How do you go about becoming a trauma-informed restorative educator?
@joebrummer
&
@ThorsborneMarg
's follow-up to the bestselling book on
#traumainformed
restorative education delves deeper into how you can develop your skills & join the movement.
If you are using restorative practices "reflection" worksheets that talk about "poor choices" then your worksheet is NOT trauma-informed. Most disruptive behavior is not a choice...it is communication about a nervous system in distress.
Tip for Teachers and Admins: When you see a kid in the hallway, the first words out of your mouth need to be connection not correction. Don't start with "where are you suppose to be?" start with "Hey, how are you? Everything okay?" Then you can ask where they need to be.
Educators often want me to to tell them what to do when kids are behaving poorly due to dysregulation. My answer is always the same, prevent dysregulation. Don't wait for the crisis, prevent the crisis by setting up a trauma-informed, safe, regulated space.
If your school culture is based in a view that kids "use" behavior to get things or get out of things, it cannot be trauma-informed. A trauma-informed approach sees behavior as communication. Behavior is the language of our nervous system when it can't find words.
This slide is mind blowing. I could present evidence for all of those and have in both my books. These are not low evidence by any means. Don’t know anything about this presenter, this list is high evidence.
MYTH: Restorative Practices are soft on discipline. REALITY: Facing those you harmed and being asked to clean up the messes you made is way more accountable than sitting home for 3 days disconnected from the real consequences of your actions. Accountability = repairing the harm!
Kids behavior in schools is escalating at the same rate as mental health problems keep escalating for kids. New discipline approaches must be sensitive to this. You won't be able to punish kids into having better mental health.
Creating a trauma-informed restorative school requires a long term plan, not a quick one-day training. It is a commitment, not a workshop. It will take lots of different elements that impact systems change as well as classroom practices. Not a one and done. Not a quick-fix!
If your school thinks restorative practices means no consequences, you need to ask if you meant punishments or consequences. The distinction between these two concepts is important. There are always consequences in life, use them to teach.
Restorative Practices only work school wide when both proactive and responsive practices are in place. If you’re only using it for incidents but not prevention, it fails. You cannot restore a community you didn’t build.
The first step in being a trauma-informed educator is learning to regulate your reactions to their challenges so you become a source of support rather than a cause of further dysregulation.
If you're going to become a trauma informed restorative school, we need to go beyond just strategies for classroom management and make deep systemic changes to policy, procedure, and hiring. Then the classroom strategies have a chance at working. It's a journey!
Behviorism is so widely accepted despite recent findings in neuroscience that have called into question just how it works and doesn't work. With that said, our society is still built on these out of date ideas with some clinging on pretty tight to old science. It is costing us!
Just to get you all excited.....here is a preview of book 2's cover. Marg and I wrote this together and I must admit, we did a pretty awesome job. It has a foreword by Dr. Lori L. Desautels and contributions from others. Should be available in June of 2024 or maybe sooner.
I got banned this weekend by 2 consultants in education who are spewing super questionable stuff that I believe harms children. It turns out those same people riled up lots of us who do this work. There are lots of unapologetic disrupters our there!
#disruptersunite
Using a circle as a reactive process without proactive circles will re-traumatize children. If the only reason to circle-up is that they did something “wrong” then the circle becomes a tool for shame not healing. Circle is a connection tool not a punishment.
Just a little while ago, I hit send on an email that submitted my manuscript for my first book on Trauma-informed Restorative Schools. It will be published in 5 countries. Hope I crossed all the I's and dotted my T's. 😃
In schools, restorative practices are less about repairing relationships and instead are more about building relationships worth repairing. You cannot restore something that never existed in the first place.
#restorativepractices
School SEL lessons are completely worthless if everything we teach them about respect, kindness, or being human isn't modeled by every adult around them. Well, look around at the current people they use as role models? How's that SEL lesson working?
Addressing what you think is "bad behavior" that is actually a "trauma coping behavior" with punishments creates sense of helplessness that simply re-traumatizes the child. That not discipline, it cruelty!
MYTH: Restorative Practices are a new alternative discipline program.
REALITY: It is not a program, and it is not new! It is a lens through which we see community building, relationship repair, and addressing harm. It is not a quick fix!
When children have big overwhelming feelings that lead to misbehavior and adults add interventions that increase those big feelings-threats, yelling, punishments- adults teach a child that adults can’t help them with big feelings. Adults could instead model calm.
This morning, I was emailed the final proof of book 2 before it goes to the printer. I co-authored this book with restorative justice pioneer
@ThorsborneMarg
. The amount of research and time we have poured into this book was worth it. It looks amazing!
it is more important than ever that educators get training in recognizing and responding to trauma. Our students and staff will return after this collective trauma with struggles. They need a school prepared. Now is the time to prepare, train, plan, read up.
