Trauma-Informed Should Not Mean Lower Expectations
In this video, Dr. Justin Baeder argues that being trauma-informed shouldn't be an excuse for lowering academic or behavioral standards, because doing so harms the very students it's meant to help.
Key Takeaways
- Lower expectations harm traumatized students - Students who've experienced trauma need more structure and consistency, not less
- Trauma-informed means understanding, not excusing - Understanding a student's background should inform how you support them, not whether you hold them accountable
- Consistency is therapeutic - Predictable rules and expectations create the safe environment that traumatized students need most
Transcript
trauma informed should never mean lower expectations and it should never mean that we're more willing to put a student in harm's way and expose them to inconsistency in the school environment and yet when i hear people talk about trauma-informed practices often that's not what they're saying but it's what they're putting in place they're putting in place practices that do not treat students consistently they don't provide consistent expectations They provide expectations that are like Swiss cheese.
They have a lot of holes in them.
And there are a lot of opportunities for bad things to happen in the school environment that create this sense of unpredictability that I think is especially bad for students who have a lot of trauma.
And I think it is entirely appropriate to be patient.
I think it is entirely appropriate to be understanding, to be compassionate.
But those are different things than having lower expectations.
And especially when it comes to safety, If we have lower expectations for student behavior with regard to safety, what ends up happening is we end up exposing the students with the most trauma to the most violence.
And we have to remember that the non-violent students greatly outnumber violent students.
If we're talking about students with trauma, we focus on students who have the most behavior problems.
But remember, lots of students have trauma, even those who do not have any kind of behavior problems.
So if we are inconsistent and...
excessively lenient when it comes to dangerous behavior like violence at school, we are going to inflict more trauma on our most traumatized students by not having consistent expectations, progressive discipline, and all the things that create a safe school environment.
And I get that we would like to just erase the consequences of trauma.
You know, we would like to not have trauma cause bad behavior, right?
We recognize that trauma can contribute to bad behavior, and we would like to undo that.
Unfortunately, it's not that simple.
We can't just say, well, you did something, but because I know you have trauma, there aren't going to be any consequences or we're going to look the other way on this because that behavior impacts other students who have trauma.
And I think our most traumatized students are the very students who are exposed to the most violence and the most disorder at school because we think we have to be lenient and we have to be understanding for our students who have trauma.
No, I think we have to be consistent.
We have to provide consistent expectations and boundaries and safety for our students who have trauma so let me know what you think let me know what you're hearing in the name of trauma informed and trauma sensitive i mean like a lot of what people should be advocating for in the name of trauma informed is just good practice right it's just good practice with regard to school culture school climate instruction Kids with trauma don't need a fundamentally different type of school.
You know, I think they need maybe a little extra compassion, a little bit extra patience, but they still need safety.
They still need the same basic things that everybody else needs.
Let me know what you think.