you.
Excuse me. (sniffles)
So these next few slides are really,
again, about workforce development and wellness.
So trauma-sensitive schools recognize the prevalence
and the impact of traumatic occurrence in students' lives.
And they create (clears throat) flexible frameworks
that provide universal supports.
And a trauma-informed school is sensitive
to the unique needs of students
and it's mindful of avoiding re-traumatization.
So the first premise is that
stress is contagious reciprocally.
So we know that students experience stress,
which can impact our workforce,
which can impact building administrators,
which can impact the larger organization.
To the participant's question earlier about, are we,
when we looked at that continuum,
are we thinking about ourselves or our SU or SD.
When we have this reciprocal experience of stress,
or if it trickles down,
this contagion can cause the entire
school community to feel stress.
And it goes in the other direction as well.
It becomes viral
when universal precautions are not in place.
If you wanna optimize performance,
you must understand and you must regulate stress.
PBIS, again, we're talking about
a multi-tiered system of support
for supporting kids who've experienced developmental trauma.
Promotes cultural wellness.
And through consistent systems and practices,
it reduces the amount of stress that you're experiencing.
So we wanna, again,
focus on what happened versus what's wrong.
What skills have you developed?
What skills have your students developed?
And workforce development is one of the most efficient ways
to reduce the amount of community,
organizational and individual stress.
Workforce development...
I'm sorry.
Workforce development is critical to this,
but also when we think about this cycle
or this reciprocity of stress,
it can also be a primary source of intervention.
So if we know where the students are
in their sense of safety and wellness,
or where administrators are,
or where folks who are in the classrooms with kids,
if we know where that is,
we can build intervention strategies
to support reduction of stress.
So then looking at the stress continuum, (clears throat)
again, stress is contagious.
We think about stress in the entire environment.
We think about our proximity to kids.
We think about the color of the room, the lighting.
We think about the energy in the room,
the energy in our bodies,
all of our senses, our relationships.
And we're all responsible for the success of others
because the connections that we have with one another,
our relationships moderate stress.
So stress is the amount of energy in our body.
And as we move along the stress continuum,
we move from an objective to a subjective perspective.
Our threshold of tolerance, our lenses become clouded.
Our cortical modulation becomes disrupted.
And we also move from
this concrete objective way of seeing things
to implicit bias.
Also known as implicit social cognition.
And that's again, when our assumptions are elicited
in sort of this unconscious way.
And it impacts our actions,
our understanding what's going on in our environment
and the decisions we make.
An example I like to give is that I grew up in a family
where being on time was a really important characteristic.
In fact, being early was preferable.
And then I lived in a community,
in a culture for about 15 years
where there was a different understanding of being on time.
In fact, being late was considered okay.
It was considered a relaxed way of being.
And for a long time,
when I was first living in that community,
when someone was late,
it would just activate my implicit bias.
And I would assume it was a fault in their character.
And it took me a long time to adjust to that,
to where it wasn't activated.
So that's about reflection,
that's about examining my own biases.
It's about engaging in wellness,
so I can push the pause button long enough to know
that that response was about my own cultural upbringing
and was not representative of all cultures.
So we know that stress is contagious, but so is calm.
So when we think about the first premise
about the reciprocity of stress in trauma-informed schools,
a good deal of what we are needing to focus on is
how are we practicing wellness,
naming our stress, noticing it in others,
and developing systems
and practices that can help reduce it?
We also know that stress
is the primary mediator of performance.
So as stress increases, our performance goes down.
So when you refer back to that continuum that I showed
where we could be trauma-organized,
which is a fragmented sort of system
to healing organization,
paying attention to this is important
because we want to perform
at our optimal level whenever possible,
so that kids can be successful.
And I suspect that everyone on the call today,
everyone participating in this webinar
has had unregulated stress at some point in their life.
If we were live, I would ask people to raise their hands.
Is anyone here not had unregulated stress
at one point or another
in their profession or in their lives?
And we tend to see what we're looking for.
So we have something in our brain
that's called the reticulated...
Reticular activating system.
And it's kind of like our air traffic control system.
It filters out what we perceive to be irrelevant,
and the way it filters things out is by our lived experience
and by our biases.
So the more that we can have awareness of our biases,
the more we can have awareness of our stress and reduce it.
Our reticular activating system
can start filtering in things
that help us change our mindset,
and help us with workforce development,
to be more regular, to be more available and regulated
for supporting kids who are really struggling.
'Cause when we're stressed, our objective filters,
our capacity to critically modulate becomes compromised.
So then, we talk about our third area,
when stress is unregulated,
it can be injurious to ourselves,
to the kids that we support and serve,
and to our community or our school community.
So we wanna, again, engage in practices
that are gonna help us feel more regulated
and to support our ability to help one another
when we're distressed.
And finally, we talk about how our biases are activated
and that that contributes to reduced self-care and blame.
It's really far easier to talk about kids
than it is to talk about ourselves.
And I don't know if anyone here
has ever noticed that in a meeting
when you're really feeling confounded
by a kid's presentation or a family struggle,
that you feel like what you've tried over and over again,
hasn't been working,
that you tend to focus on the student
rather than the system or the environment in which they are.
And so our self-examination,
our self-reflection about our own interactions
in our system becomes critical
to developing more effective interventions.
I don't know how many of you have ever heard
or seen some of Brene Brown's work,
but if you haven't seen Brene Brown's "Short on Blame,"
I highly encourage you to watch it.
It's an excellent, it's like a three-minute short
and where she really talks a lot about
how we tend to go to blame when we're stressed.
We look for something externally
for the cause of the problem
as opposed to looking internally.
So if we're really going to sit
with the discomfort of our students,
we have to sit within our own discomfort,
asking ourselves, "What does it mean to me?
"What is it that I'm feeling?
"Where is it in my body?
"And how can I use that knowledge and reflection
"to better support and serve my colleagues
"and the kids who are experiencing developmental trauma
"and the behaviors that are an outcropping of that?"
So what's the consequence of unregulated stress?
Sort of the obvious here, that we become less creative,
we become resigned to the distress and the challenges
that are relentlessly presented before us,
we become, again, fragmented.
We have less tolerance for distress
and for children's chronic behaviors.
Sometimes we miss what's right in front of us.
And it's a parallel process.
This happens to us as adults, and this happens to kids too.
And we sometimes become very passive
in response to behavior.
So we send kids away.
We send them out of context of the stress.
We use exclusionary practices like detention, et cetera.
And we wanna be aware of the vicarious impact that distress
working with kids with chronic challenges has on us.
Again, this vicarious trauma empathic distress
is so important to pay attention to.
So we're exposed to traumatic events.
We have experiences, we have emotions,
we have body-based experiences,
and then we have our response to it.
And we have a lot of demands on us
that are coming from all different directions in schools.
Whether it's having kids meeting
for certain standards or for,
we were just talking before we started this webinar,
we were talking about the recovery plan
that's being required.
So there's all these different demands
that are coming at us
in addition to working with kids who are really struggling.
So one path we can go down is we can dwell, quell,
we can avoid, and we become maladaptive.
We don't work hard enough on our wellness.
We become sort of habituated to the distress,
and we become sort of that learned helplessness again.
But the other path is that we can become reflective
and we can evaluate, and we can process,
and we can gain support from our colleagues.
And we wanna, we'll talk in a moment just about culture
and how we can utilize tools and resources
to develop a stronger culture
to support the upward path of process and reflection.
So if we go down the path of dwell,
quell, avoid, and maladaptive,
we're most likely to have empathy fatigue.
But if we try really hard as our systems and individuals
to go through the upper path,
we have vicarious resilience versus vicarious trauma,
and we can be growing from our experience
and learning from our experience.
So the question is, "Which path do you wanna go on?"
And how can you support the upward trajectory
so that you're learning and growing from your experiences,
from your reflection and from frankly, mistakes?
I don't know if anyone out there on the call today
has ever made a mistake in your work with children.
I have, I just wanna own that.
So I always wanna learn from that
and also enlist my collegial support
to help me understand what has occurred
and what I can do differently.
So this again is about workforce development.
Another really important piece about
elements of trauma-informed schools is your culture.
So, this year for those who are on the call
that are PBIS schools,
we have offered a opportunity to,
instead of doing the school-wide assessment survey,
to do the climate survey.
