The School District of University City invited area educators and community advocates to learn about championing trauma-informed schools across the St. Louis region. The session, by Alive and Well STL, uses storytelling as a means of effective communication. As teachers and administrators learned the importance of telling their own personal stories of triumph, trauma and hope that brought them to where they are today – they learned how to recognize and advocate for someone who is living with the effects of trauma. It could be their students, parents or stakeholders.
Emily Luft, program director of Alive and Well STL, said goal of the recent event was to help individuals who believe in the importance of trauma-informed schools to hone their advocacy skills.
“By being better able to share their own stories of ‘why,’ individuals will be able to help further this work within their own school communities and regionally by more effectively reaching decision makers and other important stakeholders, like parents,” she explained. “Becoming trauma informed requires the passionate buy-in of everyone in schools, including administrators, staff, and students.”
Changing mindsets – understanding what others have to overcome before they get to the classroom each day can inspire teachers and educational leadership to leave biases behind and to take action to bring out the best in students.
If, as a child, Sharonica Hardin-Bartley had accepted what a sixth grade teacher said about her future, she would not be a school superintendent today.
“This is about changing mindsets … changing behaviors that we see with the adults, and making certain that we are creating an environment for all of our students,” Hardin-Bartley said. “I represent the things we are talking about. I traveled on a bus to West County as a young girl from St. Louis city and … I was ‘Share-rah-NEEK-ah’ … because most of my teachers didn’t care enough to know my name. So as a child, I had no voice. I didn’t know myself. That confidence was not there.
“And it was my 6th grade teacher who told me I was going to be nothing. My sixth grade teacher who unearthed some things I was navigating at home on my bus ride to school.”
Teachers have power.
While they have the power to build up a child, Hardin-Bartley said, “they also have powers to absolutely destroy a child.”
She said it is a choice to be conscious with words and actions.
“We want to be conscious about our efforts, we want to be conscious about our actions and I think it is a choice. We choose to be aware, we choose to be informed, we choose to take action with our words and stop doing this lip service when talking amongst each other and going back into our buildings and doing something counterproductive to what we are talking about,” Hardin-Bartley said.
In order to embrace every child, the superintendent said the questioning should be, not what’s wrong with the child, but what happened.
“Schools, we cannot do it by ourselves – and that’s been the problem. The schools have been forced to navigate these issues with no support,” she said.
“Higher Ed needs to embrace this in their course work. Teachers need to understand this concept and they need to have strategies,” Hardin-Bartley said. “We are sending them out ill-prepared – and they are people who want to change lives, but we need the skills and resources.”
Participants split into small groups, where they shared their stories and listened to the stories of others in the room. Feedback pointed to the value of this storytelling.
“Everyone has a why. No one comes to this work (whether it be as an educator, an advocate for trauma-informed care, or both) without a reason,” Luft said. “Tapping into the power of those ‘whys’ can be an incredible source for social change.”
Marsha Morgan, retired COO of Behavioral Health at Truman Medical Centers in Kansas City spent over 40 years working in mental health. She said stories stick in the mind to create an “I can do this too” response.
“It also provides the framework for how we make our choices,” Morgan said. “We create pictures as we tell our stories. We also create memories.”
Three dozen organizations, including 13 school districts were represented among the 65 participants during the Oct. 25 session. Alive and Well STL has trained more than 40 schools in the St. Louis region to become trauma-informed, as well as other key stakeholders in the community interested in advancing trauma-informed care in schools.
“Alive and Well STL continues to get a large volume of requests from local schools to provide training around the impacts of stress and trauma,” Luft added.
For more information, visit AliveandWellSTL.org.
