Trauma-Responsive Schools
Enjoy the collated resources in Trauma-Responsive Schools. If you have suggestions, please submit suggestions using the form on the right.
The ACEs Connection supports the ever-expanding ACEs movement by educating people about ACEs science. We engage them in the movement by increasing the number of people who join ACEs Connection. We help communities launch and grow ACEs initiatives, online and in person, and provide tools to help them measure their progress. We act as the information resource for the ACEs movement by telling its stories and providing resources.
Access: ACES Connection
Becoming a trauma responsive school is a multiyear process that requires improvements on all levels. Sometimes they are small adjustments, other times they are whole paradigm shifts. Change can be managed by considering whether it is a technical or an adaptive change.
Access: Becoming a Trauma-Responsive School
The Center provides resources on bullying research, preventing gang membership, prevention strategies, risk and protective factors, school violence, National Center of Excellence in Youth Violence Prevention, Striving to Reduce Youth Violence Everywhere - and more resources!
Access: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
Iowa ASCD presenter at the Fall Academy in 2019, 2020, 2021, and 2022 helps educators respond effectively to the impact of trauma on our students.
Be sure to check out her resources on trauma-responsive schools. She also has a great infographic on the connections between MTSS and Teach to Heal.
Access: Danielle Theis Consulting
According to the National Child Traumatic Stress Network (NCTSN), child trauma is when a child witnesses or is involved in an event and, as a result, feels intensely threatened.
Access: Essential Trauma-Informed Teaching Strategies
In this galvanizing book for all educators, Kristin Souers and Pete Hall explore an urgent and growing issue—childhood trauma—and its profound effect on learning and teaching. A Study Guide is available for this book.
Access: Fostering Resilient Learners: Strategies for Creating a Trauma-Sensitive Classroom
This website provides downloadable information (e.g., A Report and Policy Agenda, Creating and Advocating for Trauma-Sensitive Schools. The organization strives to help schools create trauma-sensitive environments; advocate for laws, policies and funding streams that will enable schools to create trauma sensitive learning environments; improve trauma-sensitive approaches to meeting the needs of individual children at school in both regular and special education; and engage in a public education campaign to teach policymakers, educators, administrators, health and mental health providers and parents about the impact of trauma on learning and the need for trauma sensitive schools.
Emily Eilers shares in this blog how trauma-informed schools have become essential to successfully addressing the broadening spectrum of ACES.
The National Child Traumatic Stress Center offers resources for addressing trauma in a school setting.
Watch Kristin Souers and Pete Hall in this on-demand archived presentation.
Access: The New Three Rs: Trauma-Invested Strategies for Fostering Resilient Learners
Trauma-Invested Practices for Fostering Resilient Learners. In this stirring follow-up to the award-winning Fostering Resilient Learners, Kristin Van Marter Souers and Pete Hall take you to the next level of trauma-invested practice. To get there, they explain, educators need to build a "nest"—a positive learning environment shaped by three new Rs of education: relationship, responsibility, and regulation. There is a Study Guide for this book.
Access: Relationship, Responsibility, and Regulation
The National Association of Agricultural Educators provides lesson plans, games, and activities.
Access: Responding to Student Trauma
Kristin Souers in the December, 2017, edition of Educational Leadership (ASCD) helps educators in responding effectively to their students’ needs.
The Safe Start National Resource Center supports those working or interested in the field of Children Exposed to Violence (CEV). It helps by raising awareness, effective community action, and moving from evidence to action to prevent and reduce the impact of violence on children and their families.
Access: Safe Start Center
Mollie Marti, PhD, JD, is a psychologist, lawyer, researcher and humanitarian relentlessly dedicated to helping you thrive and strengthen others. She serves as CEO of the nonprofit Worldmaker International.
A Systemic Approach to Trauma-Responsive Schools
This is a complex issue for kids, adults, and schools. My services provide specific training and consultation to better serve this unique student population.
Debbie Zacarian, Lourdes Alvarez-Ortiz, and Judie Haynes provide a strength-based approach to serving these students.
ASCD also provides an on-demand archived presentation.
Access: Teaching to Strengths: Supporting Students Living with Trauma, Violence, and Chronic Stress
Wayne D’Orio shares how one district uses the administrators in the building to assist in minimizing the disruption and refocus the student on his/her learning.
Access: Trauma-Informed Leadership
Susie Terry and Michelle Lustig of the San Diego County Office of Education provide information on prevalence and response, triggers, tools, and self care.
Concordia University of Portland share statistics, challenges, and tools.
Access: Trauma-Informed Practices in School – Teaching and Self-Care
Trauma-Informed School shares the progress of the Santa Ana Unified School District, including resources and promising practices.
Access: Trauma-Informed School
Empowering Education – Mindfulness-Based Social and Emotional Learning shares examples for Grades K-2, 3-5, and 6-8.
Jessica Minahan shares in the October, 2019 edition of Educational Leadership (ASCD) strategies that positively impact the learning of students experiencing trauma.
Susan E. Craig shares in the September, 2017, edition of Educational Leadership (ASCD) promising practices of teachers who deal with students experiencing trauma.
Access: The Trauma-Sensitive Teacher
Promoting trauma-informed school systems that provide prevention and early intervention strategies to create supportive and nurturing school environments. Trauma Responsive Schools - meeting the needs of trauma-exposed students is best accomplished by a holistic, school-wide approach.
Access: TSA - Support and Resources for Trauma-Informed Schools
A good business secures two organizational development objectives: 1) Reduce risks and unnecessary suffering (prevent problems and pain) and 2) Raise the productivity and fulfilment of work (achieve more, enrich life).
Watch Kristin Souers and Pete Hall in this on-demand archived presentation as they address how to foster resilient learners.
Access: Welcome to the Nest: The Benefits of Using Trauma-Informed Practices in the Classroom
Dr Mary Crnobori, Coordinator of Trauma-Informed Schools for a large urban public school district in the Southeast shared this talk in January, 2019. (13 minutes)
Access: Why All Schools Should be Trauma-Informed - TEDxTalk