Educational Trauma: What is it and can schools cause it?
Trauma has been hijacked by the political right, as conservative politicians and pundits decry the “snowflakes” and disparage the safe space movement. To them, people who experience hate speech, bullying, and sexual harassment are too sensitive with their “trigger warnings.” In fact, many would argue that trauma is reserved only for war veterans and victims of violent crimes. However, many people, including educators, do not understand the expansive reach of trauma, which can occur not only from experiencing distress first hand but even from simply witnessing a distressing incident. Unfortunately, this ignorance is having a detrimental effect on our students’ academic goals and on our institutions’ goals of educational equity. But what exactly is trauma, and what causes it? More relevant, how many students are actually victims of it, and what can educators do to serve those who are coping with traumatic experiences?
But before defining trauma, I feel compelled to share the story of a former student whom I ran into a few days ago. When she was in my class a year earlier, she had vaguely shared stories of witnessing her father abuse her mother and her mother’s battle with leukemia. This may seem like an outrageous story, but I had actually been witness to both situations during a scholarship ceremony that semester. Her mother had little hair because of the chemotherapy, and when her father was ready to head home, he yelled at her mother for lingering and grabbed her arm. Unfortunately, this student disappeared a couple of months later. In witnessing the abuse of her mother and seeing her succumb to terminal cancer, she had experienced a great deal of trauma.
The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders IV defines trauma as “direct personal experience of an event that involves actual or threatened death or serious injury, or other threat to one’s physical integrity; or witnessing an event that involves death, injury, or a threat to the physical integrity of another person; or learning about unexpected or violent death, serious harm, or threat of death or injury experienced by a family member or other close associate (Criterion A1). The person’s response to the event must involve intense fear, helplessness, or horror (or in children, the response must involve disorganized or agitated behavior) (Criterion A2)” (qtd. in Beck and Sloan 13).
The DSM definition of trauma is one that educators are most familiar with. However, most of us are unaware of the scope of this trauma on our students, and while it is difficult to measure how many of our students have experienced trauma, we can safely assume that a significant number have experienced a traumatic incident at some point in their lives. Shawn Nealy-Oparah and Tovi C. Scruggs-Hussein describe ten different types of trauma that are in included in the “adverse childhood experiences” (ACE) score – verbal and physical threats, sexual abuse, drug and alcohol addiction, and divorce. They also note, “the threat can be real or impending,” which forces the students to live in a “constant survival mode” (13).
Research has also suggested that this type of trauma can be caused by experiences with racism. In his report “The impact of racial trauma on African Americans,” Walter Howard Smith finds:
African Americans experience specific events of danger related to race that overwhelm the nervous system and require us to recover. These dangers may be real or perceived discrimination, threats of harm and injury, police incidents, and humiliating and shaming events . . . A second way African Americans experienced danger is witnessing harm and injury to other African Americans because of real or perceived racism. (4)
Smith calls this “racial trauma,” which can include both macroaggressions – outright incidences of racism – and microaggressions – subtle race-based insults or slights. The latter is particularly concerning, considering that people of color experience these types of aggressions on an almost daily basis. According to Lillian Comas-Díaz in “Racial Trauma Recovery: A Race-Informed Therapeutic Approach to Racial Wounds,” “[b]rief behavioral and environmental indignities, racial microaggressions constitute messages that convey hostile, derogatory, and/or invalidating meanings to people of color . . . The above subtle forms of discrimination can be more harmful than blatant expressions of racism” (emphasis in original, 251). Finally, Robert Carter, a psychologist at Columbia University, found that these types of aggressions could lead to emotional trauma and symptoms similar to PTSD (qtd. in Comas-Díaz 251). Though teachers and professors are not trained counselors or psychologists, we need to recognize that our students of color come into our classrooms traumatized from previous race-based discrimination and aggressions.
I have heard stories of this type of trauma as often as any other from my students. Because a critical race framework informs my curriculum, class assignments and discussions often focus on racial identity and racism. My African American and Latinx students, in particular, describe incidents of microaggressions when teachers assume they are athletes or suggest that they should switch from a STEM major to a social science major so they “can give back to the community.” Even more frightening are stories of macroaggressions, which include police encounters with un-holstered weapons, shouting, and racial epithets.
