By: Lara El Khatib
February 2025
Childhood trauma remains one of the most troubling issues of the 21st century, affecting children worldwide through both domestic sources (abuse, neglect, family violence) and external events (natural disasters, wars, displacement). Because trauma impacts nearly all developmental areas—cognitive skills, social/emotional growth, and communication—it often severely impairs children’s ability to learn. Educators and stakeholders must find ways to mitigate these effects, making the trauma-sensitive classroom (TSC) an essential approach to help traumatized children cope with stress and engage in learning.
What is the trauma sensitive classroom (TSC)? In her thought-provoking Tedtalk, Dr. Meredith Fox describes how one particular teacher created a safe environment that helped her cope with childhood trauma and distress she was experiencing at home. This safety represents the TSC’s core principle: a space where educators realize trauma’s impact on the learning process, psychosocial development, and well-being, and use available resources to create an environment where children feel physically and psychologically secure, supported, and empowered to learn.
Key steps to establishing the TSC include (please note that this list is not exhaustive):
- Develop a positive relationship with students (so that they can feel safe to learn);
- Help students recognize emotions in themselves and others;
- Teach students how to communicate with others, with the use of their words, or in non-verbal, socially acceptable ways;
- Use a variety of instructional methods that allow students to learn and demonstrate their learning in a variety of ways, making learning relevant, authentic, and most importantly, fun!
- Establish classroom routines, ideally involving children in their development. Predictable routines enhance children’s sense of security.
- Create a welcoming classroom environment and implement changes only with children’s awareness and input.
Some specific ways in which a teacher helps a traumatized child in the TSC include but are not limited to:
- Instead of asking a child, “What is wrong with you?”, they ask, “What happened to you?”
- They are consistent in order to be predictable, but also flexible, in order to allow for whatever exceptions might arise.
- They love their students, empathize with them, and validate their feelings, but they also keep healthy boundaries and hold their students accountable.
- They discipline children rather than punish them when a mistake is made, and they reject the behavior, not the child.
- They pick their battles and always remember the “big picture”.
- When a child does not do something or comply with a request, they understand the difference between the child “who won’t do this” and the child “who can’t do this”.
- They are aware of children’s triggers and they make sure these triggers do not exist in the classroom (please see the intervention card about triggers).
- They “sandwich” negative feedback in between two pieces of positive feedback.
- They never touch children from behind or without their permission (please see the intervention card about appropriate and inappropriate touches).
- They never move quickly or suddenly in the classroom, as that could trigger negative or bad memories (perhaps of fleeing one’s home in a war zone).
- They help children identify what is and what is not under their control, as some traumatized children may feel that everything is beyond their control, and that could end up making them feel not only helpless, but also hopeless (please see this intervention card);
- If they are comfortable doing so, they may share a traumatic experience that they themselves have had with their students by using words that are appropriate for their students’ age.
Click here to explore specific “intervention cards” that can be used by teachers of elementary school children, in order to help them deal with the trauma that they may be facing:
- Emotional: Learning how to calm down quickly
- Emotional: Cleaning up our negative thoughts
- Emotional: I am a valuable person
- Cognitive: Understanding our triggers and shields
- Cognitive: Understanding what is and what is not under our control
- Social: Let’s practice perspective taking
- Social/emotional: My cool-down checklist
- Social/emotional & cognitive: Learning about appropriate and inappropriate touches
- Social/emotional & cognitive: The sensation map
Certainly, everything that has been mentioned in this article can and does apply to all children, regardless of whether or not they have been traumatized. However, the stakes are much higher when children have been traumatized. So what is “nice” to implement for a typical child becomes “imperative and absolutely necessary” to provide for a traumatized child. The trauma sensitive classroom is good for everyone, as all students need to feel safe, accepted, empowered, and loved. In fact, all schools should become trauma sensitive schools.
References and additional resources:
https://aspe.hhs.gov/reports/trauma-informed-approaches-building-resilience-children-families
https://www.pacesconnection.com