OPINION: ‘For our many Black and Brown children, the threats to their physical safety now and into the future are eating away at their insides’
Ways that teachers and schools can intervene to help students through traumatic events
Our students are traumatized. They are living with fear and confusion. They are experiencing or witnessing police violence, rioting and looting. And schools, a place where children typically process events and emotions, are shuttered.
What are children to do? Who will acknowledge, understand and respond to their trauma and its accompanying symptomology? Who’s there to enable our students to understand racism and violence, and to mitigate the lack of certainty in our world? Who will lead our children forward with hope for a better tomorrow, a world in which we protect our Black and Brown children?
Let’s begin by understanding how we got to this spot.
Prior to the pandemic and the most recent instances of police brutality, America’s students were already traumatized. In addition to family-based trauma, homelessness and food insecurity, children were living through the aftermath of natural disasters and school shootings.
We needed to respond and help them. We were only just recognizing the need for, and the value of, trauma responsiveness. Then, in the blink of an CONTINUE READING: OPINION: Trauma hurts our kids. Here's how educators can help address it