In considering instances like these, it is also important to understand that trauma does not need to be personally experienced; it can simply be witnessed. Nealy-Oparah and Scruggs-Hussein describe a phenomenon called “vicarious trauma”: “trauma being experienced from someone in the family, such as a parent who is suffering from illness, mental health conditions or being abusive” (13). Indeed, how often do students share experiences like those above, whether they themselves or a family member is the victim? It is difficult to quantify how many of my own students have shared how they have dealt with chronic or terminal illnesses or addiction in the family or how they have been themselves victims of violence, including gun shot wounds and sexual assault. The student described above is just one of dozens in my spaces. We need to assume that we have students in our classrooms who have suffered trauma, and we need to respond accordingly.
To not do so creates a cycle of trauma and re-traumatization that is actually perpetrated in our classrooms and on our campuses. If unresolved, trauma caused by distress and violence will put students in an academic situation where they are actually incapable of learning, at best, or where they actually drop out of school, at worst. Furthermore, past trauma can actually cause students to experience negative interactions with teachers and classmates as further trauma. As Dr. Lee-Anne Gray notes:
the brain’s information processing system can get blocked or imbalanced by the impact of trauma. Maladaptive responses to present day circumstances occur when the information processing system is trying to resolve old trauma . . . If the information processing system is stuck on a trauma, it will react to the present as if the individual is in the past, re-experiencing the trauma all over again.
As a result, something as innocuous as a bad grade or as serious as bullying can compound the mental distress a student is already under. And since mental healthcare is seriously underutilized in the U.S. – both from a lack of access and from the stigmatization of mental illness – it is likely that students, particularly poor and of color, will come to school with undiagnosed and untreated trauma.
Furthermore, nascent research indicates that students can be traumatized at school and in the classroom, not just at home or in public spaces. This has come to be known as educational trauma. Gray defines educational trauma as “the inadvertent perpetration and perpetuation of victimization by educational systems against consumers and producers of the system. Victims of educational trauma may include: children, adolescents, and adults interacting [with] the educational system.” In other words, students can be traumatized by teachers, school officials, resource officers, counselors, and classmates, and this trauma can start early in their educations. Carlyle Van Thompson and Paul J. Schwartz found that educational trauma “was experienced in middle school or high school, before and after schools sessions, with the perpetrators being peers or teachers” (51). Based on these studies, it is safe to assume that children are experiencing educational trauma as early as elementary school.
So what does educational trauma look like? What is happening to our youth that is so distressing that it impairs their emotional and cognitive abilities and follows them for the remainder of their schooling? Van Thompson and Schwartz explain, “experiences of trauma include, but were not limited to, verbal abuse in the form of ongoing name calling, bullying, condescending and demeaning language by teachers and school officials, out of control classrooms, and criminalization of school setting” (52). Additionally, it is likely that these experiences of trauma are not isolated to a single classroom or individual, but that students experience them on a regular basis in disparate contexts and from various individuals, which can lead to “feelings of inferiority, incompetence, and even hopelessness [and] can become internalized when perpetuated by supposed educators making demeaning remarks” (52).
This reality has profound implications for high school and college educators for two reasons. First, it is likely that many of our students, particularly poor and non-hegemonic students, are coming to our institutions and classrooms with trauma from earlier in their education. This has consequences for how we teach and interact with our students. Second, we need to be cognizant of how we assess and respond to our students so that we do not re-traumatize or even initially traumatize our students. We may have practices and ways of communicating that humiliate and demean our students. As Gray notes, educational trauma is often “inadvertent.” The bottom line is that equity-minded educators have a responsibility for recognizing the symptoms of trauma and are obligated to create learning environments where students can feel safe and heal from past trauma.
