Supporting Students Affected by Trauma, by Lori Desautel

As you know, we have students that struggle daily due to their traumatic lives.  I frequently reach out to articles to help inform my decisions in the office when working with students.  I found this article by Lori this evening that reminded me we all need accommodations sometimes - and someone to just love us!  Hope you enjoy this article as much as me!  - Jody

Supporting Students Affected by Trauma

Just as students with learning challenges need academic accommodations, students who have adverse childhood experiences may benefit from social and emotional accommodations.

By Lori Desautels

January 23, 2020

If our schools are to address the severe life disruptions and trauma that are occurring in our student populations, we need to be authentically trauma responsive and advocates of social and emotional learning. That is a path to improving our students’ learning outcomes and competencies—unless students feel safe and known in school, they do not learn.

Students who come to school dysregulated cannot access the executive functions they need to pay attention, emotionally regulate, problem-solve, hold strong memory, and be creative. Luckily, there are accommodations that help students with adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) calm their stress response systems so they can access executive functions. And because our students spend thousands of hours in school during their K–12 years, educators have the opportunity to address social and emotional competencies by using these accommodations that are so needed for the emotional, social, and cognitive well-being of our students who carry in adversity and trauma.

Many of our students who need emotional support and resources do not have an IEP or 504 or a team of educators and staff available to consistently meet their social and emotional needs each day. These students have critical needs in the areas of attachment and self-regulation, and educators can do much to support them, even in the absence of an IEP or 504, by working to build relationships with them throughout the school day, fostering a much-needed sense of attachment to the school community.

Secure attachments and strong relationships help these students develop their nervous systems and brains and build the skills needed for emotion regulation.

Top of Form

Bottom of Form

DISCIPLINE INSTEAD OF PUNISHMENT

We can build these relationships and attachments by intentionally and transparently handling these students with care and understanding, and employing these accommodations within our procedures, routines, transitions, and morning bell work and meetings.

We can also keep in mind the difference between discipline and punishment. Pain-based behaviors can look disrespectful, aggressive, oppositional, defiant, or dissociated and shut down. When these behaviors cause harm, they shouldn’t be excused, but we should use discipline rather than punishment. Discipline means providing the practices and strategies students require to feel calm, focused, and ready to learn. Once they’re calm, it’s possible for them to learn from the harm they have caused.

We don’t get angry with students who need academic accommodations when we provide graph paper, extra time on an assignment, audio or technology accommodations, or adjustments on an assignment. Students with ACEs need the experiences and opportunities that will help them improve their self-regulation and connection—they need SEL accommodations, and focusing on discipline rather than punishment helps educators give students the guidance they need, without anger.

ACCOMMODATIONS FOR STUDENTS WITH TRAUMA

At the district, school, department, grade, or classroom level, we can create these accommodations for our students who walk in ready to fight, flee, or shut down.

A change of seating arrangements can sometimes help a student feel safe and focused. This placement or seat may need to be in the back of the classroom or against a wall so there is a felt support and the student can see everything around them and in front of them.

This next step takes some work: Educators start by identifying students coping with ACEs—looking at chronic discipline issues can help educators know which students need a sense of connection and help with self-regulation. For each of these students, identify one or two adults in the school with whom the student feels comfortable and safe. This kind of mentor relationship is a touchpoint in times of anxiety or dysregulation, and a powerful accommodation that provides a sense of safety for self-regulation and secure connection.

Meeting with this mentor every week provides an opportunity for a check-in, during which students can share and discuss their challenges and successes. 

Another idea is to set up a personalized routine of self-regulation accommodations before there are conflicts and behavioral challenges. For example, start with a list of quick breaks—getting a sip of water, taking a walk, taking three deep breaths, drawing or using a favorite art form, moving to a quiet area, or journaling—and have the student choose two or three items from the list that they will employ in times of dysregulation and growing frustration.    

It is key that these steps be taught and discussed ahead of time so that when the student does get upset, they don’t have to make a tough decision about what to do—they have only two or three choices, which they selected for themselves in a moment of calm.