And this during the pandemic,
if there was ever a time to do a climate survey,
this is probably the time.
Because it's really important to get your finger
on the pulse of how everyone's doing.
So PBIS is a framework
that can support a really healthy culture.
The resilience literature,
which talks a lot about culture,
supported by, closely related
to social emotional learning activities and interventions,
talks about how focusing on culture and utilizing SEL,
really promotes a school climate,
and assistance approach
of one of the most effective ways of promoting resilience.
So using SEL for kids
in turn helping with their resilience
helps with our resilience.
And one of the core components of the MTSS Field Guide
is a culture of continuous improvement.
So if you haven't considered doing the climate survey,
I would highly encourage you to do that
because it's a really effective way
of examining these types of elements.
And these are all elements of school culture
from the MTSS Field Guide.
So what do we believe? What are relationships like?
(clears throat) What are our attitudes?
Excuse me, let me take a sip of water.
What's our physical environment like?
How are we embracing diversity? Et cetera.
And then before we get into the domains of impairment,
I wanna just talk quickly about upstream interventions
that are universal precautions
that help spread the toxicity that's associated with trauma.
So a way that we address wellness
for ourselves and our students
is through upstream interventions.
And we know that MTSS Field Guide,
it talks about quality, proactive interventions.
And so going upstream rather than downstream
is really useful in supporting students in being successful,
as well as all of us in the work that we do
with children and families.
So what I love about this image is that, it really is,
it speaks to the universal importance
of being present in other people's distress.
We wanna move from a hierarchical
evaluative supervision model, to more of a supportive model.
And we do that by following these steps.
So observation is taking a look at
how does that person look?
What are you seeing non-verbally in that person?
What are you noticing about their presentation,
their modulation of their voice, et cetera?
The listening component is really being present
and hearing the words and hearing the inflection
and containing the desire to fix.
So listen with the intent of really understanding the story,
not trying to share the story
or share your own story that's similar to their stories,
or really containing that desire
to fix the problem that's being expressed to you.
Become really curious, wonder out loud,
wonder to yourself
about what that experience might be like for that person.
And once you've gone through all those steps,
then you respond.
And I'm just gonna ask people to raise their hand.
I've got you all back on the screen right now.
Raise your hand if you've ever tried to solve a problem
before you completely understood what the problem was.
Karen's raising her hand.
Rick's raising his hand.
You can come back, oh, I got a thumbs up from Amy.
Thank you.
So we've got some people with their hands up.
Using the technology, I love it. Thanks so much.
Yeah. So it's a really natural thing
that we do as human beings.
We're trying to solve problems.
But the challenge is,
if we're solving a problem
before we completely understand it,
we haven't heard the whole story.
And that can be incredibly, incredibly invalidating.
So we wanna really pay attention to what is the whole story
and ask questions, get more clarification.
We also wanna make sure
that we're really engaging in self-reflective practices.
How are we examining what our experience was like?
Examining what our interaction was like.
According to the MTSS Field Guide,
self-reflection sets the stage
for building a culture of systemic improvement.
So again, moving away from an evaluative supervision model
to a reflective supervision model.
And there is a,
in the handouts that Amy put in the chat box,
there's a reflective practice guideline.
I just kind of quickly go through some of the steps
of how you engage in more reflective practice
versus again, a hierarchical practice.
And that helps us to know,
it helps us to move away from being trauma-organized.
We need to know when our colleagues are suffering,
when they're distressed, and how to help them.
And we need to be able to push the pause button
to really listen to the story
and invite humanity into our work every single day.
And this is a quote, again, from the MTSS Field Guide,
that we have to have resilience in our system.
We can't expect that people have their,
just their own individual resilience.
If they don't have a system to support them,
then they will be, their resilience will be compromised
and their adult assets will also be compromised.
All upstream.
Another upstream intervention is changing your mindset.
I've already said this phrase,
this was coined from the Wisconsin Department of Health
a long time ago right now.
So when we change our mindset, we can change our practices.
We know that a dysregulated adult
can't regulate a dysregulated kid,
so we have to be calm so we can be curious,
so that we can stay present
for the story that's being told to us,
either behaviorally or orally.
And we need to be able to think about transitioning
from a blame model to a repair model.
How can we help? What can I learn from you?
What are you telling me right now
that I don't already know about you
that will inform my decisions and my interventions,
whether they're systemic wide or my own individual response
to the behaviors that are being presented to me?
There's also a document in the handouts
called "We Got This,"
and I put that in there because
while there's a lot of opportunity
to reflect on what we might be doing
and how we might do things differently,
that we got this document
is also about the incredible repertoire
of skills and assets that you already have,
and how to revitalize those,
how to pay attention to them and how to celebrate them.
So I'm gonna stop sharing for a second.
So notice the shark fin,
that is a shark fin, not a dolphin fin,
and go ahead and put in the chat,
if you were at a body of water,
probably an ocean, 'cause that's where sharks live,
if you were at a body of water and you saw that shark fin,
what would you do?
So go ahead and put in the chat,
how you might respond to that.
Panic. Freak out. Keep my eyes on it.
Afraid. Panic. Flail. Stop and watch.
Stop and watch? Oh, Helen.
Get out of the water.
Run in the water. (laughs) That's good water aerobics.
Swim fast. Michelle, great. Love it.
Rick would get out of the water.
Okay. Yeah. So, yell for help.
Look for a way out.
Look for a fishing pole. Okay, JP. (laughs)
Some really good answers. Right. Yeah.
So typically, when we see that in the water,
we wanna get away from it.
Because it's not safe. That's our assumption.
And if any of you on the call today ever saw "Jaws,"
you probably have been scarred for life.
But when we think about upstream intervention...
Scarred for life for going to the ocean,
is what I meant to say.
We think about upstream interventions,
we wanna change what we see.
We wanna change our mindset.
We wanna develop a second theory.
So underneath that shark fin, is probably this,
not probably, is this beautiful child who's been harmed
because they have been swimming in an ocean
of abuse and neglect and fear of adults,
community violence, poor sleep hygiene,
substance abuse, challenges in school,
perhaps they have an incarcerated parent, food insecurity,
maybe they've experienced sexual abuse.
So our upstream intervention
would be to look actually under the water
and understand all of these kids are swimming in
so that we can develop a second theory.
A second theory requires reflection
and a second theory requires empathy.
Our first theory is it's a shark.
Our second theory is it's a goldfish.
It's a child that needs our help.
And it changes the story.
It changes the story that we tell
and it changes the story we believe.
It also helps change the story
that the child knows about themselves.
How we see children is how they see themselves.
So we change our mindset,
again, in order to change our practices.
And then I'm sure many of you have heard of the ACE's study
as all, I think I said that figure, 81% of you have had
quite a bit of training already on trauma.
So you know that adverse childhood experiences
has been a longitudinal study
that has looked at the effects of
traumatic experiences on kids
and the short-term and long-term effect.
So you can see what the triangle,
the continuum that happens
if you've had multiple childhood adverse experiences,
but upstream interventions,
again, upstream modalities are focusing on wellness,
social emotional learning,
strengthening relationships with each other
and the children,
ensuring that we're incorporating exercise
in order to help regulate our lower regions of our brain.
Good sleep hygiene, good nutrition,
engaging in practices that help us calm,
again, the lower regions of our brain,
like meditation and yoga.
These are all universal interventions.
These are all upstream interventions that are so critical
to mitigating the impact developmental trauma has
on kids' functioning.
So these are universal first year of support interventions.
And then we think about social emotional learning also
as an upstream intervention, (clears throat)
part of high quality instruction,
collaboration, data form decision-making,
comprehensive and balanced assessment system.
The core elements of MTSS is implementing
an effective social emotional learning curriculum
and making sure you're doing that universally
across the entire building so everyone has access to this.
You might also wanna think about
when you're thinking about social emotional learning,
the role of your clinician or clinicians in school
or the role of your school counselors
or whomever is charged with promoting and providing support
to children who are struggling
with their mental health and their behaviors.
There is a handout in the documents that Amy shared
that talks about how you can examine
the role of the clinician in your school.
It's from the Interconnected Systems Framework.
Encourage you to take a look at it
'cause it can help you to repurpose.
We really wanna try hard
to avoid sending kids out of the context of their distress.
