What is Trauma-Informed School

The purpose of this chapter is to provide the reader with an understanding of how trauma can set up challenges and obstacles to student academic success and realistic responses by educators and schools to assist students. The chapter begins with an overview of the adverse childhood experiences (ACE) study by Felitti et al. and explores the correlations between experienced childhood trauma and negative medical and social problems. The chapter will discuss the neurologic changes that can occur from childhood trauma and/or toxic stress and the common behavioral manifestations that create educational problems for students. The chapter will discuss the need for school social workers, as they can provide significant benefits to struggling students, educators, and school administrators. Additionally, the use of posttraumatic growth techniques to increase efficiency in classroom behavior, curriculum mastery, and lifelong coping will be discussed with final ideas proposing future research needs.