A trauma–sensitive school is a safe and respectful environment that enables students to build caring relationships with adults and peers, self-regulate their emotions and behaviors, and succeed academically, while supporting their physical health and well-being.
Resource Topic: Community
Supporting Students Experiencing Childhood Trauma: Tips for Parents and Educators
Schools have a unique opportunity and responsibility to help these children recover from trauma and develop the skills necessary to experience academic and social success. This begins with educating school personnel on trauma and effective interventions.
Restorative Practices: A Guide for Educators
Educators across the nation recognize the importance of fostering positive, healthy school climates and helping students learn from their mistakes. Increasingly, they are partnering with parents, students, district officials, community organizations, and policymakers to move away from harmful and counter-productive zero-tolerance discipline policies and toward proven restorative approaches to addressing conflict in schools
Project AWARE Ohio: Advancing Wellness and Resilience in Education
Project AWARE Ohio is a partnership between the Ohio Department of Education, the Center for School Based-Mental Health Programs at Miami University and the educational service centers within three pilot communities: Cuyahoga County, Warren County and Wood County. Funded through the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Project AWARE Ohio supports schools and communities in:
- Raising awareness of behavioral health issues among school-aged youth;
- Providing training to detect and respond to mental health challenges and crisis in children and young adults; and
- Increasing access to behavioral health supports for children, youth and families.
Activities Guide: Enhancing and Practicing Executive Function Skills with Children from Infancy to Adolescence
Executive function and self-regulation (EF/SR) skills provide critical supports for learning and development, and while we aren’t born with these skills, we are born with the potential to develop them through interactions and practice. Each chapter of this guide contains activities suitable for a different age group, from infants to teenagers.
Using Brain Science to Create New Pathways Out of Poverty
Experiences of social bias, persistent poverty, and trauma can directly undermine brain development and the EF skills most needed for success. The areas of the brain affected by adverse experiences of social bias, persistent poverty, and trauma remain plastic well into adulthood and, through proper coaching, may be strengthened and improved.
Strong at the Broken Places: The Resiliency of Low-Income Parents
By examining factors that promote or hinder children’s healthy development, this policy report draws on recent studies to illustrate the importance of parent resiliency in the development of social-emotional competence among low-income children. The report concludes with program and policy recommendations that have proven effective in promoting the development of protective factors, reducing vulnerabilities, and cultivating resiliency among low-income parents and, consequently, their children.
Adverse Community Experiences and Resilience
This report offers a groundbreaking framework for understanding the relationship between community trauma and violence. Until now, there has been no basis for understanding how community trauma undermines both individual and community resilience, especially in communities highly impacted by violence, and what can be done about it.
Helping Traumatized Children Learn: Creating and Advocating for Trauma-Sensitive Schools
As a follow up to Helping Traumatized Children Learn: A Report and Policy Agenda, this hopes to move beyond awareness of trauma’s impacts on learning to help schools become trauma-sensitive learning environments that can improve educational outcomes for all students
Helping Traumatized Children Learn: A Report and Policy Agenda
A collaboration among educators, parents, mental health professionals, community groups, and attorneys determined to help children experiencing the traumatic effects of exposure to family violence succeed in school.