At least 60% of students that enter our classrooms daily have been impacted by adverse childhood experiences. Yet, the main goal at school is still to teach students content and life skills.

So how can educators show our students the care and support they need in order to help them learn?

Trauma-informed teaching is an approach that considers how trauma can impact learning and behavior. As educators think about what student behavior may be telling them, they can respond in more thoughtful ways.

Our blog will dive into 8 strategies and mindsets to help you reframe your interactions with students.

Table of contents

What is trauma?

What does trauma look like in students?

8 trauma-informed teaching strategies

1. Consider your own triggers
2. Practice empathy
3. Don’t take things personally
4. Look for roots, not weeds
5. Employ de-escalation strategies
6. Avoid power struggles: Give students a choice
7. Build relationships with students
8. Focus on positive attention

Additional resources

What is trauma?

Trauma can be defined as a physiological and emotional response to any deeply distressing or disturbing event or experience. 

Child trauma occurs more often than you think. More than two thirds of children report at least 1 traumatic event by age 16. In 2019, about 1 in 5 high school students reported being bullied on school property in the last year.

Students can experience trauma through ongoing exposure, throughout their early development. Potentially traumatic events include:

• Witnessing or experiencing abuse
• Neglect
• Homelessness
• Domestic violence
• Community disasters
• Refugee or war experiences
• Sudden or violent loss of a loved one

What does trauma look like in students?

Students who’ve gone through trauma may hide their pain or mask it in another response. Trauma responses in students can look like:

Knowing how trauma affects students prepares us to respond appropriately. Students dealing with trauma are especially prone to:

• Difficulty in self-regulation
• Negative thinking
• Being on high alert
• Difficulty trusting adults
• Inappropriate social interactions

Remember, all behavior is trying to communicate something. Kids (and adults) don’t leave their trauma at the door once they enter the classroom. That “invisible backpack” travels with us everywhere, even to school, and every student will express the weight of what’s inside that backpack differently.

Important note: A trauma-informed teaching approach assumes that you may never know what your students are carrying in their “invisible backpack,” but it’s your job to acknowledge it and approach their behavior and learning with this in mind.

8 trauma-informed teaching strategies

We won’t always know if or how our students are experiencing trauma, yet we still expect students to come into the classroom focused and ready to learn.

Here are a few strategies we believe educators can use to be more supportive of students dealing with trauma.

1. Consider your own triggers

Teachers are humans. We all have triggers or particular student behaviors that tend to activate our own natural responses. We can–and must–build awareness about our own triggers to ensure our response to students is empathetic, supportive, and kind.

To build awareness, practice self-reflection. Notice when you feel strongly offended or upset toward a certain kind of behavior. Consider why that is triggering for you. Reflect on your teaching experience growing up, your life experiences and relationships, or your cultural identity. Lastly, consider what you can do to mitigate these triggers.

2. Practice empathy

You don’t have to have experienced trauma yourself to be empathetic to someone who has. Acknowledge a student’s big feeling. Help them identify it by asking them how they feel or naming the feeling you see the student expressing. It’s okay if you’re wrong, they’ll probably correct you.

If you don’t feel equipped to talk with your students about it or if they request to speak to another staff member (counselor, dean, etc.), give them a hall pass and allow them to do so while taking note of the situation.

3. Don’t take things personally

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Our Scoot sub Lakiesha Smith says, “They can come in with a lot of trauma. A lot of their issues are not personal. So, sometimes, there’s a verbal exchange with inappropriate language and profanity involved, and you’re on the other end of it. You’re like, ‘Why me?’ and it’s not really about you. It could be about something that happened at home, the night before, or something that’s been going on for weeks now.”

Keep in mind that 99% of the time it’s not about you. Remember the “invisible backpack” of other stressors that could be weighing down students.

4. Look for roots, not weeds

If all behavior is communication, what is your student’s behavior communicating? Take time to privately ask the student and listen to what they have to say.

Student behaviors are like weeds. If we just look at the surface, we often miss the root cause. Always look for potential root causes.

Smith says it better than us:

“[Try] to understand where the issues derive from. […] They are going through something very personal that’s bothering them.”

5. Employ de-escalation strategies

It’s important to maintain these classroom management techniques to keep a calm, orderly classroom:

• Stay calm: Keep a calm, neutral voice to keep situations from escalating and help model for students how to de-escalate their emotions.
• Give students roles: Empower students by entrusting them tasks. They’ll feel positive about their contributions.