So sending them, referring them out,
we really wanna try to provide
as much support in the classroom as possible
to promote universal intervention
so kids can tolerate their distress
and the environment in which it's caused
and also practice adaptive coping skills
so that they can stay within the classroom
and access their learning more.
And then, Brandi Simonsen,
who works out of the University of Connecticut,
who's done a lot of work with us in the BEST Project,
she talks about five dimensions
of social emotional learning practices
that encompass self-management,
and interpersonal relationships,
both of which are significantly harmed
by developmental trauma.
So the five elements she talks about is maximizing structure
of PBIS component for sure,
that you post, teach, review, monitor,
and reinforce the expectations.
Again, an element of PBIS.
Actively engage students in observable ways.
So this could be moving around the classroom,
giving them opportunities to respond, et cetera.
Use a continuum of strategies
to respond to appropriate behavior.
So really again, PBIS.
Acknowledging when kids are doing well,
really finding a good five to one ratio
of positive versus constructive feedback,
and also having a continuum of strategies
to support kids who are struggling.
And focusing a great deal,
hopefully on classroom-based management
versus having kids have to leave the classroom.
And I get that sometimes kids have to leave the classroom
because their behaviors are so challenging
that they need additional support,
but as much as possible
that we can keep kids in their classroom
to, again, experience the distress,
practice their strategies, and have success,
the more likely they'll be able to generalize those skills
across multiple environments.
And then upstream interventions.
This is just a non-exhaustive list
of some upstream interventions from
the Policy Institute of Helping Traumatized Children Learn,
and I'm just looking at my footer there
and I've got it typed in incorrectly.
I apologize for that,
but it's helping traumatized children learn
from the Policy Institute out of Massachusetts.
So here are some examples
of universal upstream interventions.
And then one of my favorites that I always like to show,
and this is from a video
on a school's journey to becoming trauma-sensitive,
is positive greetings at the door,
which you can even do if you're doing virtual learning.
There's ways to do it.
For this particular teacher,
she had choices, you can see on the wall,
that kids could pick.
This was pre-COVID
because some of them were like getting a hug.
There is a teacher,
I think he's in a school in Chicago
that he's memorized every student's personal handshake.
So just ways of engaging kids regardless of their age,
regardless of their grade,
even high school kids, of being there, being present,
acknowledging them and welcome them into the classroom.
So you can tie that into your school-wide expectations.
So, Amy, the second polling question,
I'm gonna stop sharing for a second.
So if people could just answer
the polling question about the level of implementation
of PBIS you're currently doing, if you're doing it.
- And that fourth one,
it should say universal, targeted and intensive.
I think it's not showing up all the way on your screen.
- Okay. Thanks, Amy.
It's so exciting to watch the polls kit.
Like we got 20 people.
Great. Give it another second.
Okay.
So it looks like everybody is implementing at some level
and it looks like one person isn't quite sure.
So it's just helpful as I go along with these slides.
So we're gonna go for,
we're gonna do a few more slides
and then we're gonna take a screen break
so people can hang in a little bit longer,
(clears throat) then we can,
you can practice what I preach about wellness and self-care.
Okay. So just a little a bit about Vermont MTSS.
I'm sure all of you have a copy
of the MTSS Field Guide at your bedside
that you refer to regularly,
but for those of you who don't,
here are the elements of MTSS,
high quality instruction and intervention,
comprehensive assessment, expertise,
effective collaboration,
all in an effort to have a systemic
and comprehensive approach
to support students in being successful.
And what does that mean?
That's a short way of saying
that we wanna meet students where they're at
and help them get where they need to go.
One of the things that the MTSS Field Guide
and other literature
that talks about developmental trauma emphasizes,
is the importance of resilience.
So the source of this quote is from CLEAR,
which is the Collaborative Learning
for Educational Achievement and Resilience.
It's a white paper on trauma. It's excellent.
Again, it's not in the materials,
but if you're interested,
you could just quickly Google "CLEAR Christopher Blodgett,"
and you would get that paper.
So resilience is about growing.
It's about working through adversity.
And we all have to have some adversity
to build our resilience, to strengthen our resilience.
It's concerned with changing the condition
of one or more of our systems
when they're exposed to an atypical amount of stress.
And certainly all of our systems have been stressed
as result of COVID.
So this is a really trauma-informed way
of being and practicing.
We wanna, as we go through the slides
about the domains of impairment,
keep this in the forefront of your thinking
about how we build resilience.
And just a reminder,
PBIS is a trauma-responsive framework
that promotes resilience,
because it describes everything that is in this banner.
So for those of you who are doing PBIS
and you're doing it well,
and you're practicing implementing with fidelity,
you are at all three levels promoting resilience.
And just as important as it is to build resilience
in ourselves individuals and our kids,
we have to have resilient communities.
So again, looking at the four premises
of trauma-informed schools, how do we regulate stress?
How do we manage stress?
How do we make sure that we're looking
at the reciprocity of stress
and using that as a tool
to develop interventions to mitigate stress?
And then we wanna think about the elements of resilience,
as we're thinking about stress,
which is self-awareness and problem solving,
growth mindset, it's a big part of what schools are doing,
optimism, self-determination,
adaptability, empathy, collaboration, caring relationships,
all key elements of what schools do,
all inculcated into the PBIS practices
and all trauma-informed practices as well.
And finally resilience isn't about invulnerability,
but it's about growth and success.
As I said, in the face of adversity,
in the face of vulnerability.
And it's about our interaction with ourselves,
our kids, our colleagues, and our environment.
In this-
- Amy Gail had just asked what the name of the paper was.
I think I found it.
Was it from Washington State University,
Christopher Blodgett?
- Yes. CLEAR?
- Yeah.
- [Kym] Thanks, Amy. - So I put the link
into the chat box.
- Thanks.
So it's, again, it's Collaborative Learning
for Educational Achievement and Resilience.
It's one of the best,
I think, documents that I've read in a while
on developmental trauma.
It's really, really very comprehensive
and thought provoking.
So here's an example
of a trauma-informed MTSS core features.
And again, we're looking at teams,
we're looking at the use of data.
We wanna make sure that we're universally intervening,
so we're using a universal screener.
So we understand what the needs
in our building community are.
And we can build in interventions
to address what we discover from screeners.
We wanna engage in a formal process
for selecting our interventions,
not just, well, let's try this, let's try that.
Using a data to identify what the needs are.
And then there's a tool called the Hexagon Tool,
which can help you go through a process
of determining what your evidence-based practices will be
and ensuring that everyone in your building understands
and has training on those evidence-based practices.
We wanna take a look at fidelity.
Access is not enough.
We have to ensure that we have positive outcomes
and that we're constantly looking at
the success of our interventions,
a repertoire of interventions
to determine whether or not they're effective or not.
And if they're not,
we're revisiting what more we might need to add
to our repertoire of curriculums and practices.
And I talked about professional development
and we know that professional development with coaching
has a far higher level of success
in sustaining the learning and implementing the practices
than just PD on its own.
And there's an article in the handouts
called "Integrating a Trauma-Informed Approach
"Within a PBIS Framework."
This is where I pulled this from, this chart,
but it's an excellent,
also another excellent article
that I would encourage you to read.
- And Kym, there's a question.
The slide with the SEL upstream intervention ideas,
was that, did you add that after you sent us the PowerPoint
or is it in the PowerPoint that we have on our website?
- I'm 99% sure it's in the PowerPoint that's on the website.
- Okay. I'll double check while you keep going.
- All right. Thank you.
And if it's not, I have been known to tweak,
but I really haven't tweaked that much
since I sent it to you.
Just more in my notes.
Oops. I'm in the wrong place.
Sorry about that.
Okay.
So why do we use a PBIS framework
for trauma-sensitive schools?
Because a PBIS framework is predictable,
a hallmark of trauma-informed practice.
It's consistent,
it's consistent for adults and it's consistent for kids
'cause it gives us a common language.
It's positive.
It focuses on really noticing the strengths
and it promotes attunement.
You can't notice kids doing well
if you're not attuned to them,
and attunement is a really critical element of attachment,
which we're trying to strengthen for kids,
because they tend to have poor attachments
if they've experienced developmental trauma.
And finally it creates a safe environment.
All of those elements,
predictable, consistency, and positive,
foster a sense of safety for children.
