My newest book with Columbia Teachers College Press and a sidequel to my book, Breakaway Learners, is now available for pre-order on Amazon and Columbia Teachers College Press.  Publication date is June 2020, in time for faculty and staff development and classroom use for Academic Year 2020 – 2021.

The title to this blog is the book’s title, and the book probes and offers suggestion for how to facilitate student success for those students PreK—College who have experienced trauma.  Real in the trenches suggestions at macro and micro levels, all grounded in their and empiricism.

The ebook is discounted at the TCPress site.  And TCPress will provide steep discounts for sales to groups or sales for events in which I participate, whether by SKYPE or ZOOM or FaceTime.  Reach out to me or Michael McGann at the Press.  I did a webinar from the Yes We Must Coalition on the book and it is available for a free download from their website.

We read and hear about the coronavirus almost every minute of every day.

As an educator, I read about how educational institutions are preparing for the virus in the US; some student abroad programs are being cancelled. Student enrollment going forward will change as some students will struggle to gain access to the US. The role and use of online learning will take on new meaning and new dimensions, even among those who were reticent. One nation closed schools for a month.

As a person with expertise in trauma and its impact on students across the US educational pipeline (see: Trauma Doesn’t Stop at the School Door (TCPress June 2020 with pre-order), this virus and the threat of its spread has me worried. As I reflect on students, teachers and families, I know that prior trauma can be retriggered by new trauma. And the new trauma doesn’t have to be in our backyard. (Were I an economist, I’d be fretting about trade and the markets.) And teachers/professors will feel the impact of the virus even if the virus has not directly touched their community. It will touch their classrooms, dining halls, residential halls, athletic events, student centers and health facilities.

We live in a world surrounded by trauma. There’s no doubt about it. 

The trauma comes from a myriad of sources including childhood adverse experiences, natural disasters and shootings in locations commonly considered safe.   The fact is that trauma produces symptoms.

While symptomology differs from person to person (even within the same family), it affects the capacity of individuals of all ages to learn and retain information.

Here’s why.

When a person experiences trauma, it affects their bodies and their brains. The immediate response to trauma is autonomic and when our nervous system is activated, we cease using the cognitive portions of our brain. We use our primitive brain to survive.  And, as we all know, we need our cognition to be operational because that is where most learning is enabled. 

I have been focused of late on trauma and its profound effects on students across our educational system. Most recently, I have addressed how to think about trauma “anniversaries” and the complexities that are entailed in remembering and honoring and commemorating natural disasters and other unspeakable events like school shootings, suicides and deaths by overdose.

In particular, I have been thinking about the need to plan commemorative events because there are so many people affected and so many possible approaches that we need to reflect long and hard on how to do what is best for survivors. Whole communities are involved.

It is in this context that I read a piece published by the Viva Center, founded in 2010 and dedicated to addressing mental health. Here is the link to the article that made, in several words, my blood boil: