Seeing the varieties of traumatic experience in Philadelphia’s students

This article was originally published in The Notebook. In August 2020, The Notebook became Chalkbeat Philadelphia.

Linnea Hunter has changed the student behavior charts on the wall of her 3rd-grade class at Paul L. Dunbar Elementary School.

Marie Acevedo, a bilingual counselor at Lincoln High School, has installed a filter over the fluorescent lights in her office, giving it a softer, more welcoming atmosphere.

Denise Burrage, an autistic support teacher at Thomas K. Finletter School, said she has improved her communication with a hard-to-reach student, sensing his aversion to loud noise and the times when he wants to be complimented and those when he doesn’t.

All three are among the 102 School District of Philadelphia staffers from 69 schools to complete courses in the past year in trauma-informed care. This is a technical term for dealing with students by shifting the focus from “What’s wrong with you?” to “What happened to you?”

The courses are sponsored by United Way of Greater Philadelphia and Southern New Jersey. Suzanne O’Connor, education manager at United Way, traces the trauma-informed approach to several sources. Among them: increased awareness of post-traumatic stress disorder among veterans returning from foreign wars, recent research in brain chemistry, and research linking exposure to trauma to poor health outcomes and school performance.

Although only a minority of Philadelphia students may have been shot or shot at, trauma-informed care goes way beyond that kind of violence to consider the effects of a variety of types of severe emotional trauma.

One agency at the forefront of local work on the effects of trauma, the Children’s Crisis Treatment Center, explains in its literature that “the unrelenting stress caused by abuse, neglect, exposure to violence, extreme poverty, and other adverse childhood experiences can impact the way children learn, play, grow, and function throughout their lives.”

The United Way courses, taught by the Institute for Family Professionals (IFP), in Fort Washington, deal not only with the effects of violence on children, but also factors such as physical or emotional neglect or abuse, a household member experiencing mental illness or drug abuse, living in an unsafe neighborhood, or living in foster care.

When the tent is enlarged to include issues such as these, a large number of students in a high-poverty urban area such as Philadelphia fit under it. Such students will likely do better in a quieter, gentler classroom atmosphere.

According to the 2013 National Survey of Children’s Health, almost half of U.S. youth ages 12-17 have experienced at least two types of “childhood adversity” that could affect their physical and mental health as adults. The percentage is undoubtedly higher in impoverished big cities.

The 24 courses offered locally by IFP include “Enhancing Trauma Awareness,” “Understanding Anger,” “Essential Communication Skills” and “Mindful Interaction.” They run for at least six sessions of two-and-a-half hours each.

There is no cost to the School District or its personnel who participate, but the teachers or administrators must attend on their own time, usually evenings or weekends. This helps explain why, so far, only a small fraction of them have taken an IFP course.

“There’s a lot of stress, a lot of pressure,” in District classrooms, said lead instructor Susannah Spanton. “There’s a lot of emphasis on testing, not so much emphasis on emotional, relational health. There are a lot of trauma-impacted children and trauma-impacted communities.”

In past years, Spanton has taught the courses in suburban districts, including Brandywine and Upper Moreland, but she found a “stark contrast” when she started in Philadelphia last year.

“The Philadelphia teachers were so appreciative to have the information and to have the opportunity to connect with one another. They were parched, just drinking in the information.”

Spanton is quick to respond to those who assume that trauma-informed methods are permissive, tolerating violence by students against adults.

“It doesn’t excuse the behavior,” she said. “We have to have consequences in place.” But she adds that “We need teachers to be able to lower the possibility of violence."

“If a kid gets in your face and you know the techniques to calm them – not that it always works – there’s a much better chance of it not exploding,” said Spanton.

“Explosions happen when aggression is meeting aggression. That’s when you have kids in handcuffs going out the door.”

Having taken the training, former principal Newton Brown, now a support administrator whose job includes substituting in schools when the principal isn’t there, agreed.

While most of the training he received in the past revolved around student achievement, he said via video chat, “this gets into the kind of baggage they’re carrying around and how it affects their performance.”

“We can no longer just tell people, ‘You’ve got to stop doing what you’re doing.’ We have to show them there’s a better way to do it."

“I don’t know of anywhere that punitive actions have helped someone to grow,” said Brown.

Trauma-informed care is often subtler than just defusing confrontation.

At Dunbar, Hunter said she used to have a chart in her classroom where she evaluated children’s behavior with colored cards: green card for a good day, red card for a bad day, orange card for a timeout.

After taking an IFP course, she realized that this amounted to shaming the students and changed the chart to statements like, “I’m being my best self,” “I made some mistakes,” and “I’ll make better choices.”

She designated a “safe place” in her classroom, a corner with stuffed animals where the students “can just go and collect themselves.”

“I’m still learning; every day isn’t perfect,” she said. “You’re always on stage. They’re watching to see how you resolve conflict. If you flip your lid, they’re going to flip their lid.”

Lincoln counselor Acevedo said she was surprised that there was no mention of trauma in the masters’ program in education from which she graduated in 2011.

“I can’t believe it’s taken this long for people to understand the need for this,” she said. “I’m hoping to get to a place where I can educate my fellow educators.”

Acevedo and Burrage, the Finletter teacher, both said they were fascinated to learn about the biological side of anger, the changes in brain and body chemistry that occur when someone gets angry.

And Burrage has taken some of the lessons into her own life. “I could understand better why I might get angry when I’m driving,” she said. “I could understand my children and their temperaments better.”

“We’re all brought up in different environments,” Brown said. This has helped me deal with people on a whole other level.”

Get more information about other trauma-informed training through United Way.

Get more information about the Institute for Family Professionals.

This story is part of a continuing series by the Notebook on student behavioral health, with support from the Van Ameringen Foundation. Contact reporter Paul Jablow with your ideas and feedback. He would like to hear about your experiences with the system: where it has succeeded, where it needs improvement, and what you would like to read more about on this topic.