And there's another document,
sorry, I put a lot in our handouts today,
called "The Trauma-Informed School Checklist,"
which is a really useful tool.
It's about, I think it's two pages.
So it just kind of takes a look at
some of the elements that you have in your school,
and asks you questions about
is that in place or not in place or partially in place.
And I have to always show a triangle.
So, MTS and PBIS is an organized system of interventions,
both academic and social, emotional behavioral needs.
And we talk about tiers of support.
We talk about universal, targeted and intensive,
and that's kind of how we categorize
or compartmentalize our intervention strategies,
but there's really no specific number of tiers
required in a multiple multi-tiered system of support.
We layer supports.
And I know this is probably obvious,
but I'm gonna say it anyway.
Kids who have intensive needs
continue to need to access universal interventions.
Because they usually have intensive needs
around one particular area
and they can be successful in other areas.
So they may be accessing more than one type of intervention
or additional support at a time.
The types of sports kids receive,
they don't supplant universal support.
So it's not, all right, we've done the universal,
now we're gonna do the intensive
and we don't have to do the universal anymore.
These supports provide additional instruction
and we teach behavior, social, emotional wellness,
as relentlessly as we teach academics.
And specific professionals are not attached
to a specific tier, but relationships are.
So you don't have to be a mental health expert
to practice an intervention
for a student who has intensive needs.
What you need is the relationship
and you need the training in order to be successful.
So I would argue that if it's the custodian
and the school has a great relationship with the kid,
give that person, him or her, some training
about some of the interventions that you're utilizing
so that they can use the relationship
to really strengthen the effect of those interventions.
So with that said, we're gonna talk a little bit
about some of the fundamentals of trauma,
which will be repeat for a lot of you,
but before we do that,
I'll stop sharing and I'll look at my time piece.
I have 9:59 on my computer.
So let's take,
everyone look at their respective time pieces.
And if we can come back in five minutes
and we'll continue on our journey
of talking and learning together.
So as we're listening,
apparently the slide show I sent
does not have that SEL slide in it.
So I am in the process
of trying to send it to Amy right now.
So I'll make sure that that updated slideshow gets to you.
So we're gonna spend a little bit time
on some of the core concepts of trauma.
So one of the objectives was,
what's the difference between PTSD and developmental trauma?
So we know that trauma involves events,
experiences, and effects.
And so we can have a direct experience to trauma,
secondary, for example, witnessing community violence,
vicarious, which we talked about earlier
when we're really focusing on wellness,
hearing the stories of traumatic experiences from children,
our colleagues, and we feel helpless
sometimes with this experience.
We have heightened reactions to environmental stimuli
and it tends to overwhelm our ability to cope.
It's not just an event itself.
It's what our response to the event is.
But when we think about post-traumatic stress disorder
and how we've typically understood trauma
for a very long time,
typically it's a short lived experience
or it happens when a brain is fully developed
or almost fully developed
and interventions are more efficient and effective
typically if they're done well and done right.
So when we think about developmental trauma,
again, for those of you who've had a lot of training,
this is gonna be some repetition,
we know that when a child is exposed
to chronic unrelenting abuse and neglect very early on
when their brain is in the robust stages of development
from in utero to like age four or five,
and it's perpetrated in the caregiving system,
there can be a cascade of developmental injuries
across seven domains.
And those domains were identified by Dr. Bruce Perry.
We know that there can be abnormal organization
of our neural pathways as a result of unrelenting trauma,
that there's a cascade of neurobiological problems.
And the thing that's important to remember,
it's neurobiological not just neurological.
Kids who have experienced developmental trauma
when the injuries have been perpetrated
in their caregiving system,
are relationally reactive
or have a hostile attribution bias.
So their template for adults is that we're unsafe.
And so that's their default response to us.
They're always monitoring their environment.
They're hypervigilant about their environment
and looking for signs of danger
so they can protect themselves.
We also know that kids have 100 billion neurons at birth.
And so the potential for neuronal development,
healthy neuronal development is significant.
However, in order for healthy neuronal development
to happen, you need specific patterns of activity
at specific windows of development
in order for those neurons to connect.
When you have a kid who's exposed
to unrelenting abuse and neglect,
those windows are often missed.
So it could be things like language acquisition,
or it could be things like attachment and relationship.
And when those windows close,
where you can develop relationships,
where you can learn language
as examples of windows of learning,
or windows of neuronal connection,
it becomes that much more difficult
because the window is closed.
So we have to develop alternate neural pathways.
We have to rewire the brain, if you will,
through multiple, multiple, multiple repetitions,
which was why working with kids with developmental trauma
can be so incredibly exhausting and depleting
because of the amount of repetition it takes
to help re-circuit the brain.
There's a really interesting book
called "The Brain That Changed Itself"
by Norman Doidge, it's D-O-I-D-G-E,
that has a lot of examples
of people who have suffered significant trauma to the brain
and how they were able to re-circuit
through, again, multiple repetitive interactions.
And it's also really important to remember
that we started this training, I said,
"Notice where you are in your body right now."
If things come up that are disconcerting to you
or are troubling to you,
just notice where that lives in your body.
So Bessel van der Kolk wrote a book
called "The Body Keeps the Score,"
another really excellent book if you haven't read it.
And he talks about how we convert our experiences
to our neuroanatomy, it's not our memories per se.
It's what lives in our body.
I showed you the ACE's pyramid.
It has an impact on our auto-immune system.
It has an impact on our cardiovascular system.
And it has an impact on the neurochemicals that we produce.
And we can have an overabundance
of like cortisol and adrenaline
as a result of too much trauma.
And particularly kids
who've experienced developmental trauma
tend to have a really high level of cortisol very early on,
which is toxic to brain development,
particularly toxic to the hippocampus,
which is responsible for helping integrate information
that comes from the limbic region
into our thinking part of our brain, our cortex.
So our body keeps the score.
And if we can't organize our body,
we can't organize our thoughts.
We can't organize our behaviors.
Because if you're spending a lot of time
trying to figure out where your body is in space
and what your body is telling you,
it's hard to be present in your cortex.
It's hard to be activating the thinking part of your brain.
There's a part of our brain called the posterior cingulate,
it's kind of, it's like our GPS,
in kids have experienced developmental trauma,
that tends to be compromised.
So a lot of the kids who've experienced developmental trauma
need a lot of body-based intervention,
a lot of proprioceptive feedback,
so they can orient their body to space
so that they can focus on the thinking that they need to do
to access their education.
We know we've learned over the years
that talking is not very effective with these kids.
It's not a durable intervention in it of itself.
Doesn't mean we stop talking completely.
That when we blend talking with body-based interventions,
the generalized ability of those skills
and the effectiveness of the intervention
is increased multiple times.
So we talk about the cascade of neurobiological problems,
these are the seven domains of functioning or impairment.
I'm gonna talk about five of these domains today.
So we're gonna talk about physiology,
our attachment in relationships,
emotional regulation, cognition and learning,
and behavioral control.
But before we talk about interventions,
I wanna emphasize the importance of data-informed decisions
for effective interventions.
I referenced the Hexagon Tool.
I referenced some other tools that you can use.
Make sure that when you're going to
introduce an intervention to a kid who has intensive needs
or introduce a universal intervention to the whole school,
that you have data
that supports the implementation of the intervention.
So whether it's gonna be a social skills group
or a group for reducing anxiety,
or life skills curriculum, whatever it is,
make sure you have the data to support that.
And you use a systematic process
for choosing the intervention strategy or the curriculum.
There's a fidelity measure considerations document
in the document link that Amy shared with you.
And just to repeat,
one of the core features of MTSS
is comprehensive assessment.
You can't do a comprehensive assessment without good data.
So let's talk a little bit about the physiology:
body and the brain.
So some of the challenges that we experience,
this is a non-exhaustive list,
is that a kid can be, they're hyper or hypo sensitive,
that they have a lot of regressions and delays.
We talk a lot about age versus stage.
So chronologically, they may be one place,
but developmentally they could be in a very different place.
And that could be modulated
by the level of stress that they're experiencing.
So I showed that one slide,
as our stress increases, our performance decreases.
And so does our intellectual functioning
and sometimes our response to our environment
can become chronologically or developmentally lower
than our chronological age, myself included.
I have been known to get a little pissy sometimes
when I'm really stressed out.
