SEL

Upper School Learning Specialist

December 2023

Building on the Strengths of Young People: A Trauma-Sensitive, Resilience-Building Strategy

This workshop focused on how to best support students who’ve encountered a traumatic event.

What were your big takeaways from your workshop or project? Childhood trauma can affect the body, brain, behavior, and genetics of a person who’s endured a traumatic event. Keys for adults to be aware of are: supportive adults are critical in buffering the negative emotional and physiological responses to traumatic events. Giving students the opposite of what they expect is important, i.e., meeting their angry or irritable student responses with care, compassion, and interest. Students look to caring adults to help them manage their emotions.

Focus on strategies, self-regulation, and being resourceful. Recognize the effectiveness of cold communication and hot communication. Cold communication helps with co-regulating, problem-solving, and planning. On the other hand, hot communication, i.e., blaming, yelling, and sarcasm makes the problems young people are experiencing worse. From the presentation, “Young people will be more resilient if the important adults in their lives believe in them unconditionally and hold them to high expectations.

The Upper School Faculty would benefit from learning how impactful their interactions with students are in building self-regulation skills and coping strategies.

Like Stanley King seminars, this workshop reinforces building trusting and caring relationships.

 I recommend this professional development opportunity for all teachers.