What if Schools Are The Source of Trauma
[Music]
[Applause]
my teacher
yanked me down the hallway
and slammed my seven-year-old body
on a hard wooden
bench i was so afraid
my heart was beating rapidly
my hands were so sweaty
that as i tried to hold on to the bench
they kept slipping
legs were rocking back and forth but
because i was so small
my feet didn’t touch the floor
all i wanted
was my daddy
i just needed my daddy to be there and i
knew he was on his way i knew he was
coming and as i looked down the hallway
all i could see was
chalk dust
and my heart dropped
because i could hear them
i could hear the teacher
and the counselor and the principal
talking about me
they were trying to figure out what to
do with me
they were talking about suspensions
and expulsions
and even putting me in special education
and then i heard them
talk about my family
they said
they just didn’t care about me and that
wasn’t true
that’s not true at all then they started
using words like
at risk
culturally deprived
and
i didn’t know
what those words meant but they didn’t
sound right and they didn’t sound good
and there i am
a seven-year-old terrified
listening to this
but now that i’m an adult
i know what those words mean
but they’ve been replaced today
by terms like toxic stress
trauma
and adverse childhood experiences
now
they have a way of measuring toxic
stress and trauma
and that is done by using a
questionnaire
called the adverse childhood experiences
questionnaire
and on this question there are 10
questions
and they’re in the category of abuse
neglect and household dysfunction
but every single question on that
inventory on that questionnaire
is grounded in the child’s home and
family
of those 10 questions i would like to
highlight three of them
and one of them asked
was there anyone in your home a family
member or other adult
who hit you kicked you
beat you or harmed you
in any way
and my answer to that is no
no not at home
but it happened
at school
i was paddled regularly
i was told to bend over
hold on to the seat of a chair
and the principal or assistant principal
would take a wooden stick
and whack me
right across my behind
and when they really wanted to hurt me
they would use the paddle with the holes
in it
and that paddle would leave me bruised
and hurt so much that it was hard to sit
still
for the next few days
did you know that there are 19 states in
this country
that still allow
corporate corporal punishment
in public schools
and there are 48 states
that allow it
in private schools
just imagine
if that administrator left the building
picked up a stick and hit a child
outside of the school building they’d be
charged with assault
but here right now today
it’s still legal
let’s look at another question on the
inventory
it said did in in your home did a family
member
or another adult
put you down
insult you or make you feel bad about
yourself
that did not happen in my home in my
home i was elevated
but it happened at school
teachers actually told me that i would
be dead or in jail before i turned 18
that i would never amount to anything
and even though i was smart
i was put down for being a know-it-all
or a miss smarty pants
you remember when i said they were
thinking about putting me in special
education during that time they had to
give you an iq test
and my iq was off the chart
so they could not put me in special ed
they ended up skipping me a grade so i
went
from second grade to fourth grade
but if that would have happened today
i probably would have ended up in
special ed because african american
children are overrepresented in special
ed especially in the category of
behavioral disorders and intellectual
ability
let’s choose another question
the question say was there no one in
your home
who cared about you
or made you feel special
everybody in my home cared about me
it made me feel special
i was adored at home my intellect and my
behavior was praised at home i was told
i was smart and i could do anything
so when you look at these questions that
are so grounded in home and family do we
really believe that the home is the only
place that children experience trauma
i experienced my trauma at school
on three questions
and the way we measure trauma is that if
you have
answered
yes to four or more questions your
lifetime outcomes are diminished
you’re more likely to engage in risky
behaviors you’re more likely to have
poor health health outcomes and much
more likely to experience an early death
school was the source
of my trauma
and when a child’s spirit is murdered
at school
where does their soul go
to heal
dr patina love challenges us with that
question where does the child’s soul go
to heal
i spent seven hours a day at school
and i went home to heal
and my family would build me up every
night
just to send me back to school the
source of my trauma
every
day
so
this isn’t saying that trauma is not
experienced in the home of course it is
but that is an opportunity for schools
to become the healing spaces
so what can we do about this
first we have to stop blaming children
and families
and we have to understand trauma
we have to understand our own trauma
and our own trauma triggers
we also have to be aware of the cultural
lens that we bring everywhere we go
and recognize that everyone does not
have the same cultural lens
we have to be aware of implicit bias
we all have it
we didn’t ask for it and we don’t want
it but it’s there
and then
we can implement trauma-informed
practices
and what we’ve learned about
trauma-informed practices is that it
challenges us not to ask the child
what’s wrong with you
but what happened to you
but then we can go a bit further
we can then begin to practice and
implement
healing centered practices
and those practices take us from what’s
wrong with you to what happened to you
to what is right with you
it understands that trauma and
resilience is a collective experience
and it focuses on the healing by tapping
in to the inner strength
that every child and family has
and then
we can take a really good look at
ourselves and we can ask ourselves what
we can do
this overused statement
it takes a village
to raise a child
is
absolutely true
but we have to recognize
that schools
are a critical part
of that village
and when we do it right
we can ensure
that every child
can learn
grow
heal
and succeed
thank you very much
[Applause]
you