So I'm gonna talk about the form
and function of the brain very quickly here.
Sorry about that.
So we have a triune brain.
We have three core elements of our brain
and they are integrated.
When our brains are working well,
we have these three operating systems
that are well-integrated and they talk to one another.
So our survival part of the brain
may override our thinking part of the brain.
If we're in real danger, we want that to happen.
Our logic and reason part of the brain
may override our emotional brain
when we've had enough experiences
that we've been able to incorporate
into our cognitive repertoire.
So the logic part of our brain may tell our emotional brain,
"You know what? I got this. It's okay.
"You're upset, but we've had this experience before.
"We can think our way through it."
So stress is the primary mediator
of how well these three operating systems interact.
So a healthy brain, again, is integrated.
So we know, however,
that the more a neurobiological system is activated,
the more the states
and the functions associated with those states
become built in.
So positive examples of that are like memorizing a poem
or riding a bicycle.
The more you do it,
the more those functions associated with that state
become built in.
In the case of developmental trauma,
when we are constantly activating
the emotional and survival part of our brain,
those states become built in.
And so the default view of the world
for kids who've experienced developmental trauma,
as many of you know, is that it's dangerous
and that they have to engage in survival techniques
in order to mitigate the stress of their environment.
And perception is more important than reality.
So the most benign environmental stimuli,
a benign request, a change of your proxemics with a kid,
can sometimes cause them to go into that survival mode.
And then their brain becomes disintegrated
as opposed to integrated.
So we want our brain operating systems
to be talking to each other,
but trauma interferes with that process.
So we also like to think of trauma as a virus,
it's just sort of a metaphor.
So there's a healthy brain,
and then we have a disintegrated brain.
So stress separates the three operating systems,
and interrupts the fluid,
integrated functioning of the brain.
When we're stressed out, when we're feeling danger,
thinking is a less efficient way to regulate.
So that's when our lower part of the brain kicks in
or our emotional center of the brain.
Again, for kids who have experienced developmental trauma,
those lower regions,
that emotional regions are always turned on.
It's so hard for them to turn that off
because of the chronic unrelenting stress
that they experienced when their brain was developing.
So those neural pathways that they developed
are one of danger.
Their amygdala is over-activated.
Their hippocampus functioning is compromised.
So that whole series
of how we receive information through our senses,
monitor the novelty or the intensity of it
through our amygdala,
our hippocampus categorizes it and kind of maps it
and sends that to our cortex,
where we incorporate that into our repertoire.
That process is highly disrupted for kids.
Things tend to get stuck
in that emotional survival part of their brain.
So we think about trauma as a virus and just,
you can go ahead and unmute and just call out
when you think of your computer and if it gets a virus,
what are some of the things you notice
about your computer when it has a virus?
So go ahead and just,
if you have an idea, unmute and say it.
- [Participant] It's slow.
- Slow. Yes. Thank you.
What else?
- I feel like there's a disconnect
or things don't work the way they should.
- Right. Things don't work.
You push the button
and you push the delete button and nothing happens.
It's like when I just tried to send the updated PowerPoint
and it didn't work.
What else happens when your computer gets a virus?
- I was gonna say it does like unexpected things.
- Yes, Lisa. Exactly.
Yeah. A good example. - [Kim] You lose
any information that you needed.
- Kim, I love that. I should be writing these down.
These are so good. Right.
So that's, Kim, that's a great example of,
you might be working with a kid
and they're there present with you
and you think they're getting it
and you think they're getting it,
and something stimulates them
in a way that makes them scared,
and everything you just worked on goes away.
It's like when you try to save a file and you'll lose it.
Great example.
Any other ideas?
(indistinct)
- [Man] Yeah.
- I don't know if someone just unmuted,
I couldn't hear what they said.
(indistinct)
Anyway, so those are great examples.
So our computers become erratic. They become sluggish.
Sometimes they shut down.
That's a dissociative response that our kids often have.
And that infected person,
the person who has trauma as a virus,
we're gonna continue with this metaphor,
can spread the virus to others.
So they may become aggressive.
They may become, they may shut down and become dissociative.
They may engage in chronic behaviors
that are stressful to other people.
So when we think about trauma as a virus,
we know that the firewall for trauma is relationship.
So this is just a summarization of this.
We need unique interventions
for kids who've experienced trauma at the intensive level,
but also kids can benefit greatly
from universal interventions
that are consistently practiced in your classrooms,
in the larger building,
as well as when you're doing individual work with kids.
So when we think about physiology and the brain,
and some of the strategies,
it's really important to think about
how you can implement all of these universally
in addition to at the targeted level
and the intensive level.
But every single intervention that I talk about today,
and some will be repeated
because they're not mutually exclusive
to the domains of impairment,
every single one that I talk about today
are not harmful to kids in the general population.
So anything that you choose to do in classroom-wide
or in the cafeteria-wide or a school-wide or,
is gonna be helpful for everyone.
So some of the intervention strategies we suggest
are listed here.
Routines are the pillar to trauma recovery.
Regulate, relate, and reason is sort of a sequence
of events that you can work on with kids
when they're dysregulated.
That the first thing you're gonna do
is stabilize their nervous system,
get them physiologically regulated
while using your relationship and not go to reason,
not go to that cortical functioning too quickly,
'cause if you go too fast to reason,
you will dysregulate them very quickly.
So the second domain of impairment
is attachment and relationships,
and here are some examples
of some of the developmental injuries
that can occur as a result of,
again, that chronic and relentless abuse neglect
that happens when there's a robust explosion
of brain development.
Again, it's a non-exhaustive list.
When I think about lack of congruence, number four,
between the internal experience and external world response,
that's, again, that's when perception
is more important than reality.
We can be incredibly unintentionally invalidating
when we don't understand that something very,
what we perceive to be very benign
has caused a child to have a really big reaction
or a student to have a really big reaction.
So we wanna be thinking about that.
We wanna be thinking about
not reenacting traumatic experiences.
Using our relationship wisely and compassionately.
Not trying to fix the problem
before we know what the problem is,
as I said earlier when we showed that slide
about really being curious and wondering and listening.
And then what are some of the solutions
or interventions that we might use around attachment?
Here again, a non-exhaustive list,
but one of the things
I think is really important to consider
is differentiating between validation and reassurance.
In other words,
being willing to enter into the darkness with kids,
walk in that world with them,
and take some steps with them out of that world.
So an example
that I experienced once
at one of the schools that I oversee,
one of the independent day treatment schools that I oversee,
is that, it was actually in staff meeting,
one of the staff said that she was working with a kid
and he said, "My mother doesn't love me."
And she tried to reassure him.
And what she said is,
"Oh, yes, of course your mother loves you."
That was so invalidating to that kid.
Because in that moment,
he felt like his mom didn't care about him.
It made the teacher who said that very uncomfortable,
which is why she did that reassuring response.
But when we are reassuring,
we completely ignore the story that's being told to us.
So it's really, that's a really important element
for trying to heal some of the developmental injuries
that occur as a result of attachment
and relationship injuries.
And then number five, refine your language.
This is about changing your mindset.
Again, by changing your mindset, you change practice.
So thinking about kids are seeking connection,
that they're seeking repair,
and that they seek validation, not manipulation.
We all manipulate our environments.
I turned on the heat this morning.
I put the heat on in my car.
We all manipulate our environments to feel safe.
So it's important to actually reframe manipulation,
not as a pejorative,
but as something that is a way to demonstrate
what our needs are.
PACE is from Dan Hughes' attachment work,
which is Playfulness, Acceptance, Curiosity, and Empathy,
four really important components
to working with kids who've experienced developmental trauma
and also can be incorporated into classroom,
school-wide or individual work with kids.
Again, across all the tiers of intervention.
And just a little bit,
I just wanna remind you that a dysregulated adult
cannot regulate a dysregulated child.
And so this is from Bruce Perry's work, a slide that he did.
So it's just so important
for us to have our own self-awareness
about our level of dysregulation and stress,
have our own co-regulator with us, it may be a colleague,
maybe it's the building administrator,
and have the ability to occasionally tap out to say,
"I'm being triggered right now.
"I'm aware of that. I need to step away from it."
This is about reflection and this is about our own wellness.
This is what we want to be doing.
We wanna match, we can match vitality.
So we can match the affect, but not the dysregulation.
