Change Makers
Anchors of Hope
The Safe and Supportive Trauma Sensitive School Award recognizes schools that have created a safe, supportive, equitable and inclusive school climate/culture of belonging for all students. The award distinguishes school communities that address trauma’s impact on learning, including trauma from racism and other structural inequities, on a whole school basis is central to its educational mission.
To qualify for the award, a school must:
Establish a shared understanding among staff of traumatic experience and its impacts
Engage in an inquiry-based reflection/action planning process to weave trauma sensitive approaches into their practice
Utilize the transformative beliefs of a trauma sensitive school to guide their action planning and decision making throughout the school
The Lesley University Institute for Trauma Sensitivity is honored to present our very first Safe and Supportive Trauma Sensitive School Award to the students, staff, and families of the Manthala George, Jr. Global Studies School in Brockton, MA.
The accomplishments of the George School over the last several years, both academically and in school climate, are nothing short of remarkable. In addition to special education classrooms, they have implemented a K-5 global studies curriculum in three languages (Spanish, French and Portuguese), the only school in the Commonwealth with multiple dual language immersion strands in one school. At the same time, they have significantly improved their students’ academic competence as measured by state accountability standards. In support of these accomplishments is the development of a safe and supportive trauma sensitive climate/culture in the school.
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When asked about the work in creating a trauma sensitive school, Principal Natalie Pohl commented that it is a key foundational element in all that the school has accomplished. As to what this looks like in the George school, she stated, “It is not one specific thing. It is many different parts all moving at the same time. How everyone in the building comes together and how we work with each other and how we work with our children to create a welcoming safe and supportive environment.”
Guiding conditions of a safe, supportive, and trauma-sensitive school include:
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of the impacts of traumatic experience (1) on student learning is essential, as it is a necessary dimension to understanding how our students learn and why they behave the way they do. And this shared understanding is a central pathway to knowing what makes a school safe and supportive for all students and staff. It is not about identifying clinical and subclinical stressors in specific students, but rather it is about acknowledging and understanding the prevalence and impacts of these stressors in our school and using that knowledge to guide how we build our school communities and our practice with all students.
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builds on our shared understanding, and in its application, deepens our understanding of trauma and its impacts. Identifying our school’s local urgencies, reflecting on our practice and developing workable local solutions to our urgencies is the core of our practice development. This fusion of understanding and practice provides school staff with a voice in not only identifying but also addressing our individual school concerns.
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(attributes) | that guide our practice and establish what we mean by safe and supportive, trauma sensitive. The understanding/reflective practice action planning is guided by these Transformational Beliefs that become embedded in our school’s culture as we use them in our decision making at the whole school and classroom level. It is this embedding of these Transformational Beliefs that the understanding and the reflective practice are sustained.
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Item description
Progress Towards
Trauma-Sensitivity
Guiding Condition
IIntegrating Transformational Beliefs
Developing a Shared Understanding IIntegrating Transformational Beliefs
Initiating (1)
Confront our beliefs in action and challenge our former understanding about students and learning – cognitive dissonance can disrupt and reset guiding beliefs.
Disruptive
Core concepts of a broad definition of “trauma”, prevalence, impacts and reflective action planning. Whole child, whole school/classroom
Discovery “Aha”
Progressing (2)
Integrating beliefs into understanding and practice. Alignment of stated beliefs and beliefs in action.
Guiding action
Integrate systemic factors such as anxiety-producing demands, racism, and gender bias into our understanding of the sources of traumatic experience
Broadening our view
Well-Integrated (3)
Woven into our belief system.
Guides the way we make decisions and act. It is how we do things.
It is our “culture”.
Ongoing knowledge development. On-boarding and refresher materials/sessions. Development of internal expertise and staff knowledge leaders.
Expertise/Ownership
Engaging in Reflective Practice
Using checklists to review current practice, identify urgencies and develop an action plan. School/classroom context matters. Small is the new BIG
Structured process
Review, reflect, renew as we implement our action steps. Urgencies shift and are addressed with an action plan. Expand this process throughout the school and our classrooms
Inquiry as the norm
Our school wide and classroom practice is guided by the Transformational Beliefs and an ongoing inquiry based reflective process.
How we do things
