Trauma-informed practice intentionally creates space for equitable academic achievement and success for all students, including those negatively impacted by trauma.
What is Trauma?
Trauma is a commonly used term that can mean different things in different contexts. Here, we use it to mean an event or experience that caused long term negative consequences impacting physical, mental, social, or emotional wellbeing. While we often think of trauma as resulting from things like extreme violence or wartime experiences, there are actually a wide range of circumstances that can cause severe and lasting trauma. This can include singular events like a natural disaster or car crash as well as things that happen over an extended period like childhood neglect, domestic violence, intimate partner violence, sexual assault and abuse, racism, bullying, or religious trauma.
It is also important to note that the Covid 19 pandemic has caused trauma-like symptoms in a wide range of the population. While there is controversy over whether it rises to the level of being a collective trauma, it is clear that the pandemic has caused ongoing anxiety and stress responses that mirror the experiences of those that have undergone other forms of trauma (Bridgland et al, 2021).
How does trauma impact students?
There are many different ways that trauma can impact people, and individuals that experience the same traumatizing event won’t all respond the same way. Experiencing trauma causes long term changes to the body’s stress response system, often resulting in hyperarousal, which means that the body overreacts to stressful situations. Some common symptoms that are particularly relevant to how students function in the classroom include anxiety, confusion, difficulty sleeping, disconnection, and depression (Center for Substance Abuse Treatment). Experiencing events or encountering information that reminds the individual of the traumatizing event can cause extreme anxiety or even flashbacks of re-experiencing the event.
These symptoms can easily be misperceived by instructors as a lack of motivation or engagement. Students struggling from the effects of trauma may not even be aware of that their behaviors stem from the ongoing impacts of trauma. This can make it difficult for instructors to correctly interpret the situation and provide appropriate student supports.
How can I protect my mental health?
Providing a supportive learning environment for students who have experienced trauma can impact instructors as well. If students disclose traumatic experiences, it can create anxiety for instructors who worry about the ongoing wellbeing of the student. Those instructors sometimes feel the need to provide ongoing emotional support out of concern that the student won’t find other help. As an instructor, you may also have experienced trauma that results in distress from these conversations.
Before providing suggestions for supporting students in the classroom, we want to provide some strategies for instructors to support their own mental health and wellbeing.
Don’t do it alone.
When a student brings up struggles related to trauma, instructors may feel personally responsible for helping the student. Remember that there are many services on campus designed for exactly that purpose. You can take students in immediate distress directly to the CAPS office or get them in contact with the CARE team who can help them access other campus support services.
Take care of yourself first
We’ve all heard the saying ‘you can’t pour from an empty cup’. To support your students, you need to take care of yourself. Create appropriate boundaries between work and home life. Be clear to students about how long they can expect to wait for responses from you and stick to the guidelines you set. Also ensure that if you have a research apportionment, you leave adequate time for that aspect of your work.
Be proactive
Challenging behaviors in the classroom may arise that are nuanced, complex, and difficult for instructors to manage on their own. Try to think ahead about what issues might arise and how you can respond to them in the moment. Also, set expectations for conduct at the beginning of the semester so you have specific rules to fall back on in tricky moments. For more on this topic, see the guide to dealing with incivility and microaggressions in this resource.
What Can I Do to help students?
Experiencing trauma often doesn’t leave any visible signs, and students that have experienced trauma may not have any official university accommodations. As an instructor, we recommend that you think about ways in which you can design a course to be supportive of students that have experienced trauma even if they don’t disclose that information to you.
Here, we present research-based strategies that can help you not only avoid re-traumatization but also promote healing and growth for the students you work with.
Provide physical and psychological safety
Individuals may have experienced trauma related to their race, ethnicity, gender identity, sexual orientation, or other aspects of their background, so try to create a space where students can be safe bringing their whole self to the classroom. Use correct names and pronouns for all students and ensure that everyone in the class does the same. Provide a detailed list of topics covered each day so students can prepare for content related to trauma they have experienced.
