Trauma-Informed Opposition to Teach Like a Champion Reveals What Trauma Talk Really Is

teach like a champion versus trauma-informed.

That has been the debate over on Twitter recently with a surprising amount of controversy over this document that shows some things that you can say to your students when they don't write enough, when they stop writing, when they should continue working, they should continue pushing their thinking, moving their pencil, getting some words down on paper, what can you say to them?

A lot of people were really offended at this document in the name of being trauma-informed.

So this has given me a lot of chances over the past week to think about what it means to be trauma-informed.

And I've had a lot of discussions with people asking them, you know, what do you mean by trauma-informed?

And it's come down to basically three things that people seem to mean when they say trauma-informed.

Let me know what you think about this.

The first thing that people mean is they mean good teaching that has always been good teaching, right?

Like get to know your students, care about them, pay attention, be empathetic.

to me, none of that is new.

And it's even, you know, a lot of that is even in the standards, like get to know your students is in the teacher evaluation standards.

So of course, we're going to continue doing those things.

And I think what's happening is the trauma informed movement is taking credit for ideas that are not new, that are widely recognized as good, and then kind of mixing them together with some bad ideas.

So the second category of ideas that fall under the banner of trauma informed are the bad ideas that I think have as kind of a Trojan horse, right?

You've got this apparent gift to do all these nice things for your students, but hidden inside is lowered expectations.

What's being sneaked in to our practice is lowered expectations.

And in the case of this Teach Like a Champion handout, it was very blatant that people were saying, you know, like let the kids stop working, let them write less.

Like people were directly advocating for lower expectations for students who are perceived to have trauma.

And that's the really strange thing about all this.

We're not talking about accommodations, we're not talking about responding to a request from the student like, hey, cut me some slack today.

I really need it.

This is all just assumption.

This is all just basically stereotyping like, oh, you're a trauma kid.

I'm going to expect less of you.

Do we really think that kids are going to benefit if we expect less of them based on our assumptions about them?

I don't think anyone would say that that is what worked out in their life.

Like if you ask around people who had hard childhoods, and grew up and kind of turned out okay.

I can't imagine a single person is out there who says, you know what, my teachers really expected nothing of me and I rose to the occasion and look how well it worked.

That's just not how it works.

The whole reason teaching matters, the reason teachers believing in kids matters is because we can get them to go beyond their limitations and to not be held back by whatever bad things have happened in their lives.

So the low expectations part of trauma-informed is really weighing on me.

The third category of statement that you'll find under the banner of trauma-informed is just pure nonsense.

And when I've asked people to explain what they mean by trauma-informed, I get these long, almost religious sounding, spiritual sounding, you know, accolades for trauma-informed and no one can tell at all what these people mean like it makes absolutely no sense it's just word salad it is jabberwocky tier word salad and tell me if you're finding any other categories within trauma informed there's the good stuff teachers have always done there is lowered expectations smuggled in like a Trojan horse.

And then there's just complete nonsense word salad that's trying to make Trauma Informed out to be the best thing ever.

So let me know what you think.

I wanted Trauma Informed to work.

I was a believer probably starting about five years ago and had some friends that were associated with this.

movement and what they were saying sounded good.

But in the long run, it's become clear that it's all just repackaged, rebranded, caring about your students, along with something that I've always known to be bad, and that is lowered expectations.

And now you toss in all this indecipherable nonsense that people are saying in the name of trauma-informed, and who knows what we're even talking about anymore.

Let me know what you think.