Important Information: 

ISTEP Testing - Just a reminder that 10th grade students will be ISTEP testing on Tuesday and Wednesday of this week for their English tests.  Testing will happen during period 2-4.  Please make sure you have read the ISTEP schedule so you are aware of any changes to the regular day.  This is an important two days for our students!   Our math tests will be Monday and Tuesday next week.  

Additive Makes the Magazine - On Wednesday, February 26th, Modern Machine Shop Magazine will be at Perry Central to do some video taping of our students and their journey with additive manufacturing.  The magazine will be featuring Liam Gogel and Christian Holman - as a "day in the life of a student" along with other students who have been able to create some great products.  Perry Central is one of the first high schools in America to offer the National Additive Manufacturing Certification.  Thanks to Ray Niehaus, Seth Gehlhausen and Bo Gibson for continuing to help us lead the way!

RTI Meeting - We will have an RTI meeting on Thursday, February 28th at 7:20 a.m. in the high school library.  Please send names of students who you think need extra supports!

SFS Domain 1 & 3 - Reminder that Domain 1 & 3 are due March 15th.  If you would like help with this work, we will have a help session on Thursday morning at 7:20 in the high school library and on March 5th at 3:10 in the library.  Please let us know if you need help with this!

Random Act of Kindness Day!

"Kindness is a language in which the deaf can hear and the blind can see."  Mark Twain

Monday, February 17th is National Random Acts of Kindness Day!  For the past 20 years, research has been studying "positive psychology", the analysis of how uplifting emotions such as gratitude, love, joy and inspiration affect our well being and improve our lives.  One of the easiest ways to provide these positive feelings to ourselves and others is through kindness.  Research shows that kindness can help boost ones immune system, decrease stress levels, providing feelings of meaning and purpose and a sense of connection.  

National Random Acts of Kindness Day is a day to focus on the simplicity of empowering others.  As you go through the day today, I encourage all of you to be intentional about spreading kindness to others and helping our students understand the power of these simple acts.  Below are a few ideas of how you can spread kindness today and everyday!! 

• Pay for the coffee or meal of the person in front of you in line.
• Leave a kind note for someone, no explanation needed.
• Share words of encouragement. You never know who might need them.
• Put your skills to work for someone in need. For example, offer to create a résumé for someone seeking a new job.
• Drop off a load of groceries at the local food pantry.
• Mail a “thinking of you” card to someone you’ve not to talk to in a while.
• Order a bouquet of flowers to be delivered to anyone in the hospital. That means, call the florist and tell them to pick a hospital or nursing home and deliver flowers to the person the front desk thinks needs it the most. It could be a sick child, an elderly person with no family or college student down on their luck.
• Send a thank you note to the local fire department, police departments or any military personnel.
• Just smile.

Important Information: 

Faculty Meeting - Just a reminder we have moved our faculty meeting to Wednesday, Feb. 19th at 7:20 a.m. in the high school library!  We will have a light breakfast and enjoy the morning for learning!  Hope to see you there!

Discussion Meeting - For those of you on the Discussion Team, just a reminder that we will meet on Thursday morning at 7:30 in the high school library. 

Commodore Awards - Congratulations to Josh Craney and Commodore Manufacturing as they will be recognized on Tuesday at the Department for Workforce Development at an awards banquet in Indianapolis.  Commodore Manufacturing will be recognized for their strong business-education relationships.  Also, Chase James will be recognized as an outstanding CTE student!  Way to go, Commodores!

ISTEP Testing - We will begin ISTEP testing for all 10th grade students the week of February 24th.  Students will take the first round of English tests February 25 & 26 and then Math on March 2nd & 3rd.  Please look at the attached ISTEP Schedule HERE.  The schedule shows who will be helping administer the test and provide coverage for classrooms.  For those of you administering the test, just a reminder we will meet Tuesday at 3:00 to go over the details and training requirements.  

Classroom Reminders - Just a reminder we are focusing on writing strong learning objectives, utilizing formative assessments (assessment strategies that inform us if students are learning) and posting classroom expectations this semester!  I have been in almost everyone's classroom more than once and many great things are being noted.  Thanks for your diligent work!!