I was asked recently how to make a discipline system more trauma-informed. I replied, "you don't, you make the people running the system trauma-informed. It is a way of being not a program."
Often we take away privileges or activities we think students don’t deserve or haven’t earned, yet those things were the protective factors that actually helped connect them to school or regulate their nervous system. We didn’t help them, we made it worse.
One of the biggest reasons schools fail at implementing RJ/RP and trauma informed is too many competing initiatives. That leaves staff little time for planning and professional learning. Then they claim it doesn’t work. Yet, it does.
I am learning as I do the work that Trauma-informed Restorative Practices can't be an add on to your school or another program. It needs to be the priority of how we function. It isn't about what we "do" as much as it is the lens we see everything through.
I used to say I was the product of trauma and child abuse. Now I know I am the product of post-traumatic growth. It’s a journey. It’s a process of grieving, healing, grieving more, and quieting the chatter inside your head. Someday, it will be a sense of peaceand wisdom.
#Hope
Behavioral issues in schools are not on the rise because of what we do or don't do AFTER they act. They are on the rise because of what we do or don't do before they act. School culture and climate is where we need to fix discipline, which means proactive not reactive.
If you want to handle the current behavior problems in schools, don't hire more responses like police, hire for more prevention strategies! Hire social workers, paraprofessionals, and behavior techs trained in trauma-informed & restorative approaches!
When you use trauma-informed restorative practices without the mindset shift, those practices become trauma inducing and punitive. It isn’t just what you do, it’s how you show up to do it.
We are showing our commitment to the game-changing work of Dr Bruce Perry, that has inspired our school, by making this statement on our school windows
#Regulate
#Relate
#Reason
@BDPerry
@RogersHistory
In the same way our current culture is making it difficult for educators to do their jobs, our current economies are making it hard for parents to do their's. It is showing up in our children's behaviors. Working parents are struggling to be parents and "employees"...
An educator will lead our Department of Education.
I am proud to nominate Dr. Miguel Cardona to ensure our teachers are taken care of, and our children have an opportunity to thrive.
More evidence that student behavior has a basis in mental health, trauma, and environmental settings. You're never going to punish your way out of this. Punitive consequences will only make it worse. There is much hope in the restorative, trauma-informed approach!
@sarahwads
@DudeAdhd
I know little about this
@tombennett71
person or what he does. I saw this slide and hoped it is some sort of parody. With exception of the last one which too general, all of those have plenty of evidence. and all are gross oversimplified statements of complex issues.
I am now trading the phrase "Chain of command" for the phrase "Chain of Support". This moves the focus from telling people what to do to supporting them in doing great things!
@AUK_Schools
@TheKeyTrauma
I’ve spent long hours pondering why people think what they think about how to respond to children’s
#behaviour
- came up with this as a map!
The circle process is a way humans come together to celebrate their shared humanity before anything else. Then serious matters are discussed followed by more celebrating of our humanity and shared collaboration. It is a pretty amazing process of regulate, relate, reason.
If someone is telling you a story about their trauma, they are also sharing their story about resilience. My story is not just was happened to me, it is also the story of how I survived. It is a story of resilience and slow but steady healing.
@TGrivoisShah
@AlexSVenet
This whole conversation is based on some mythical idea that those practicing PBIS are doing the same things. Rewards are one small part of PBIS, yet they are all I hear mentioned with it. I have also NEVER seen PBIS implemented and run with any fidelity.
We have collected a flood of evidence showing that PBIS, Behavioristic approaches, carrots and sticks cause more harm than good. It is time to move past this stuff to more nervous system aligned approaches to behavior.
Rewards/punishments put all the weight of behavior change on the little human without a fully developed brain. What if the child doesn't need to change but the environment needs to change? What if the child's brain doesn't feel safe? Punishments/Rewards won't make them feel safe
Contract to publish my book on Creating A Trauma-informed Restorative Culture in the School Setting came today. This is getting real. Exciting and terrifying all at once. Has to be finished in 3 months. Wow! I know I got this and still scary.
Sometimes, I think we are so busy trying to prepare kids for the “real” world, we fail to allow them to be kids. Many have experienced more of the real world than they should have already. We force them to grow up and steal childhood.
I am beginning to move away from supporting this whole growth mindset crap. It seems to tell kids they are just thinking about it wrong with their "fixed" mindset. Sometimes it isn't the thinking at all. It's marginalization, poor conditions, and trauma not "fixed" thinking.
This tweet and most of its responses shows me how far we need to go to get schools to be trauma-informed. This hyper-individualistic "pull yourself up with your bootstraps" messaging is unhelpful for kids. Teach them about their support system rather than a self-blame system.
