An addendum to my blog post yesterday about trauma sensitive classrooms. This is based on a form that is presented in the workbook: “The Trauma Informed School”, by Heather Forbes and Jim Sporleder. Jim Sporleder was the principal in the school in Walla, Walla Washington that isfeatured in the documentary, Paper Tigers.
The form is for use with students of concern to school personnel and lists 37 different issues to look for and range from academic struggles, depression or extreme sadness, friendship issues, overreaction to witnessing an “incident. And at the top is a place for “urgency”: low, medium, high. So when thinking about using such a form…think of how very helpful it would be to have a school committee made up of a teacher/s, administrator, school social worker, and yes even a resource officer.
About Author
I have been a social worker for 31 years. My work has been with families and children first in the area of Child Protective Services and then as a therapist working with the same population. I have worked with divorcing and divorced parents teaching co-parenting techniques, supervised therapists and have been a social worker for emotionally challenged children and adolescents in an inner city school system. About 7 years ago I was introduced to the work of Bryan Post and, as a friend and colleague said at the time…I went Post-al. All of my previous assumptions and indeed my work using behavioral interventions, got pushed aside. And along came the realization that none of the interventions, meant to change behaviors, had anything in common with helping children heal from the trauma they had experienced. My best work these days is as a coach/consultant for parents, other caregivers, and teachers. The services I provide are parent education, coaching, consulting and supervising. I am the mother of five adult children and grandmother to five. I am both a bio mom and an adoptive mom.