Creative Minds - If you haven't had a chance to watch these videos of our students, please do so!  They are utilizing the skills they are learning in Mr. Gibson and Mr. Gehlhausen's classroom to develop products of their own!  Each of these teams will hopefully participate in the Innovate WithIN Entrepreneurship Contest at U of E on March 6th and gain the chance to move on to the state and win some cash prizes!  We are proud of these Commodores!

FOCUS

The science team is starting their journey into the Mike Schmoker Focus book study.  As I re-read chapters 1 & 2, I found it to be a good reminder of the importance of simplicity, clarity and priority when working to develop our own curriculum.  I think it is good to re-visit our resource as we work to develop guaranteed and viable curriculum.  Here were a few things that stuck out in my mind:

Guaranteed - Can we guarantee that the same curriculum is being taught by every teacher in every classroom?  What gets measured gets done, so how can we develop a simple process for reflection and measurement?

Viable - Ensuring our curriculum doesn't contain more content that can be EFFECTIVELY taught in 180 days.   We do this by focusing on power standards and reducing the number of standards we try to teach in a school year. Also, we need to remember we really do not have 180 teaching days!

Read, Write, Think - Research shows that our students will learn more and retain more if students have opportunities to discuss and write about what they are learning  (Turn and Talks/Quick writes are valuable)

Authentic Literacy - Reading growth depends on our ability to build up students' knowledge base and vocabulary.  This can be achieved by ensuring students have opportunities to read complex fiction and information-rich text.  Emphasis on books, textbooks, newspapers, magazines in all disciplines helps to build learning of core content along with advanced analytical and thinking skills.

Strengthening our Guaranteed and Viable curriculum at Perry Central is our first priority as we work to ensure our students are getting a rich, content knowledge curriculum filled with critical thinking & communication skills. Our goal is to develop our curriculum, work to vertically align standards, add rich reading & writing opportunities across the curriculum and keep the process simple and research based.   By doing this work, we will eliminate the stress of "squeezing" it all in and allow our students the time and opportunity to grow deeper in their learning!   


Important Information:

Visitors in the House - This Monday, Bedford North Lawrence will be bringing their Early College Leadership team to Perry Central to learn more about our program.  They will be visiting in the morning for a couple of hours.  We are excited to bring them to our facility and continue to learn and grow with them!  Their visit is part of the CELL Early College Federal Grant that we were asked to be involved with! 

High School Orientation - This Tuesday evening, our current 8th grade class and their parents are invited to Perry Central to start planning for their high school career.  Students will work to lay out their next four years of high school with leadership from Dana Harris!  It is usually a largely attended event.  Thank you to Dana for making this happen! 

Amazing Shake - Wednesday morning, we will be sending a small team to West Washington to help judge their Amazing Shake event.  The Amazing Shake is a Ron Clark activity that provides students in the 7th and 8th grade the opportunity to learn how to gain valuable 21st Century Professional Skills such as how to make eye contact, think on your feet, communicate, etc.  We are excited to learn from WW and potentially bring back this exciting opportunity for our students.  Students who win the West Washington event will participate in Atlanta at the Ron Clark Academy for the national competition.

Evaluations - Just a reminder that our admin team will be working hard to get into your classrooms for long and short visits for the spring semester.  Typically the second round of evaluations are unannounced.  If you have questions or concerns, please let us know.  I have been seeing a lot of GREAT formative assessment activities and learning objectives on my walk through activity.  I am grateful each and every day to have such an outstanding teaching team!  Keep up the great work!

ISTEP - We will be starting our ISTEP re-testing this week.  You can find a copy of the schedule and students involved at this LINK.  We will take English this week and math next week.  ISTEP for all 10th grade students will begin the last week of February.  Thank you for your flexibility and support!

Valentine's Day -  Stop by the high school office on Friday for our Valentine's Cake-Pops!  We Love our faculty and staff!! 

Vocabulary

Last week, I attended another training session for IPLI (Indiana Principal Leadership Institute).  The speaker, Dr. Philip B. Warrick a co-author for Marzano's Leading A High Reliability School, spoke about the importance of developing a guaranteed and viable curriculum.

