Don’t Be Fooled, Trauma Is a Systemic Problem: Trauma as a Case of Weaponized Educational Innovation

There is always an easy solution to every human problem—neat, plausible, and wrong.

–H. L. Mencken (1917)

What follows is a handful of snapshots of classroom incidents that educators have shared with us as examples of the impact of trauma in schools:

• A third grader flips over a table and throws his pencil at the teacher when a peer takes his toy.
• A kindergartener retreats to hiding under a table when told to put away her materials and line up for music class.
• A middle school student yells and swears when a staff member insists that he change his blood-stained shirt, soiled from an injury.

These incidents present great challenges instructionally. Educators ask us: How should teachers respond? Should they allow swearing in the classroom if a child is triggered? Certainly, the child is troubled, but if there is no punitive consequence, are we not condoning the misbehavior? How can we stop and attend to one child, when 25 others are ready to learn? And we hear again and again, if we stop and attend to one child, won’t we lose “control” of the others?