So we wanna be able to understand
when a child is in a really dysregulated state
and engage in interventions,
usually non-verbal interventions, body-based interventions,
that can help them come down the trajectory
of dysregulated to being more regulated.
And I wanna emphasize, again, PBIS promotes attunement,
which is a core element
of healthy attachment and relationship,
by looking to positive behaviors,
by recognizing the signals
of when a child is starting to be distressed,
and intervening as early as possible.
Whether again, it's an individual intervention
or a universal intervention.
Another domain of impairment is emotional regulation.
So you can look at the list.
Kids really struggle.
They tend to have a very restricted range of affect.
There's a couple of really interesting studies
about how they misread emotions like sadness.
And they might misread that as anger
because some of our facial expressions
in sadness can mimic anger.
And unless you have a really refined understanding
of affect and emotion,
it's hard to distinguish between the two.
So they misread our nonverbal communication.
Their affect expression tends to be restricted.
Many of our kids either go internally,
dissociate or become externally expressive
of their frustration through behavioral.
They tend to have a lot of sleep disruptions.
The locus coeruleus,
which is part of the brain that helps with their sleep,
is not well-developed, is compromised in it's functioning.
So they break through REM sleep.
They don't go through the stages of sleep well
and REM sleep helps us incorporate our experiences
from the day before.
So it's really difficult
for kids around being able to regulate their emotions
and their physiological states,
or it's hard for them to understand
what their body is telling them.
I talked earlier about the body keeps the score,
but they don't always recognize
that that interoceptive cue that they're having of distress
is just that it's distressed.
And so they react to it in a behavioral way.
So what do we do about this?
Again, think about these
from all three levels of intervention.
First of all, we need to be an interpreter.
We need to help them understand.
Oh, I see, Amy. I've seen that look on your face before.
I think you're starting to tell me that you're frustrated.
I think you're starting to tell me you're angry.
Have I got that right?
So recognizing and helping them interpret,
or I've noticed before
when you kind of hunch your shoulders,
that you're starting to not understand the lesson,
which means you're frustrated.
So interpreting for them,
giving them the language
to start to understand their bodies.
And again, you can do this as a whole class.
You can do a whole class brief lesson on
crunch up your shoulders and now relax your shoulders.
What do you notice? What's different?
So helping kids to start to understand
what their bodies are telling them.
Using movement and yoga, OT activities.
Marti Smith, M-A-R-T-I,
Smith has a website called creative therapies.
She's a child trauma fellow with Bruce Perry.
And she uses occupational therapy practice
through a trauma-informed lens.
She's brilliant and her ideas are creative and fun.
So if I had my druthers,
every single kid who'd experienced developmental trauma
would have a comprehensive occupational therapy evaluation
to get a sense of what sort of needs they have.
So you can do isometric exercises.
Again, the posterior cingulate,
that GPS system for us is compromised
for kids who've experienced developmental trauma.
So giving them a lot of proprioceptive feedback
can be incredibly useful
in helping them to understand
where their bodies are in space.
Proprioception also fills our neurochemistry bucket
with serotonin and dopamine.
So things like wall sits
or pushing against the doorframe or,
Marti Smith loves Lycra,
creating sort of an enveloping comforting feeling for kids
that can help them
again, understanding where their body is in space.
We know that flection,
which is like, if you were doing yoga,
flection would be like the child pose,
is something that is calming.
And extension is something that wakes you up.
So if you have kids,
and you can do alternate states of regulation
with these activities in the classroom.
So you could have kids do a child pose
to get them to calm down,
to understand what that's like in their body,
and then do a flection activity, which is more alerting,
to have them understand where that lives in their body.
So one of the things that I've done with kids
in terms of a flection activity
is that you can have them spell
the name of their favorite artist
or their favorite song with their hands.
Like Y.M.C.A., that's a flection activity,
extension activity, excuse me.
Or with older kids,
I've had them spell their favorite swear word for me.
So it's a way of alerting them
when they tend to be shut down or dyssocial.
And it also, like I said, you can do both,
and have kids understand
where they're feeling that experience in their body.
Teaching affect identification and regulation,
and just, I don't know how many people can see me,
but I'm pointing to my sternum.
So our sternum is one of the most calming bones in our body.
So you can have kids press really hard.
And you can do this again, classroom-wide or in gym class.
Press really hard in your sternum
and see how you feel about that.
Does that help you feel calm? Or what do you notice?
- And there was just a question
about the name of the person who does the OT evaluations
and whether they have resources that schools can access.
- Her name is Marti, M-A-R-T-I, Smith.
And it's creative therapies.
And yes, she has a ton of resources
that are free on her website.
And then there's also webinars you can attend.
She's amazing.
She came to Vermont a few years ago, actually.
She did a full day presentation. She's just great.
And she's very accessible, accessible.
She really presents information
in a way that feels relevant and usable.
So we talked a little bit about emotional regulation,
but I'm just gonna go through this quickly
'cause it's important.
So we know that we have responses to danger,
and that we have two divisions
of our autonomic nervous response system.
The parasympathetic is responsible
for putting on the brakes, if you will, rest and digest.
And the sympathetic is responsible
for keeping us out of danger.
And we might fight, we might flee,
we might freeze, we might flop,
or we might submit when we're in danger.
Kids who've experienced developmental trauma,
that sympathetic division
of their autonomic nervous response system is always on.
It's over-activated.
It's like they don't have a rheostat,
they have an on switch
and very rarely they have an off switch.
And even when they appear calm,
I often think about ducks swimming on a lake or a pond.
They look like they're just gliding along effortlessly,
but their little feet are going like crazy.
So when you think about kids
who've experienced developmental trauma,
when they might have an appearance of calm,
there's still a lot of things going on in their body
and in their brains,
that's causing them to be hypervigilant
to their surroundings
so that they can respond to danger
as they perceive it and stay safe.
And a lot of their adapt...
A lot of their coping mechanisms are quite maladaptive.
And as I said earlier, they can be incredibly confounding.
Because they've got this over-activated limbic region,
the amygdala is over-activated.
And when kids become dysregulated,
on average it take...
If you were to experience a stressful experience,
say you're driving your car
and you had to slam on the brakes
'cause a deer ran in front of you.
And fortunately the deer got away and you didn't hit it.
You'll have this physiological response.
You'll feel the cortisol
and the adrenaline swimming in your body.
But on average, it takes a normally developed person,
20 minutes to become regulated,
to become physiologically regulated
after an event like that.
Kids who have experienced developmental trauma,
it can take much longer, it can take hours.
It can even take days at times
because there's these chronic little things
that continue to activate their sympathetic branch
of their autonomic nervous response system.
So a really good universal intervention
is helping kids understand their bodies.
But if you're doing an intensive intervention with a kid,
is doing some work with them on that.
You are just stressed out.
Name where you're at in your body.
Is it your shoulders? Is it your stomach?
Is it your head? Is it your neck?
Help them. Be that interpreter for them.
Also know that their reward neurology tends to be impaired.
So rewards have a less robust impact
on kids have experienced developmental trauma
than a kid who is more neuro typically developed.
So they tend to have less intensity
and they don't tend to last as long.
So that's why a lot of times
when we're talking about developing behavior plans
for kids who've experienced developmental trauma,
we should be really thoughtful about,
are we relying, mostly on an ABA model,
you probably won't have the best results with that
because they can't abstract to the future as well.
And I do a whole thing on trauma-informed behavior plans.
If you ever wanna hear more about that,
feel free to reach out to me.
So I'm just thinking,
is there anything else I wanted to say about that?
So again, when you're thinking about interventions,
universally, you can do work with kids
to understand these psycho-education
about how our bodies respond to danger.
And we can also help them understand
that when we are feeling very afraid,
we shut down systems like our thinking system.
'Cause it's neurologically disrespectful to assume
that when we're in real danger,
and again, it's the perceived danger
for kids who've experienced developmental trauma,
that we can think our way out of that danger.
We have to let our body get us out of the way of the danger.
So again, the stress continuum,
I'm gonna do this a little bit differently.
So a typically developed person,
low or no stress, that's our rest and restore stage.
We all need a little stress
to get out of bed in the morning,
to do our jobs, to do a presentation.
When we start getting to that moderate and high stress,
we start to get overloaded.
This is when our critical functioning
really becomes diminished,
and we're more activated in our limbic region of our brain.