One of the areas he spent some time on was the importance of vocabulary.  He started the session by asking us three important questions:  Why should we teach vocabulary?   What vocabulary should we teach?   How do we teach it?  The questions seem easy to answer, but I was reminded of the shear importance of ensuring it is a viable part of our curriculum as he answered:

1.  Why Should we teach vocabulary?  Vocabulary is the gatekeeper for learning and memory.  Without a strong vocabulary, our brains do not know where to sort and save information (Fluid Intelligence).  (Remember students from poverty have only heard 13,000 words vs. 48,000 for middle class children before they have started school.  Also, it is interesting to know that the SAT/ACT is about 85% vocabulary - and probably ILearn and ISTEP - where does that leave or poverty students?)  

2.  What vocabulary should we teach?  Guaranteed Terms:  20-30 a year that are necessary to learn your content area/    Verbs that represent the mental processes students must use to perform the standard (Infer, compare, describe, contrast)     * These should be vertically aligned!

3.  How do we teach vocabulary?   We must touch all areas of the brain in order for children to remember new words:  Receptive Vocabulary - from reading-literacy/ Productive Vocabulary - from speaking and writing.  When we use both of these strategies, it can bring a lot of the brain to the party! (Marzano's 6 Step Process is a great resource.)   It is important to spiral words throughout the year (remember, you are only really doing this for 20-30 a year) by periodically revisiting the words and allow students to discuss them.  There are many games and strategies students can use! 

As you reflect on these questions/answers, be thinking about how you can become more intentional about teaching academic vocabulary in your classroom! We will be talking more about this in the next few weeks!

"Don't be clouded by your circumstance, but driven by your vision."   - Horst Schulze

Important Information: 

Tip of the Week:  When offering constructive criticism to students, research says we should remember the 1:5 ratio; for every 1 negative we need to provide 5 positives.  When students have to be redirected/serve consequences - just do not forget to catch them being good! 

Meet one of our Mentors:  This week in a conversation with another teacher, I realized that I should do a better job communicating some of the extra people that you may see around the school!  Many of you may see Mick Hetman wondering around the school occasionally with Ray Niehaus.  Mick is an very talented industrial designer who owns his own business, Hetman Design (If you google this, you can see his amazing web page.  Mick has been working with some of our engineering students as they are utilizing CAD and our 3D printers to create prototypes of toys that Mick has designed and he has found himself as a mentor for some of our art students.  We appreciate Mick and what he has invested in our school and look forward to continuing to work with him! 

Surprise and Delight Challenge -  Many of you are familiar with Buddy Berry and the "Surprise and Delight" opportunities he encourages.  February 3-7 will be Surprise and Delight (SAD) week!  He encourages all of us to provide an opportunity in our classroom for our students and make sure to share it on social media!  You can find great ideas for how to incorporate SAD activities into student learning by searching #surpriseanddelight or following @BuddyBerry.   Looking forward to some great activities for our students!!!  

(Hint - you may find your own Surprise and Delight in the high school office this week!)  

Faculty Meeting Change of Date - Due to being out of town on the 18th, we are going to move our faculty meeting to Wednesday, February 19th!

Math Team - The math team has been working with math consultant, Laurie Ferry, over the past two years.  She will be "in the house" on Tuesday again!  We appreciate the math team and their hard work!  Their outcomes have been very positive!!

ISTEP Practice Test - On Wednesday during 4th period, all 10th grade students will take a practice writing test.  Our goal with this practice test is to provide students the opportunity to take the test with a 60 minute time frame, like on the test that is coming up!  English teachers will be working hard to table grade the assessment and provide valuable feedback to our students.  Thanks to them for all of their work and collaboration!

Counseling Week - If you see our school counselors this week, please pat them on the back as it is National School Counseling Week!  We are so blessed to have such caring individuals who help our students navigate life, better their social/emotional skills, help students determine their college-career paths and so much more!  We love them!

Scheduling - Dana is starting the scheduling process this month.  Our first step is to go through transcripts and provide students with notes about what classes they need to take and should take.  We will be collecting their interest and from there we will utilize the numbers to help us determine the master schedule.  It is a long, tedious and fun process!!  Please be patient with us!