As a last resort, you can always call the front office for help in extreme cases after you’ve exhausted all other strategies.

6. Avoid power struggles: Give students a choice

It’s easy for an educator to demand obedience and order. But students are much more willing to trust educators who respect them. When misbehavior happens, give students a choice, give them space to reflect, and move on. Don’t try to win or look tough.

Instead of confronting a student in front of everyone, try private, nonverbal redirection. Give students extended time to comply with directions, rather than demanding immediate compliance.

7. Build relationships with students

Show genuine interest in students’ lives outside academics by asking about their interests and experiences. If you have extended opportunities to interact with them, try the “two by ten” rule. Talk to a student for two minutes a day for 10 days in a row about topics unrelated to academics or behavior.

Check out our other blog for more tips on how to build relationships with students.

8. Give positive attention

Students who experience chronic neglect and negative thinking may act out more because they realize negative attention is fast, predictable, and efficient.

Positive attention, on the other hand, should also be just as fast and frequently shown to kids. This includes praising good behavior, as well as surprising kids with “random acts of kindness.” Make sure to express warmth that isn’t necessarily earned.

Additional resources

While these strategies help foster a trauma-informed teaching approach, they aren’t exhaustive. Check out these websites to further your understanding in trauma-informed teaching and how trauma impacts children:

• SAMHSA – National Child Traumatic Stress Initiative
• Child Mind Institute – Trauma & Grief
• ASCD – Trauma-Informed Teaching Strategies

Wrap-up

All kids will benefit from a trauma-informed teaching approach. We don’t need to single out the kids who have explicitly been impacted by trauma and use these strategies only on them.

If you’re looking for more in-depth training on this topic and much more on your way to becoming a well-rounded guest educator, consider applying to Scoot Education!

We’re an educational staffing company dedicated to creating exceptional experiences in education. This means whether you’re a sub, paraprofessional, or a teacher aide, you get access to:

• Training resources to sharpen your skills in classroom management, lesson internalization, and more
• A personal Education Consultant who understands your day-to-day and works closely with you to fit your needs
• More job opportunities, more fun!

Apply now

Greg Kates can relate. He’s one of our substitute teachers in Colorado who has taught both full classrooms and one-on-one as a paraprofessional.

In an interview about his experience as a substitute teacher, he shared how he approached challenges with tricky students and behavior.

Ultimately, his consistent warmth and positive reinforcement proved to be his most effective superpower.

We hope this 3rd episode in our Scoot Street blog series inspires you when you’re dealing with your troublemakers.

Getting to know Greg

What is your name and what kind of classroom do you help teach?

Greg: My name is Gregory Kates and with Scoot, I have been a one-on-one para, a science teacher, a math teacher at one point. Mostly science, para, language arts and English.

So what led you to start subbing?

I decided to start subbing because teaching was always my dream, but it always felt super inaccessible without a grad degree.

At first I was definitely concerned, but Scoot just jumped in and made my dream super accessible.

I’ve done long-term positions for Scoot too, which means I was basically doing what I would be doing with the license, without having one.

I think this is important because I’ve been through so many different classrooms, from stressful classrooms to more light classrooms, to all sorts of different students. Now with all that experience, when I become a real teacher, I know exactly what I’m doing.

What is your favorite thing about being a substitute teacher?

I love the students. They always make me happy. I get lots of words of affirmation as long as I’m trying hard to get lots of, “Mr. K, you’re really cool.” Or if I go to preschool, I’m leaving there with at least 10 notes or drawings.

If you try hard and you’re willing to create a relationship with the students, they’re always gonna treat you really nicely because you’re something new and interesting to them. And you’re not the same old, same old.

It’s fantastic. I love hanging out with students.

The other day, I was at school and they had a dance. Everyone was dancing. Some of the students started dancing. So I started dancing. I did the worm, I did a handstand and walked and they all got super excited.

You know, just seeing the bright, happy faces of all the students. That’d be the biggest part.

4 Examples of handling challenging student behavior

Could you share with me some examples of challenging, but rewarding experiences in the classroom?

Example 1 – Redirect energy to more positive activities

Greg: I was a para for a kid who was an incredible young student. He had down syndrome and he was super lively.

It was just all day, me running around making sure that he was okay. It was so incredible because I was able to be there for a long time and help him with every single thing he needed.

