Opening Keynote: Building a Classroom Culture with Trauma-Awareness and Trauma-Informed Interventions

Children and teens who have experienced trauma have more success in classroom environments with certain qualities and with teachers who understand how trauma impacts learning and behavior. The first step in building a trauma-informed classroom is understanding how the brain and body process trauma, and how these experiences impact brain development. When a student is triggered, there is a predictable physiological response, then coping strategies that are used to return the body to a relaxed state. During this keynote, we will look at how a collaborative, restorative, strengths-based classroom is beneficial. This knowledge is important, but it is also critical to have a toolbox of strategies and interventions that help build students’ cognitive skills. We will touch on the “window of tolerance, “or the optimal zone of physiological arousal, and ways to help students get in the zone and stay there for longer periods of time so they are ready and available to learn.

Breakout session by keynote presenter: Trauma, Disassociation, and Short-Term Memory Impairment

When a student has post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), a common way of coping with the extreme stress is to dissociate. Dissociation involves disruptions in consciousness, memory, identity, and perception of the self and the environment. This is especially important for educators to understand because it affects a student’s ability to learn and remember new information. During this session, participants will learn how to recognize when a student may be dissociating, how to best respond, and strategies for building short-term memory skills.