Provide clear expectations to build trust
Many students, particularly those that are neurodivergent or who have disabilities, have experienced trauma related to educational systems (Spaeth & Pearson, 2023). Give clear guidelines about your course structure, assignment instructions, standards of conduct, and communication pathways to ensure everyone understands all expectations. Be transparent in your grading and decision making. Also be consistent with your feedback and communication.
Help students engage in peer support & connection
Build a community of learners within your course so that multiple pathways of support and connection may form. Often, students realize they have more in common than just their course, and a supportive network of deeper understanding can form in support of both course goals and student development.
View students as collaborative partners
Trauma often involves power differentials, so a trauma-informed approach asks instructors to build opportunities for shared power when possible (Crumpton, 2020). Students are experts in their own needs and wants, so strive to trust them when they suggest things that would help them learn better. Use collaborative language and consider working with students to develop things like course policies and standards of conduct.
Connect students with resources
Ensure your syllabus lists campus-based support resources outside of your course. Throughout the semester, take time during class to remind students about key resources and under what circumstances they might be useful.
Empowerment, voice & choice
Strive to recognize and nurture students’ strengths and skills. Consider giving students a choice of topics for assignments. Wherever possible, also give students a choice in how assignments are completed (for example, giving them the option of turning in a written paper, recorded presentation, podcast, artwork with author notes, or another creative medium). This allows students to use the strengths they’ve developed and avoid re-traumatization that may be related to specific educational experiences.
Social Justice across historical, cultural, and gender issues
Work to intentionally acknowledge and counter biases and stereotypes you have based on race, gender identity, ethnicity, sexual orientation, age, religion, and geography. Honor the traditional cultures of students and communities and recognize the presence of community and historical trauma. When talking about marginalized communities, encourage students to speak about their own experiences while avoiding singling individual students out to represent their entire communities.
Think about the physical space
Aspects of the physical classroom space can signal safety or alarm to individuals that have experienced trauma. For some, sensory experiences like the sound of the air handling system, brightness from fluorescent lights, or being in a particular location in the classroom can cause anxiety. Give students a choice of where they sit and, if possible, provide different types of seating options. Tell students it’s okay if they use noise cancelling headphones as long as they’re not listening to anything through them. Encourage them to use fidget toys as long as they’re not distracting other students.
Encourage mindfulness
Mindfulness holds numerous benefits for teachers and students in a classroom by fostering concentration and understanding while intentionally holding space for the experiences, identities, and lived truths of all students (Emerson et al, 2017). There are many different short activities that can enhance mindfulness, such as meditation, breathing exercises, focused contemplation, journaling, or reading aloud. Using one of these at the start of class or in moments of student frustration or boredom can help bring focus back to the task at hand.
Resources
- A free ebook called Trauma-Informed Pedagogies has more detailed information about applying trauma informed pedagogy in a higher education context.
- The article Mental Health in College Populations is a review of current literature on mental health in college students.
References
Bridgland, V. M. E., Moeck, E. K., Green, D. M., Swain, T. L., Nayda, D. M., Matson, L. A., Hutchison, N. P., & Takarangi, M. K. T. (2021). Why the COVID-19 pandemic is a traumatic stressor. PLOS ONE, 16(1), e0240146. DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0240146
Center for Substance Abuse Treatment (US). (2014). Trauma-Informed Care in Behavioral Health Services. Chapter 3, Understanding the Impact of Trauma. Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (US). Available from: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK207191/
Crumpton, S. M. (2020) Trauma-Sensitive Pedagogy. In Stephens, D. W. & Ott, K. (Eds.), Teaching sexuality and religion in higher education: Embodied learning, trauma sensitive pedagogy, and perspective transformation. Routledge.
Emerson, L. M., Leyland, A., Hudson, K., Rowse, G., Hanley, P., & Hugh-Jones, S. (2017). Teaching Mindfulness to Teachers: a Systematic Review and Narrative Synthesis. Mindfulness, 8, 1136-1149.
Spaeth, E., & Pearson, A. (2023). A reflective analysis on neurodiversity and student wellbeing: Conceptualising practical strategies for inclusive practice. Journal of Perspectives in Applied Academic Practice, 11(2), 109-120. DOI: 10.56433/jpaap.v11i2.517
Topics