Finally, what can educators do to better serve and interact with students who have suffered from trauma? First and foremost, even though we are not trained to treat the symptoms of trauma, we can make their learning environments safe and conducive to healing. Here are some tangible ways to create safe learning environments for traumatized students:
1. Create safe spaces: Because many students may come from home environments or communities that have caused trauma (i.e. unsafe environments), it is important to create these safe spaces at schools. Nealy-Oparah and Scruggs-Hussein suggest, “For us as instructional leaders and teachers, this means that we must have the social emotional intelligence to create schools and classrooms that are physically, socially, and emotionally safe for students” (13). Furthermore, Van Thompson and Schwartz write that educators need to “foster empowerment and create an environment of trust and safety through meaningful activities such as writing about and sharing experiences in small groups . . . the creation of a safe space is critical to their engagement” (57). And yes, this means we need to include trigger warnings before presenting materials that may re-traumatize students. As a result, we need to push back against a socio-political atmosphere that decries “safe spaces” and see these admonishments for what they are: 1) the perpetuation of white supremacy, heteronormativity, and misogyny and 2) the refusal to acknowledge the lived experiences of non-hegemonic peoples who suffer trauma at the hands of these types of oppression. It is our responsibility as educators to facilitate learning, and we are obligated to create safe spaces for traumatized students so that they are able to heal and learn. To return to the student I mentioned at the beginning of this essay, I was surprised to see her this past week, but I could tell instantly that she had changed in a positive way. Her mother had died, but at the urging of extended family, she sought help from a therapist, and she had cut ties with her father. And she came back to college because she knew she had a safe space to return to.
2. Reality pedagogy: Gray suggests educators incorporate “mindful awareness, cross content curricula, the meaningful integration of technology, globalized citizenship, [and] individualized curricula” into their classrooms. She also notes that traumatized students “require diverse and individualized curricula that reflect their uniqueness.” These types of curricula can stop the cycle of re-traumatization that occurs in classrooms, which is perpetuated by a Euro-centric curriculum, teachers’ implicit biases, and the lack of esteem associated with bullying.
3. Culturally Relevant Pedagogy: Similarly, Van Thompson and Schwartz argue, “[i]t is critically important that these young males see themselves in classroom texts and other materials that are used in classrooms.” This type of representation helps non-hegemonic students build pride, self-esteem, and self-efficacy. More specifically, they write that educators should “utilize texts and classroom materials that young men can relate to such as reading topics that include traumatic experiences and historical and present-day racial violence and injustices” (57). However, this suggestion can actually re-traumatize students if not presented correctly. Choose readings and topics that reflect the students’ experiences but also include narratives of triumph and healing. The students should also see the counterstories to the pain and trauma.
4. Counternarratives: Writing is a powerful tool for healing and self-actualization. Prominent social psychologist Claude Steele describes the benefits of narratives in his book Whistling Vivaldi: How Stereotypes Affect Us and What We Can Do: “By helping students develop a narrative about the setting that explains their frustrations while projecting positive engagement and success in the setting, [educators] can greatly improve their sense of belonging and achievement – which if done at a critical time could redirect the course of their lives” (216). In a trauma-informed classroom, these narratives ask the students to reflect on the topics described above and can create a space where students feel empowered to find their voices. Similarly, Van Thompson and Schwartz suggest educators “encourage young men of color to voice their counterstories in writing . . . promote learners’ active participation in class discussions and support groups that will allow their voices to be heard and valued” (57).
5. “The eight Rs”: Nealy-Oparah and Scruggs-Hussein describe a trauma-informed framework that creates what they call a “trauma-sensitive environment” (TSE). These practices include routines, rituals, relationships, and regulation. Click here for the entire article.
6. Know you campus’s resources: Almost all campuses have personal counselors or therapists on site, and often, these services are free to the students. If you believe that a student is suffering from trauma (or shares this with you), walk them over to the school’s personal counselor and help them set up an appointment.
Educators who adopt a trauma-informed pedagogy can find themselves in murky waters; we just don’t know how many of our students have experienced trauma and are still coping with its effects, thus making it difficult to determine when to adjust our curricula and pedagogies. It would seem that students must self-identify to make this work. However, it would be presumptuous to believe that students are comfortable sharing these experiences with us, especially when the course has just begun. Instead, we need to include the above principles and practices to create a safe learning environment for all our students. We need to assume that at least one student in our class is suffering undiagnosed and/or untreated trauma. Otherwise, we risk these students’ academic success and perhaps even their physical and emotional well-being. But if we teach to these students’ needs, all students in the class will benefit.