Best Practices for Trauma-Informed Classrooms

By : Dan Tricarico

Zen is defined as noticing the world exactly as it is - free from judgement and detached from anticipated outcomes.  The following list are 5 zen practices, as described by educator and author Dan Tricarico, that can be used by administration, teachers, and students to help regulate their mind and body:

1.  Invite possibilities:

• View experiences through a beginners mind

• Be open to change, learning, and new possibilities

• Be vulnerable

• Consider your students (peers) perspectives

• Learn from your students (each other)

• It's okay not to know.  Try.

• Maintain a growth mindset 

  • Fixed mindset - I avoid challenges vs. Growth mindset - I embrace challenges

2. Create acceptance:

   • • Accept the moment "as is"

     • Detach yourself from anticipated outcomes

     • "Be one with your toast" - Toast doesn't always come out perfectly toasted and buttered, but it is what it is... There will be more toast.

3. Compassion and Gratitude:

   • • Utilize gratitude rituals/sentences/mantras

     • Consider: What is the most generous assumption I can make about this person

       • Why are they acting like that?  What might they be going through that I don't know about?  Assume there is something because there usually is.

     • Do your best to do everything through kindness and love

     • Have self compassion - Have grace and forgive yourself

4. Practice mindfulness:

   • • Use your senses - I see... I hear... I feel...

     • Find the detail - Focus your attention on the details around you

     • Be HERE now - Have present moment awareness

     • Keep waking up - We don't usually exist in a constant state of mindfulness, but you can keep waking up to it (Mindfulness vs. Mindlessness)

5. Cultivate personal space: 5 Ss

   • • Space

     • Silence - Look for places in your day when you can create a bit of silence for yourself

     • Stillness - Look for places in your day when you can create a bit of stillness for yourself

     • Subtraction - What is one task/obligation/idea that you can take off your place or let go?

     • Slow down

       • Stop, take a breath, observe what you're feeling, and proceed positively

Neurologist Dr. Daniel Siegel summarized the benefits of these practices by saying, "Where the attention goes, neural firing flows, and neural connection grows."  By utilizing mindful, zen practices and sharing these practices with our students, shifts in neural activation and attention create opportunities to alter the internal neural firings that shape not only the activity in the brain in the moment, but also alter the  long-term structural connections in the brains of those engaged in the interactions.

*Active engagement is the root of brain growth!*

"When the bum is dumb, the brain is the same!"

• Direct instruction should never be more than the number of minutes of the age of the student, up to 12 minutes,  without a 60-90 second break.

  • • This isn't to say that all direct instruction should be 12 minutes or less.  This means that for every 5-12 minutes, students should have a chance to stretch and/or process.

• Quick activities to check-in and break up instruction:

  • • Pencils, stick figures, GO  - Summarized what you just learned

    • Create ~3 titles for a book based on what you just learned

    • If you were absent for the last 5-12 minutes and you needed me to tweet you what you missed, what would you need me to tweet?  Include a hashtag (#) and an at (@).  (See image below.)

      • • Tweet extension: Students can trade tweets laster and write a short paragraph explaining the tweet

    • Write a 5 word summary

    • Quick round table discussion

    • Write a song

      • • Give song options like Row Your Boat, Twinkle LIttle Star, Jingle Bells, Baby Got Back, etc., or student choice - Give students up to 30 secs to choose a song.  

        • For younger students or accommodation support, teacher can start the song and students can fill in the blanks or complete the sentences.

    • Visual tagging - Choose an object/thing (related to the topic or randomly crazy) and have students compare what they just learned to the noun given.

    • Question! - Imagine I was going to give a pop quiz right now, what are ~3 questions I would ask and what are the answers?

    • Question? - What is one question you have about what we are learning?  It could be a clarify question or an extension question.

    • Answer /Echo - If a student is the echo, they stand up and repeat the answer another student gives.

      • • Choose an echo - great for students who don't often raise their hand due to anxiety, need differentiated support, or may not have been paying attention. (Of course, don't call the student out for not paying attention, simply make them the echo.)

        • Ask a question to the rest of the class and call on someone to answer.  Then, the echo repeats the answer.

    • A-B teams - switch-up who starts where A = after / B = Before 

Intervention Solutions for Difficult Behaviors: Building Positive Relationships

To most bad behavior, there is an antecedent.  It is important to keep this in mind when we approach bad behavior and behavior intervention plans.  Most commonly, challenging students are challenging because they lack the skills to not be challenging.   Therefore, the bad behavior is the signal by which a child communicates that he or she is having difficulty maintaining certain expectations.  You can think about this in the context of adults or children.  If you throw an expectation at an adult in the workplace and they don't have the skills to meet that expectation, they would look "bad" too.  Getting to the bottom of bad behavior means looking past the symptom and understanding the problem behind the behavior.

Psychologist Ross Greene developed an intervention plan that looks at patterns in behaviors and guides a deeper look what missing skill set or what problem may be driving the behaviors: The intervention is called an "Assessment of Lagging Skills and Unsolved Problems."    You can find more about ALSUP and additional collaborative proactive solutions by clicking the "Challenging Behaviors" link at the bottom of this page.  

Part of the ALSUP process is gathering information from observed behaviors and from speaking with the child who is having the problems.  Start by showing empathy and gather information from the student.  If he or she is resistant to talking, use means of communication that reduce the need to speak.  For example, use a chart that has "YES" or "NO" written on it and the student can point OR ask for a thumbs up or down to yes or no questions.

Once the problem has been identified, invite the student to collaborate on possible solutions.  Again, for students who are non-verbal or resistant to talking, a picture chart to point to could be a means of getting student input.  

Language example:  A mom and her daughter came into Dr. Greene's office for a session and they were upset about dinner from the night before.  Both the mom and the daughter explained their frustrations and Dr. Greene asked the daughter, "You don't want any holes poked in your pot pie and your mom doesn't want you to burn your mouth.  Do you have any ideas on how to solve this problem?"  (The little girl suggested taking the whole top off so it was still in tact for her to eat and the inside of the pot pie could still come off).  This solution worked for both parties and gets the by-in from the daughter because it was her solution.