Local school districts strive to help students who have experienced trauma

Educators in Cape Girardeau County’s two largest school districts are working to become more sensitive and responsive to students who experience various forms of childhood trauma.

The combined enrollment of the Cape Girardeau and Jackson public school districts is approximately 9,600, and counselors in both districts say there’s a strong likelihood most of them either have or will experience at least one traumatic experience before they reach their 17th birthday.

“I don’t know if it’s becoming more prevalent or if we’re more aware of it,” said Jackson Middle School counselor Lauren Buchtmann, who added childhood trauma can include anything from parental divorce or death of a family pet to physical, sexual or emotional abuse.

“There’s a pretty long list of things that fall within the definition of trauma,” she said and explained they are also referred to as “adverse childhood experiences,” or ACEs.

In response, school districts across the state such as the ones in Cape Girardeau and Jackson are participating in the state’s recently enacted Trauma Informed Schools Initiative.

The Missouri Legislature created the initiative three years ago, authorizing the Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education to provide online resources to schools to help them work with students who have experienced various forms of trauma.

“It’s really a paradigm shift,” Buchtmann said and explained the initiative training is an ongoing process. “It’s a change in mindset that will continue to deepen and change over time. We can’t just flip a switch and say we’re a trauma informed school.”

Through the Trauma Informed Schools Initiative, teachers, counselors and administrators are learning how to better understand the causes of childhood trauma and how they can be supportive and help students work through various issues. Buchtmann said these issues, when left unaddressed, can have a negative impact on the emotional and physical well being of students as well as their ability to learn.

“We have a goal of keeping our students safe, to create a safe and supportive environment for them, and to help them continue to learn,” Buchtmann said. “The trauma informed approach helps us understand we have many students who have experienced some type of trauma and understand what’s impacting their behavior.”

Although Missouri does not mandate school participation in the initiative, districts such as the ones in Cape Girardeau and Jackson realize trauma-sensitive training can help students cope with whatever is going on in their lives and can help lead to a positive learning experience in the classroom and a successful transition into adulthood.

Kati Knaup, counselor at Blanchard Elementary School in Cape Girardeau, said staff awareness of the Trauma Informed Schools Initiative has been building for several years. The district began formal trauma sensitivity training last week.

“Last year a group of us from the elementary and secondary schools went through training in St. Louis and our job this year was to come back and start training the staff at each of the buildings,” she said.

Workshops incorporating a training program developed by the Missouri Academy for Child Trauma Studies (MoACTS) began last week with junior high, middle school and Central Academy staffs. Training sessions at Cape Girardeau Central High School and Franklin Elementary are scheduled for next spring, and all other schools in the Cape Girardeau district will complete Trauma Informed Schools Initiative training by the end of the 2020-2021 school year.

“This is a comprehensive program that our entire district can get behind,” Knaup said. “The expectation is that everybody in the district will receive the comprehensive training program, then they’ll have their own teams within their buildings that will decide how to adapt the program in their own areas and how to train new staff that comes on board.”

The program’s success, Knaup said, can be tracked on the basis of attendance, behavior, office referrals “and other things of that nature that should be easy to measure.”

The Trauma Informed Schools Initiative and overall trauma support training have been eye-opening, Knaup said.

“Even as a trained mental health professional, the more that I get into it, the more complex I realize it is,” she said. “It just takes a lot of continuous education, continuously thinking outside the box and continually changing your thought patterns. We all see things through certain lenses and it may seem simple on the surface, but it (childhood trauma) is definitely complex.”

One thing Knaup has done as an initial step to respond to students experiencing childhood trauma is to create a “Peace and Love Zone” or “PALZ” in a classroom at Blanchard Elementary.

“Teachers know if there’s a student who needs to come and hang out with me for a little while, then we’ll do that,” Knaup said and explained she interacts with all of the school’s 360 students at least once a week.

“Every student every week comes into the PAL Zone,” she said.

According to recent national studies, nearly a third of all adults say they had a traumatic experience as a child. Four out of every 10 school-aged children say they have experienced a physical assault and more than 60% of youth younger than 17 have been directly or indirectly exposed to crime, violence or abuse in one form or another.

The statistics are even more troubling in Missouri, where a higher percentage of children age 17 and younger have experienced two or more adverse childhood experiences than almost any other state in the nation.

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