And when we go really low,
or when we get into really high stress, excuse me,
we dive really low in the lower regions of our brain
like the brain stem, our heart rates become increased.
We're not thinking, we're not hearing words.
We're only paying attention to,
like Charlie Brown's teacher, wah, wah, wah.
So we hear the inflection of the voice,
we notice the proximity of the person,
but the words have no meaning.
So you can see
that we have this positive intolerable window
that's pretty broad
in order for us to provide academic instruction
or social emotional instruction.
And the window for toxic
when we really have no access to learning, is smaller.
So this again is a typically developing person.
And our resiliency window is much wider
than our vulnerability window.
When we think about a kid
who have experienced developmental trauma,
someone who's highly sensitized to environmental stressors,
and like I said, the sympathetic division
of their autonomic nervous response system
is over-activated, their amygdala is over-activated,
that limbic region is over-activated,
that low, no stress, rest and restore
is a very small window.
Mild to moderate stress
can cause them to start to shut down.
And then we move along to toxic stress.
You can see that there's just this really small window
of being able to reach kids.
So again, repeating myself,
the more that you're focusing on your wellness,
workforce development,
universal interventions
that allow kids to practice movement,
OT activities, learn about emotions, et cetera,
the more that this...
Let's see if I can do my pen here.
Oops.
The more that we can get this area
to broaden into this area.
So when you think about that,
the positive area is much smaller.
The tolerable stress is much smaller
and the toxic stress becomes very, very heightened,
very, very quickly, and kids shut down or become aggressive.
And again, the resiliency window is much smaller here
and the vulnerability window is much bigger.
I wanna reemphasize that vulnerability can be an opportunity
for learning and growth.
If we can name it soon enough and intervene soon enough,
to help kids understand
that they're getting into that window,
and back them into the resiliency place again.
Vulnerability isn't weakness, it's not indulgent.
It's an accurate measure actually of courage
when we know that we're in a vulnerable stage.
And vulnerability can promote innovation,
creativity, and ultimately change.
So that's important for us to know,
and that's important for kids to know as well.
And as I've said this many times,
perception is more important than reality.
Oh. Okay.
I think this is where we wanna,
I'll go through this, then we'll do the polling question.
So when we think about and learning
and that developmental injury domain,
here, again are some challenges that kids experience
that they have rigid and concrete thinking.
It's hard for them to get cause and effect.
They can have delays in their language.
Their executive functioning tends to be compromised,
inhibiting their impulses, their working memory.
They can have cognitive distortions,
very intrusive memories.
And often the memories are implicit.
They're not necessarily explicit.
So an implicit memory just changes your neurochemistry.
They don't really understand what's going on,
but it's causing them to feel really unsafe and scared.
And so they react to that.
I think it just a really great example
of poor cause and effect thinking is,
a couple years ago, I was working with a kid.
He was in the basement of one of our schools.
He was on, I think it's called a RipStik.
And he was touring around.
This was a kid that needed to move his body all of the time.
Sitting was not an option for him.
And he's RipStiking around the basement.
He's very good at it.
And he goes around like,
I guess it was a support beam, and there's a kid there.
He didn't know this kid was there and he bumps into her.
And he, talk about poor cause and effect.
It was totally her fault. He was gonna beat her up.
He was gonna harm her.
He swore at her,
it was totally her fault that he ran into her
as opposed to him being able to say,
"Wow, I was RipStiking really fast.
"I didn't know she was there.
"I bumped into her. It was an accident."
So that was his default,
was to blame and to deflect from his own vulnerability
and feelings of shame.
And that's a part
of the poor cause and effect thinking that happens.
And then what can we do?
Oh, look at that, repetition, movement again.
So the more we're asking kids to move,
we can ask them to do,
like if we engage in opportunities to respond,
if we do that with movement in the classroom,
that's a universal intervention.
And it also helps us metabolize cortisol.
Movement helps us metabolize cortisol,
which kids who've experience developmental trauma
have a ton of in their body.
Targeted training on executive functioning.
I've heard if you Google "Harvard executive functioning,"
they have a ton of materials on executive functioning
that you can access.
Structure and routines.
Again, routine is a pillar to trauma recovery,
really build on their competencies.
That kind of goes back to that triangle,
where are they doing well?
And really strengthen those.
So I think Amy,
this is where our third polling question should come up.
So how many of you have a morning coffee or tea routine?
I know Karen Braeutigam'll say,
I know she has a tea routine. (chuckles)
Some people don't have either. Okay.
Okay. Great.
- I think Amy also has a tea routine.
- Okay.
- [Karen] So that tea that I have from a cup.
At the first time, either lady.
(laughing)
- Great. - I like to mix mine
with the bathroom routine too,
because I drink so much tea, but...
(laughing) - Karen, thanks for sharing.
- You're welcome, dear. Anytime.
- So why do I wanna know about your routine?
So if, oops, oh, I got rid of that.
So kids who've experienced developmental trauma
tend to have interrupted sequential thinking,
because again, they're constantly being bombarded
with body-based experiences of distress
or perceiving danger in their environment
that doesn't appear dangerous to us.
And so when you think about learning,
learning often requires sequential thinking.
There could be multiple steps to learning.
We really wanna chunk it down for kids.
We wanna do a lot of front-loading,
a lot of pre correcting
and having multiple modalities as all of you know.
It could be a visual as well as a verbal
as maybe even something on a kid's individual desk
that helps them do sequential steps.
But when you think about your morning routine,
here's a gentleman who's making his coffee,
he's got a French press.
So it requires step.
It requires maybe grinding the coffee beans,
measuring the coffee beans,
measuring the water, boiling the water,
putting the coffee, the ground coffee into the French press.
Step after step after step after step.
However, if when he is making his coffee,
if his toaster goes on fire,
he's likely, although I've asked this question
when I've done this training live,
some people tell me they're not gonna put that fire out
'til they make their coffee,
but most people,
their sequential thinking will be interrupted
because their toaster is on fire.
So a metaphor
for kids who've experienced developmental trauma,
when you're asking them to engage in learning,
and it takes sequential thinking,
that if their toaster is on fire,
they're constantly being interrupted.
So their successful completion of many academic tasks
depends on the ability to bring
like linear order to the chaos of the daily experience.
Traumatic experiences can limit this ability
to organize like their material sequentially,
their thinking sequentially,
and then learning becomes really difficult.
So you start them on an academic task and boom,
something scares them in their mind.
You start them on the academic task
and they have an interoceptive experience
that stops them from completing the task.
It can be very difficult for kids.
And then going back to the triangle,
so we wanna think about kids can have a lot of strengths
in different areas,
and we wanna focus on those competencies.
We wanna build on those competencies.
So they're always accessing universal interventions,
whether it's in the classroom or school-wide, as I said,
and the areas where they struggle the most,
that's when we will intervene intensively for them
and develop an individual plan for them
that's trauma-informed.
But I also just, I love this quote,
it's from the MTSS Field Guide, that we don't label kids.
We don't call them tier two kids or tier three kids.
And I would venture to guess that there's very few people
that ever refer to kids as tier one kids.
We don't wanna make their current status permanent.
We wanna believe in the power of change.
And we wanna not lose the kid to the diagnosis.
So when we start calling them trauma kids
or tier three kids or ADHD kids,
we lose the whole child to the diagnosis.
It's our job to notice their competencies,
to attune to students so we can figure out what they are.
Even when there's times it's really hard to find them
because the kids are struggling so much,
it's our job to find them and to help build on them.
And so, whoops, from the ARC model,
Attachment, Regulation and Competency,
in the competencies domain of that model,
and the architects,
Margaret Blaustein and Kristine Kinniburgh
talk about relational connection,
self-development identity,
and working on targeted executive functioning training.
So again, there's the three primary elements
of executive functioning,
cognitive flexibility, working memory,
and delaying inhibiting responses or impulses.
Working memory for kids
who've experienced developmental trauma
is often compromised.
This is related again to hippocampus functioning
'cause the hippocampus gets hurt by cortisol development
and the over-activated amygdala.
So that's where it's really hard for kids
to hold stuff in their brain,
manipulate it and regurgitate it,
or spit it out in a different way.
So it's just something really important
to remember about chunking things down,
about sequential thinking, et cetera.
