How to Help Kids Through the Trauma of School Closures
Published on March 25, 2020
Being told you can’t go to school because people could get sick can be a very scary thing for a child.
Heck, it can be scary for us as adults.
So, how do we help kids who are experiencing trauma from this event?
In my Trauma course, we define trauma as a deeply distressing or disturbing experience.
How deep, how distressing, and how disturbing can vary from person to person.
There is such a thing as medical trauma, too.
While I personally haven’t heard much about coronavirus related shutdowns as medical trauma, it sure seems that it is a distressing and disturbing event.
The question of how to help kids through this came up in the mastermind this week.
How do we support kids who are going through a traumatic experience right now, even the same one that we are going through.
We shared some ideas in the mastermind, and I’ve been thinking about this a lot. I’m concerned about my own kids and about their reactions to this as well as the kids that I work with every day.
Here are some strategies that I and others have come up with:
Go back to Maslow
Maslow’s hierarchy of needs reminds us that we need to feel safe and taken care of before we can do anything else.
When we feel safe, protected, and free to make choices, we have a better chance of overcoming traumatic situations.
As many school districts are doing, make sure that kids have the basics taken care of first.
Abandon Academics
I’m sure I’m going to get some push back here, so hear me out.
I’m not saying forget completely about learning.
I am saying that we can take it back a few notches about “meaningful learning” while kids are out of school.
A number of teachers have been so focused on “rising to the challenge” of providing distance learning that they have forgotten that they weren’t doing this two weeks ago.
Academics are certainly important, but the world isn’t going to end for these kids if they don’t take that test on the civil war you had planned.
Focus on Family
For some kids, being home in a domestic violence situation is about the worst thing that could happen. My heart goes out to these kids and their families. This is an awful situation.
In your efforts to make activities for your kids, don’t forget to include the families and respect their time.
Do your best to find ways to make this memorable experience a family bonding time as much as possible.
Rather than giving parents and kids assignments to do, ask them how they can continue learning.
Focus on learning, not instruction
As teachers, we have a teacher-focused mindset. We always talk about all the things we can do to teach kids while they are out of school.
That’s not really what our kids need.
They need us to allow them to learn. In the mastermind a principal gave this great example. Instead of teaching them about the ocean, invite them to learn about the ocean.
As I have said hundreds of times before, and I will keep saying, when students drive their own learning, they can and will go way deeper than we ever could in a classroom.
Imagine a student finding a book or web site about the ocean and spending hours and hours learning about the ocean, instead of meeting the standard “Some rocks found on land were formed from compacted ocean sediments” (yes, that’s a real standard for grades 3-5 in the ocean literacy standards.)
They may stumble upon that very specific piece of information, but imagine if they were given the freedom to learn anything they wanted about the ocean, and let that passion drive them?
What if they don’t learn about the ocean? I think they’ll survive for a little bit.
Change Your Paradigm
A teacher asked the other day how she was going to give tests while kids are out of school. Thankfully, I have a great friend who gave counsel on that subject.
She said, “You’re not going to!”
These are unprecedented times. It’s going to take a lot to change for some people, but we have to recognize that everything is different.
Many schools will not be back in session for the rest of the academic year.
We have to rethink how we are doing things.
Trying to provide “structure” by continuing to do all the things we have done is not going to help kids.
If anything, it is going to cause more angst and more frustration.
Which brings me to a post for another day: What are we going to bring back as soon as schools open again, and what are we going to forget we ever did?