1. Building Resilience In Those We Care For

2. The ACE Study produced four surprising results.
 Childhood trauma is extraordinarily common.  

3. So, why do ACEs cause so much damage
So, why do ACEs cause so much damage? This is the second part of the “theory of everything” – what happens to your brain when you have ACEs.
Long-term toxic stress – the kind that comes from living with a physically and verbally abusive alcoholic parent, for example – damages a kid’s brain. Toxic stress floods the brain with stress hormones. When a kid’s in fight, flight or freeze mode, their thinking brain is offline and doesn’t develop as it should.
Kids experiencing trauma act out. They can’t focus. They can’t sit still. Or they withdraw. Fight, flight or freeze – that’s a normal and expected response to trauma. So they can have difficulty focusing and learning. Their schools often respond by suspending or expelling them, which further traumatizes them.
When they get older, they cope by drinking, overeating, doing drugs, smoking, as well as over-achieving or engaging in thrill sports. To them, these are solutions. They’re not problems. Nicotine reduces anxiety. Food soothes. Some drugs, such as meth, are anti-depressants. So telling someone how bad smoking is for them isn’t likely to make much of an impression if it relieves anxiety.

4. Staying in red alert status puts a lot of wear and tear on the body
Staying in red alert status puts a lot of wear and tear on the body. So even if people haven’t smoked or become obese, their risk of heart disease and diabetes increases, as do autoimmune diseases. This is the third part of the “theory of everything” – what happens to our bodies when we live with toxic stress for years.

5. What can WE do? Encourage social connectedness – developing community.
Provide concrete support in times of need.
Demonstrate social and emotional competence.
Support the use of restorative practices to build safety in environments and manage conflict.
Implement systems to support the whole.
data

6. We’re entering an age that might be the modern equivalent of the Renaissance, I call it Un-wraveling…
Its a new understanding about ourselves.
Today we will do a quick overview of the ACES History, then what are we doing to build resilience, predominently in school settings.

7. Toxic stress can turn genes on and off
Toxic stress can turn genes on and off. And these changes can be transferred from parent to child. The area of research that looks into how our interaction with the people around us can change our genes is called epigenetics.

8. When principal Jim Sporleder learned about the ACE Study and the effects of toxic stress on kids’ brains, he said he’d been doing everything wrong when it came to disciplining kids. In one year, he changed the school so that when a kid threw a chair or yelled at a teacher, the staff didn’t suspend or expel the kid, which just further traumatizes the kid. They understood that the kid was behaving like that because he or she was experiencing trauma. So, they asked: “What happened to you? How can we help you?”
After one year, suspensions dropped 85%, expulsions dropped 40%. After three years, suspensions dropped 90%, and they stopped expelling kids.
The kids’ grades, test scores and graduation rates went up. The kids, whose average ACE score is 5.5, say the school is their family.
What happened at Lincoln inspired filmmaker James Redford to make a documentary called Paper Tigers, which follows six students for a year at Lincoln High School, and shows how the school’s trauma-informed, resilience-building practices changed their lives.
SHOW PAPER TIGERS TRAILER HERE

9. Building Resiliency
Self Care Language Coping How to De-escalate Yoga/Meditation New ‘I’ Statements PBIS, Restorative Practice Behavior Training, Data
NOT only for students, but for the staff…we must begin with us.
Use example of how we support those additional adults we work with, we cannot walk into their enviroment and state what it is they need to do to change. We need to teach them the tools first, then support them, as with learning anything new, it takes practice!
Largest lesson is to teach the behavioral manifestations of trauma through the lens of physiological, psychological and neurological blocks and how WE can either add to the trauma OR change what we are doing and lessen the behaviors and increase learning opportunities.
Resilience trailer here or talk about the movie at Sundance!, next slide is Q and A, cutting edge information, FIRST FOLLOWER video here?

10. Restorative Practices
The fundamental hypothesis of Restorative Practices is: Human beings are happier, more cooperative, and productive, and more likely to make positive changes in their behavior when those in positions of authority do things with them, rather to them or for them.

11. RP with student voice, language to use when speaking
Social discipline window from RP
and Social Discipline Window (Our responses drive the attachment or detachment to learning) Our responses are empathetic or sympathetic and they can tell the difference. We are saying to them “I care” or “I don’t care”.
RP with student voice, language to use when speaking
State people, resources, school sites needs Focus on interactions can fail based on our communication