Honestly, I just feel like bragging a tad bit. I finally went shopping for clothes after 4 years of eating healthy, guarding my sleep, and exercising almost daily. I was able to go back to wearing a size small on my 5 ft 4 in body. Best trauma therapy I have ever tried…..
As you go through the day today, remember there is no need to be amazing, great, or perfect. You don't need to be the best, or better than others. Just enjoy each moment with kindness, love, and grace. Do that and you might be amazing.
I have been scanning old slide photos from my childhood. Some photos I have never seen before.....this broke me. No kid should have this face so young. Every part of my being want to hold him and love him. He was little me....abuse and neglect create that face....
We need to stop saying that youth are struggling with their sexuality. They are not. They are struggling with YOU and their sexuality. They fear losing friends and family. They struggle with rejection. The struggle isn't with them, its with you.
What is collective trauma? It is when you put 80% of the population of humans on earth in survival mode at the same time. Fight, flight, freeze, faint. Millions of people with dysregulated nervous systems trying to function best they can.
#bekind
#traumainformed
What we fail to see is that preparing children for a harsh cruel world by being harsh and cruel to toughen them also keeps the world harsh and cruel. We could change that narrative to love at anytime.
Spending my day creating care packages for this week’s trauma informed restorative justice trainings in Hartford Public Schools. I am super excited to take this work to new levels with our newest schools. No avoiding every care package comes with dog fur at no extra charge.
The most developed parts of a child's brain are also the parts that are most frequently engaged. Punishment engages the stress system and the negative emotions that come with suffering. Restorative Practices engage empathy, attachment, reflection, consequences, forgiveness.
Trauma-informed RJ is not an alternative discipline or violence prevention. It is pro-relationship, pro-community, pro-compassion. It isn't the alternative. It is a better way at being human and interacting with other humans.
Neuroscientist and Psychiatrist, Dr. Bruce Perry has done 2 PBS series on Stress, Trauma, and the Brain that explain well why we need trauma-informed schools. Worth watching. This is part 1:
In my workshops I ask people to define "punishment." Words like suffering, pain, infliction, & imposed come up. Funny how adults fail to notice words like cruelty have similar definitions. This upholds my belief that punitive systems foster violence because they are violence.
In just an hour, I will offer the closing keynote at the Restorative Justice in Education Conference at Eastern Mennonite University. This is definitely the boldest, most vulnerable, and most honest presentation I have ever done. Feeling pretty energized to do this....
Full day PD on Trauma-informed Restorative Justice starting in a few. Looking forward to beginning this work in a new district and creating braver spaces for adults and kids to work and learn.
Started this yesterday and really haven’t put it down. Along with
@BDPerry
‘s Born for love and
@DrGaborMate
’s Myth of Normal are painting a clear picture that our current culture isn’t fit to develop healthy humans. It is toxic.
Educators will need supports today to be regulated and responsive to kids feeling off or unsafe in their classrooms. Circle up, pass the talking piece, let everyone have a chance to complete their stress cycle, feel their feelings, and grieve.
Restorative Circle on the playground. 4th graders were able to express what they want from their peers during recess time. Creating a community where students voice matter.
@corinne_barney
@HartfordSuper
@Ms_Zanghi
I will be presenting on Wednesday at the Creating Trauma-Sensitive Schools Conference
#TSS2021ATN
. Come learn about my new book and a unique way to be sure our restorative practices are based in a trauma-informed lens.
Our brains take our current sensory & interoceptive data and compare it with our past experiences to predict what is happening in our world. When your past is filled with negative, traumatic, stressful stuff, guess what your brain predicts even in safe situations?
I get asked pretty often for a book list. While not an extensive list, just what I could fit on the couch....here are the books I have been enjoying or that I recommend.
Day 1 of my adjunct teaching gig. Wow, yes that was amazing and I loved learning from the new group. Also got a reminder to quiet my inner criticism and do what I do. Day 2 coming. 😜
This is one of our favourite sessions to deliver. It's the one that had the biggest impact on me as a teacher and instantly reduced conflict in my classroom. The session teaches us about human interaction.
The world will always hand you people who will tell you that you're not good enough, not smart enough, or whatever. Just keep moving. Those people are not your people.
Truly trauma-informed restorative schools stop looking for "answers" and start crafting the right questions about what will support traumatized kids. This change moves us to look at root issues not surface chaos.
I spent my week working with a couple of school systems and just feel energized! I watched two school districts roll out their Year 1 soft roll out of trauma-informed restorative schools and it was so beautiful. Can't wait to watch this grow!
You cannot be a truly trauma-informed school unless you are willing to celebrate and support your LGBTQ students, teach their history, and protect the from homophobia! With that said: HAPPY PRIDE!
I don’t think Americans fully understand the collective trauma they are experiencing around them and in them. The sheer volume of traumatic experiences around us right now is like a silent war zone. This will impact us for years to come unless we act.