On May 9th, Governor Inslee signed a law that surely will affect our most vulnerable of students deeply. This new law reads: “Beginning in the 2020-21 school year, and every other school year thereafter, school districts must use one of the professional learning days funded under RCW 28A.150.415 to train school district staff in one or more of the following topics: Social-emotional learning, trauma-informed practices, using the model plan developed under RCW 28A.320.1271 related to recognition and response to emotional or behavioral distress, consideration of adverse childhood experiences, mental health literacy, anti-bullying strategies, or culturally sustaining practices.

I cannot believe it. This is such an incredibly positive step in the right direction! I am especially excited to see trauma-informed practices included in this new law.

Last month I wrote about the importance of teaching students self-regulation skills, especially in regards to how they would like their lives to play out. The challenging part is having the insight as a teacher into the impact of trauma on students to help these students regulate. Often their regulatory behaviors are counter-intuitive it would seem and only when you know the motivations driving them do they begin to make sense. Insights are not always enough though. You have to be able to act on this knowledge. An equally difficult aspect of helping students of trauma is to have the skills required to respond to emotionally laden situations in a healthy manner. Up until now, access to this knowledge and these skills have been limited. This is the case no long. Now, the question becomes, “Can this knowledge and these skills truly help, and if so, how?”

Let’s look at an example of a student who experienced neglect during early childhood. This is a period of time when infants and young students start to build a mental schema of cause and effect. For example, “If I cry, then my caregiver will hand me a bottle.” Unfortunately, neglect results in an internal schema that is more like this, “If I cry, nothing happens. If I don’t cry, nothing happens.” For such a child, there is no connection between cause (crying) and effect (bottle). Instead, the child is left with a schema in which there is no connection between cause and effect. In other words, no schema at all.

What does this look like in the classroom? Have you ever had the student that you have told 1,000 times not to do something and yet, they persist in doing it? Even when consequences are consistently given? This may be a child who is not making mental connections between their actions and their consequences EVEN if it seems abundantly clear to you and most other children in the classroom that their behaviors (causes) result in consequences (effects). Imagine how difficult it is for this child to self regulate when they do not see the connection between the cause of their behavior and the effects of their behavior! It is maddening! Wouldn’t it be great to have the skills that addresses this type of behavior?

How about a student who has a very difficult time summarizing the story line of even a simple story or finds it challenging to predict what a likely outcome of an event in a story will be? How about a child who has a difficult time using logical reasoning? All of these can be a result of students struggling with cause and effect because they have quite literally not have had the early childhood brain development required to form a schema for cause and effect.

The good news? There is plasticity in the brain. This means the brain can grow new neurons over the course of a lifetime. This also means a child who did not develop neuronal pathways to grasp the concept of cause and effect in infancy and early childhood can do so at a later date with proper interventions. Teachers need the skills, such as how to verbally walk students through the process of thinking through cause and effect situations, to help build these pathways.

What I have talked about is just one small taste of what we can learn as educators about helping our students of trauma. There are so many other ways in which the brains of students of trauma and equity are impacted. I am thrilled about the opportunity for educators to gain the background knowledge and skills needed to help students of trauma. I love that this is now a requirement for our state. This will be a game changer for the children of our state, and for us as teachers!