Abstract
In this chapter, we describe the critical role that safe and supportive school cultures play in the educational success of students impacted by trauma and students with neurodevelopmental disabilities. Centering on the stories of several real students and their families, the chapter explains how individual supports and services schools provide to these students, typically through the special education system—while an essential ingredient for supporting their progress—often fail to achieve desired results when not delivered in the context of a supportive school environment. Based on the experiences of these students, as well as important insights from research, we will argue for an educational approach that shifts perspective—that moves from the outside in—by first paying close attention to the educational context that surrounds students and then analyzing carefully the individualized services each particular student needs to succeed within that broader context. We will describe a process that the Trauma and Learning Policy Initiative (TLPI) has developed for helping educators create safe and supportive, trauma-sensitive school cultures and will argue that this process can also support the creation of inclusive school cultures that research suggests are critical for students with neurodevelopmental disabilities. The chapter concludes with implications for policy.
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Notes
- 1.
The authors would like to express a special thank you to Susan Cole, Anne Eisner, Joel Ristuccia, Marissa Del Rosario, and Katie Ryan, the members of the TLPI team. All of the ideas expressed in this chapter related to the education of students who have experienced traumatic events and the creation of whole-school trauma-sensitive school cultures are derived from the ongoing, collective work of the TLPI team. More information about TLPI’s work is available on the project’s website, http://traumasensitiveshools.org. We would also like to thank all of the law students in Harvard Law School’s Education Law Clinic over the years for their work representing highly vulnerable families, including those whose stories are recounted in this chapter. Additionally, we would like to thank our colleagues at Massachusetts Advocates for Children’s (MAC) groundbreaking autism center (including a special thank you to Johanne Pino, Leslie Hughes, and Catherine Mayes for their very helpful feedback on this chapter), from whom we have learned a great deal about the educational needs of students on the autism spectrum and how to support their families. Finally, and most importantly, we would like to thank the many caregivers and students whose courageous journeys we have been privileged to share. Of course, all errors or omissions are attributable solely to the two present authors.
- 2.
In order to qualify for special education and related services, a student must be found eligible as a “child with a disability,” which the IDEA defines as “a child (i) with intellectual disabilities, hearing impairments (including deafness), speech or language impairments, visual impairments (including blindness), serious emotional disturbance … orthopedic impairments, autism, traumatic brain injury, other health impairments, or specific learning disabilities; and (ii) who, by reason thereof, needs special education and related services” U.S.C. § 1401 (3)(A).
- 3.
To protect students’ privacy, all names used in this chapter are pseudonyms.
- 4.
“Competency”—at school, a synonym for learning—has been recognized as one of three essential pillars of trauma treatment in an intervention model pioneered by these authors.
- 5.
See Chap. 1 of Helping Traumatized Children Learn, Volume 1 for a thorough summary of the ways in which traumatic experience can impact students’ learning.
- 6.
As this attribute makes clear, and as we wish to emphasize, appropriate, high-quality services are an integral part of a whole-school trauma-sensitive environment. In making the case for the importance of the surrounding context, we do not mean to suggest that such services are not important.
- 7.
The recommendations that follow are adapted from policy recommendations articulated elsewhere by TLPI. See Cole et al. [5], pp. 88–93.
- 8.
Many of these approaches are reflected in the Safe and Supportive Schools Framework Statute advocated for by TLPI and passed into law by Massachusetts in 2014. See MGL c. 69, § 1P, available online at https://malegislature.gov/Laws/GeneralLaws/PartI/TitleXII/Chapter69/Section1P.
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Gregory, M., Nichols, E. (2018). From the Outside In: Using a Whole-School Paradigm to Improve the Educational Success of Students with Trauma Histories and/or Neurodevelopmental Disabilities. In: Fogler, J., Phelps, R. (eds) Trauma, Autism, and Neurodevelopmental Disorders. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-00503-0_12
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