• One morning, in my middle school classroom, a student reported that there was a shooting on his block. Other students, living on the same block, reported that they heard the shots.
• A middle school student, struggling with learning difficulties and disruptive behavior, was responsible for security at home. The family was surrounded by active gang members, and at times, this 13-year-old student fought off violent opponents.
• One student in my class was living with a relative. Previous to being placed with this relative, the student had been in a variety of foster families.

Many students face a variety of conditions that interfere with their ability to perform in school. Often, in our times, ADHD is blamed. It’s important for educators to understand that some of our students have past or current trauma, which can impact focus, memory, and social skills.

Although a diagnosis is beyond the scope of practice for an educator, awareness of what trauma is helps educators to identify when a referral might be needed.

What is psychological trauma?

Saakvitne (Pearlman & Saakvitne, 1995, p. 60) tells us that trauma is a unique individual experience. It can be one event, like a terrorist attack or it can be ongoing events, as in wartime, or living in a dangerous neighborhood. Family violence, whether it’s child abuse or neglect, or witnessing violence is traumatic.  

No matter how big the event, what makes it traumatic, is the inability to stay present, to understand what’s happening, to integrate the experience, to understand that it’s over. It causes the individual to feel that there is a threat to life, bodily integrity, or sanity.

Research indicates that children can be traumatized in a variety of ways, including:

1. Frightened and frightening caregivers
2. Neglect, separation, abandonment
3. Witnessing domestic violence
4. Parental fighting
5. Threatening words or behavior
6. Secondary effects of parental PTSD
7. Accidents, medical crises, surgery, invasive procedures
8. Death of a parent or parent figure.

References

Fisher, J. (2018, 12 19). Part 1: Module 1: Trauma and the Body. Complex Trauma Certification Course. PESI.

The featured image is of Mary Patterson, who was sentenced to 6 weeks in jail in 1873 for theft of poultry.