Four Ways to Support Students Affected by Trauma

22 Nov Four Ways to Support Students Affected by Trauma

For some students, school is not just a place of learning and growth but also a refuge to escape trauma, emotional neglect and abuse from home and teachers too have a role to play. Keep reading for the four ways to support students affected by trauma.

For some children who go to school, school is the only place in their lives where they know they are safe and can form trusted enduring relationships.

Ways to Support Students Affected by Trauma

Have you ever wondered why students find it difficult to engage in school? They attend school with hopes of meeting and forming friendships and getting connected to their teachers but still can’t form a bond or relate properly with others.

Why do these happen despite school being an escape route for them and how can teachers help and support students affected by trauma?

Below, are some of the ways teachers can help students heal and grow mentally and academically.

Healing and Repair

Teachers now have a greater understanding of the developmental, emotional, and social difficulties that kids who have experienced trauma encounter at school thanks to the new field of “trauma-informed learning,” which has made significant achievements in this area.

Teachers are trained in therapeutic techniques that can be incorporated into the classroom.

These techniques address the delayed development, underdeveloped neural pathways, and over-regulated nervous systems that students experience as a result of trauma, despite the fact that teachers are not mental health professionals.

Students learn better and perform their tasks when they are calm. The methods applied by teachers allow them to deal better with their emotions when confronted with setbacks that have to do with academics.

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Growth and Strength

What this pupil has gone through has become more important to instructors than “What is wrong with this student?” thanks to a trauma-informed education.

This gives teachers the opportunity to shift the emphasis from what is wrong to what can be done to make things right.

More than only correcting psychiatric disorders and developmental delays are needed to improve the mental health and academic performance of traumatized adolescents; instead, healing, growing, restoring, and lifting are required.

Below are four teaching techniques that you can use in your class, knowing that these approaches also assist your mainstream students.

1. Positive Relationships

Students affected by trauma experience more challenges when it comes to relationships.

It is critical that we help these students feel safe and trusting where possible, so they learn to develop social intelligence and seek out positive bonds with others.

Students like that are supposed to feel safe and that would require the teachers to help them trust people so as to build a positive bond with others.

By helping them, teachers have to employ practices such as smiling and sharing their life stories with the students.

2. Positive Physical Space

Positive feelings can be created by a classroom’s physical design and aesthetic. Images and sayings can encourage your children to work together and think creatively.

Increased amounts of natural light or delicate lighting can improve a welcoming, cozy atmosphere.

3. Positive Priming

Additionally, you can employ positive primers to encourage positivity when students first enter the room or when they take individual work breaks.

Assisting your students in gradually increasing their emotional bank account can alter their brains and improve their ability to learn.

It can also help them create stronger bonds with others, and become more resilient.

Consider using positive primers throughout the learning process the next time you are developing a lesson plan.

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4. Using Character Strengths

It has been demonstrated that fostering talents in students increases success and well-being.

All kids, especially those who have experienced trauma, require chances to discover, develop, and use their character strengths, which include traits like courage, compassion, humour, and creativity.

Finally, Every teacher aspires to have a good influence on their students’ lives. The teacher has a particularly important role to perform for pupils who have experienced trauma.

The inclusion of positive psychology in the classroom has the power to inspire development in addition to healing, which has the ability to drastically alter the life paths of many of these young people.