12. RTI and Behavior Supports
Source: Jeff Sprague
PBIS, 2009
Intensive academic support
Intensive social skills teaching
Individual behavior management plans
Parent training and collaboration
Multi-agency collaboration (wrap-around) services
Alternatives to suspension and expulsion
Community and service learning
Targeted/
Intensive
(High-risk students)
Individual Interventions
(3-5%)
Increased academic support and practice
Increased social skills teaching
Self-management training and support
School based adult mentors
Check in, Check out
Parent training and collaboration
Alternatives to out-of-school suspension
Community and service learning
Selected
(At-risk Students)
Classroom & Small
Group Strategies
(10-20% of students)
PBIS overview
We don’t need a store with tangibles and rewards…. Yet.
We do need ot understand the layers of students and society and ourselves as people.
Effective Academic Supports
School wide social skills teaching
Teaching school behavior expectations
Effective classroom management
Active supervision and monitoring in common areas
Positive reinforcement systems
Firm, fair, and corrective response to problem behavior
Community and service learning
Universal
(All Students)
School-wide, Culturally Responsive
Systems of Support
(75-85% of students)
Jeffrey Sprague, Ph.D.
Jeffrey Sprague, Ph.D.

13. Outcomes in Schools Suspension/referral reduction
Increase in literacy, attendance
Safety and Community in students, parents and with staff

14. Think about …
An argument or disagreement you had with another, one that brought out emotions, actions, behaviors where you look back on NOW and think wow…. I shouldnt have done that.
Think abot when you were a young child, think of a favorite teacher... Tell me one word about that teacher…
Impact vs. Intent

15. Feelings, create Thoughts, which creates our Behavior Behavior
Impacted Systems of meaning: Assumption of Danger
Physiological and Behavioral Response: Safety Seeking/Need Fulfillment
Interference from Developmental Challenges: Reliance on Alternative Adaptations
Feelings,
create
Thoughts,
which creates our
Behavior
Developmental Deficits: difficulty understanding what they feel and how to cope with it
Difficulty expressing what they feel
Difficulty understanding the link between behavior, feelings, and experience
Difficulty maintaining comfortable arousal
Negative self-concept
Feel like they can’t impact their world
Believe they are not capable or competent
Blame themselves for not succeeding
Difficulty reading social cues
Overly rigid or too diffuse boundaries
Lack of trust or over-dependent on others
Difficulty sustaining attention and concentration
Difficulty planning, problem-solving, organizing information, and delaying response to stimuli.
All are experiences each of us has had at one time, just not all at once.
Behavior 101….
Functions of Behavior (what our societies children are experiencing now which is out of control, gaining control, only comfortable with negative attention, will push until they receive what is comfortable to them such as with pushing a teacher to the point of detachment) with ABC data with filled out example, behavior from school connected to student sleeping in his car the night before….
ABC data to look at what WE are doing that may be the Antecedent or Consequence

16. Our Goals
Taking a look at our experiences, the lack of societal acceptance and what is difficult to discuss, or easier to ignore and look the other way?
How does our behavior teach those around us, do we value awareness or does our behavior teach denial of acknowledging what is happening in the moment?
Are we teaching (by doing) empathy, sympathy or apathy?
How are we responding to our students?
How are we responding to eachother?
Are we responding?
Being aware of our responses, becoming Trauma Informed, embedding RP with knowledge of PBIS/Behavior helps creates relationships, trust and safety in environments, it lessens the reactions and responses that not only do we have but our students and families have as well. We an calm… or not.
RSA short on Sym[athy vs Empathy??
LESSON ON TI

17. 10/11th grade, Tier 3 students
When asked to share “What have you learned the last few weeks?” “I learned being Trauma Informed makes us feel like we aren’t doing something wrong and makes me feel comfortable enough to speak.”

18. 11th grade student, male
“I learned when things happen at home come out at school, when there’s times I cant deal with it, when the Teacher asks me ‘What’s happening? Or What happened?’, it means to me the Teacher cares about what is happening to me. When the Teacher tells me to go to the office, Vice Principal, Counselor, call home, Buddy Room, that means the Teacher doesn’t really care about what’s happening to me.”
Restorative language

19. 10th grade student, female
“I learned that our health, students health that’s not taken care of makes us be out of class, then come back in, then we are behind and then our health is still not taken care of and our academics are not taken care of either.”

20. 10th grade student, male
“I learned I have had anxiety for a long time. Now I understand it is trauma. It meant to me a lot of absences, less money for schools. The school system can be more peaceful being Trauma Informed instead of sending me to the counselor, where they don’t know what to do with anxiety or trauma, that’s not their job, but it is where we are sent.”

21. 11th grade student, male
“I learned that the teachers I have who have always asked me “What happened?” when I am having a hard time really helps, I trust them and I know they care about me.”
Restorative language

22. 10th grade student, male
“I learned that Teachers, adults, they can calm us, or not. They have a choice.”

23. Paper Tigers Coping staff first then students
Neurological and physiological systems, why do you do what you do when you are stressed?
How can we do it better?
Documentary I can get and show here if there is an interest
Resilience in SunDance Film Festirval so not as easy to “get”

24. Instill safety,
learning will follow.
Thank you,
Susan