Also, I was able to help him get out of his shell, have more fun–in a way that’s constructive–[because he used to] like biting people a lot.

We started biting less, running more, biting less, dancing more. It was so great to be in his life.

Example 2 – Fight fire with patience and respect

Another example was with a student who had autism. There were a few times he would engage in physical altercations with me. And at first, it was difficult to see beyond that and I thought that was a really bad thing.

But after I showed him that I was here to help him and not just to be a destructive, authoritarian adult in his life, he ended up really liking me and being super loving. Loved hanging out every second.

Example 3 – Set expectations and understand the reasons behind student behavior

I used to work with another student who at first went up to me and said, “You know, I fight substitute teachers, right?”

Then I said, “Well, I don’t think that worked out very well for you. I don’t think that’d be very constructive. We’re trying to learn here,” in a nice tone.

I continued to check in with him, let him talk it out. I did the dance moves–that always gets kids laughing.

Soon enough we had an emotional bond and instead of what he was doing before–saying he was going to fight teachers or he was on his phone, which is not allowed–he did his [schoolwork] packet and then hung out with the rest of us!

Right now I’m painting a picture of the job being kind of hard, which it is, but it’s rewarding!

Example 4 – Compromise slightly to encourage students to be on task instead of just saying “no”

Lastly, I was with a student who wasn’t doing her work. She kept drawing. Her drawings were really good. She was super nice, well-behaved and quiet when I asked people to be quiet, but she still wasn’t doing her work.

So I got a little tired of it, but I couldn’t just keep saying no because sometimes you keep saying no and they do it anyway. And what do you have to do? You have to call culture or the dean and that doesn’t feel good. I try to do that as little as possible. It has to happen sometimes, but I try to make sure to handle the classroom myself.

She was drawing eyes, but I noticed that her eyes didn’t have the spot to really give it that realism. It gives it that pop because it’s the light reflecting off of the eyes.

So I showed her how to draw that. She got really excited, finished her drawing, and put it away and did her work.

Greg’s takeaway

Greg: Seeing all these incredible students responding to feedback is amazing. When I let loose occasionally, do the worm, draw with them, they learn to participate and love you after that.

And that’s just what a student has given me.
Just a place to try a million things, make a bunch of mistakes, learn from them, grow and create a million great relationships with these students.

Closing advice

What advice would you give to someone subbing for the very first time?

Greg: Go for it because it’s an incredible experience. You will make a lot of mistakes, but you’ll learn a lot.

As long as you respect the students, help them, and learn to not just be this super rules-oriented, crazy person. Just meet them with compassion and empathy. Sky’s the limit. These kids will love you forever.

If you could describe your experience with Scoot in one word, what would it be?

Greg: Rewarding. I feel like that’s gotta be the word.

Subbing is a very hard job in a lot of aspects, but if you’re focused and you have the right mindset, it’s so incredible and it’s better than anything I’ve ever done by far.

The team at Scoot is so supportive. The nature of subbing is that many of us have lots of gifts and skills to bring, but we’re not real teachers, so we can’t do everything right.

But Scoot has given me a million opportunities. They’ve been super supportive at every turn. If I ever have a problem, they’ve just given me feedback. They don’t look for reasons to be mad at me.

This opportunity has made my dreams come true. I’m on the fast track to becoming a teacher and I never thought that’d be possible for a while. Without Scoot, I would’ve continued being a construction worker, just hanging out.

Conclusion

Never underestimate the difference of kindness you can make for your students.

Remember to stay the course and stick by these methods:

• Set expectations: Don’t be afraid to tell your students what constructive behavior is. But always remember to keep a gentle and firm tone. And take note when you’re repeating yourself too much.
• Build relationships with your kids: Show them you love and care. They’ll grow to trust you and feel encouraged to be on better behavior. Being interested in their interests is a good place to start!
• Compromise: Work with them to encourage good behavior and cooperation. If that means adjusting expectations, communicate that to them. For example, if you have a talkative group, allow them to work together or in pairs quietly.

Want to sub with us?

We hope this interview has encouraged you if you’re an educator yourself! If you’re thinking about teaching, consider applying to Scoot Education.

We’re a substitute teacher staffing company dedicated to creating exceptional experiences in education.

As a Scoot sub, you’ll get ultimate flexibility in your work schedule, 1-on-1 support through a personal Education Consultant, and market leading pay.

Apply today!