Educators learn strategies to help children cope with trauma

Childhood emotional injury and neglect has become so pervasive that an entire strategy for incorporating a response to it has been developed for educators: trauma-informed schools.

Children suffer from abuse, abandonment, neglect, the threat and reality of violence, bullying, health problems and financial and physical insecurity. They also suffer from one-time events such as the death of a loved one, seeing a family member go to jail or get beat up, and witnessing violence and the extremes of anger.

Under such stress, children are in no condition to learn, study or succeed, and their misfortunes and behaviors can have ramifying effects on their classmates and friends at school.

On Tuesday night, about 30 people, most of them education students at Marietta College, gathered in the Alma McDonough Auditorium to hear a panel discussion on the approach of trauma-informed schools. The session was organized by the Southeast Ohio Teacher Development Collaborative and moderated by veteran educator Rob Radway.

The panel was made up of Megan Wagner, an intervention specialist with Rolling Hills Local School District near Cambridge; Doug Pfeifer, director of Life & Purpose Behavioral Health in Marietta; Heather Warner of the hunger remission nonprofit Go Packs; Mike Masloski, superintendent of Ridgewood Local School District in Coshocton; and Megan Miller, principal of Beverly-Center Elementary School.

“I work in a room where we get everything in behaviors, hitting, kicking, biting, cursing, but once they calm down we can talk to them,” Wagner said.

The concept of calming such children, giving them a sense of safety and acceptance, ran as a theme through the discussion.

View Full Article