And when we think about relational connection,
I like to think about relational deposits
and relational endurance.
How are you depositing
your positive relationship with that kid
in little increments throughout the day,
whether it's friendly greetings at the door
or it's a high five, which we can't do,
or an elbow bump, which we can do,
how are you doing that throughout the day?
It doesn't have to be big
in order to be effective and durable.
And finally on the cognition and learning domain,
just that's our cerebellum.
It has 50% of our neurons and it's about one 10th
of the size of the brain.
And it helps us process learning and movement.
People who exercise have more cortical mass.
Oxygen enhances learning and exercise enhances oxygen.
So as much as you can incorporate movement
into your classes, whatever the classes,
even if you're working one-to-one with a kid,
if you can do rocking or stepping in place
or some kind of rhythmic activity,
it'll help kids incorporate the learning
into their repertoire,
whether it's social, emotional, behavioral learning,
or academic learning.
Okay. So our final stop today is behavioral control.
So here are some of the impairments
that can happen as a result.
I talked a little bit
about sleep and eating challenges already
and the locus coeruleus.
I think what's important to remember is the lens
through which we have looked at children
and sometimes continue to look at children is antiquated.
We really should reframe
and change our mindset to change our practices
from misbehavior to stress behavior.
The communication that kids are giving us
is often behaviorally,
and the behaviors that they use to communicate
are sometimes incredibly, incredibly, difficult.
How do we accomplish some of this change of language
and changing our mindset?
Again, universal language, psychoeducation,
challenging kids when we have a relationship with them
using metaphors, practice and experimentation.
I often like to use the metaphor
of helping kids dip their toe in the pond of distress
with a life jacket right next to them.
And that life jacket is an adaptive coping mechanism,
and then help them take their toe out of that distress,
practicing that coping mechanism
and doing that over and over and over again.
We tend to punish the hurt.
So kids, when they act out behaviorally,
are showing us their pain and their shame,
and we tend to punish it.
And we really wanna move towards a more relational,
reparative process with kids,
so that they can learn
from that consistency and predictability of compassion.
And as I said, relationship.
So what are some of the things we do?
As I said, stress behavior versus misbehavior
is a psychoeducational goal.
We wanna do re-framing.
I know Rick Beals, uh, he was on the call.
I don't know if he still is,
but he's been doing some work lately
on restorative practices.
Restorative practices goes so well with trauma-informed
because it is about inviting membership, building community,
and working on the repair of the relationship,
not the rule violation.
We wanna reduce our stress
as well as the stress of the kids.
And that these symptoms are their attempt to self-regulate.
And again, repeating, they tend to be maladaptive.
So what neural pathways does traditional discipline create?
I often think about what kids would,
what language kids might use
to describe their school experience,
who are chronically struggling
and are being disciplined as a result of that.
There's a handout in the documents that Amy shared earlier
called "How Do Youth View Discipline?"
It's a really helpful reframe
in understanding of how they see discipline.
And there's extensive literature that documents
that children who experience these exclusionary practices,
are far at greater risk
of entering the juvenile justice system
compared to peers who haven't.
So we really wanna be thoughtful about that.
So we want to not use shame and isolation.
We wanna invite membership.
We wanna avoid reenactment and disenfranchisement,
and we wanna teach social emotional learning.
We don't wanna punish and exclude.
So we wanna move to a needs-based approach
versus a compliance-based approach.
Compliance-based approaches tend not to teach.
They tend to be more, again, punitive,
and we wanna move to a repair model versus a rule violation.
So if a kid violates a rule,
what do we need to do all of us
to repair the damage or the harm that's been done?
And when I think of kids who violate rules,
I want to look at the whole environment, not just the kids.
So what was going on in their classroom or in the hallway,
what was going on with me at the time?
What were all of the,
what were all of the environmental stimuli
that influenced this child to struggle?
And how can we learn from that and change it for next time?
So if we think about shifting mindset to shift practices,
just a little bit of the uninformed view
versus the trauma-informed view,
we wanna stress that when we shift our lens,
we shift our perspective from blame
and well, to more of a collaborative response
to trying to find solutions to challenges.
That these kids' actions are motivated by survival,
that we're potentially activating their stress
through our environmental stimuli,
which again, could be anything from the tone of my voice,
to the lighting in the classroom.
We wanna avoid disconnection and marginalization, as I said.
We wanna avoid power struggles.
A really great way to show a kid you're out of control
is engage in a power struggle with them.
So let go of the rope.
Also wanna think about reframing motivation and behavior.
In the applied behavioral analysis world,
which I appreciate and respect a great deal,
we talk about functions of behavior
being seeking attention,
or avoiding or escaping an activity or an expectation.
But in the trauma-informed view,
one of the re-frames I like to do about this is,
we always think about kids are seeking safety,
as opposed to just seeking attention
and that they're avoiding danger.
So if they're not doing a task that you've asked them to do,
an academic task that you've asked them to do,
it may 'cause it's eliciting a sense of shame
and a lack of success or potential failure.
And so they're avoiding that danger
or that consent what seems to be attention seeking behavior
may be a way for them to try to promote safety.
We wanna think of the function of behavior absolutely,
but also what's the feeling behind the behavior?
Often the feeling behind the behavior
of kids who've experienced developmental trauma,
is they're afraid.
And when we think of it in that framework of fear,
we can be more activated to intervene
from a compassionate relational place
rather than a punitive exclusionary place.
So I also wanna just
the social discipline window very quickly.
We wanna be thinking about doing with,
focusing on doing with, because if we do to,
we activate their defense system
and we deactivate their attachment system.
If we don't do, we're reenacting trauma,
where we possibly are reenacting the neglect
that they experienced very early on
when their brain was developing.
We do for, we just empower
and we promote a poor self-concept,
which is something that's pretty instilled
in these kids already.
But when we do with, we empower,
we foster relationship,
and we activate their attachment system.
Think about the consequences.
They can be done in the context of caring relationships,
enforcement of rules and consequences with accountability
can be done when you still have strong,
compassionate relationships.
And we want kids to have accountability and responsibility.
This is why we talk a lot about using restorative principles
and practices to helping kids
so that they can gain agency and mastery
in developing and practicing adaptive coping strategies
when they are engaging in behaviors
that are in violation of rules or expectations.
Finally, I just wanna say that,
think about how are we gonna rewire their neural networks
and understanding that a lot of the behavior
that these kids express to us
are a result of abnormally developed neural networks
or incompletely developed neural networks.
So we want policies in schools
that are gonna support creative learning environments,
and that are gonna promote across all three tiers,
opportunities to rewire or re-circuit neural pathways
so that they are more adaptive and healthy.
You need to activate a neural network in order to change it.
So you can't learn to play the piano just by looking at it.
You have to practice it.
Slow it down, push the pause button,
really think about regulation before you go into reason.
Just really exaggerate your interventions
and understand that you're gonna need
a great deal of repetition in order for it to be successful.
Tons and tons and tons and sometimes frustrating repetition.
And also our active memory,
it fills up about 15 seconds and then we dissociate,
and then we come back online
and the brain starts to trickle stuff
into our short-term memory.
And then, like I said,
kids who've experienced developmental trauma,
have a lot of disruption with sequential thinking
and their working memory is compromised.
So just another reason to remember,
I need to repeat this so many times
for this kid across all three tiers.
And we also retain about 10% of what we hear.
So hopefully you got a little more than 10% of this,
but that's another thing to remember as well.
So we need multimodal instruction.
And finally think about dosing.
Again, that's dipping toes in distress
in order to heal and build resilience,
doing it in small increments.
And also being really compassionate about,
just because a kid did it yesterday,
doesn't mean they can do it today.
Just because a kid did it five minutes ago,
doesn't mean they can do it now.
You may need to back it up, slow it down,
do some more dosing
in order for them to practice the skill or the behavior
or the academic exercise that you're teaching them.
And we wanna have
as much as possible contextual opportunities
for all of this.
So as much of the behavior that could be classroom managed,
that kids can stay in their community
and strengthen their sense of belonging membership,
is really critical.
And with that said,
I'm just a minute over. I'm sorry.
Any questions?
- A minute is not bad.
- A lot of work. A lot of listening.
Great job. Thank you.
Appreciate it. Appreciate people hanging in there.
If you have any questions, I'll hang on for a few minutes.
If not, I hope you...