Trauma & Healing Supports

Building Strong Brains: Tennessee ACE’s Initiative a Facilitator’s Guide

Tennessee ACEs Initiative is a major statewide effort to establish TN as a national model for how a state can promote culture change in early childhood based on a philosophy that preventing and mitigating adverse childhood experiences, and their impact, is the most promising approach to helping TN children lead productive, healthy lives and ensure the future prosperity of the state.

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We Don’t “Move on” from Grief. We Move Forward with it.

This video is helpful to use when talking about grief with high school students. Writer and podcaster Nora McInerny shares wisdom about life and death. Her candid approach to something that will affect us all, she encourages us to shift how we approach grief. “A grieving person is going to laugh again and smile again,” she says. “They’re going to move forward. But that doesn’t mean that they’ve moved on.”

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Creating Identity-Safe Schools and Classrooms

This research report addresses the ways in which practitioners can build inclusive and affirming school environments with keen attention to identity safety that can support all students in feeling safe, protected, and valued in school environments. A growing body of research points to effective school-based practices and structures, described below, that educators can use to foster the identity safety that nurtures student achievement, positive attachments to school, and a genuine sense of belonging and membership for each student.

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Choosing Trauma Informed Care for Children with Intellectual Disabilities

We live in a world where all children can experience challenges with their mental health, including those caused by trauma. We know all children can heal after trauma; this includes children with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD). Sometimes recovery from trauma requires partnership with child- and family-focused mental health care providers. Caregivers play a large and important role in their child’s treatment and recovery, so having information about what help is critical. It might be time to seek help from a mental health provider if a child has experienced trauma, or you notice concerning changes in your child’s behavior or mood that suggest a traumatic experience may have occurred. For more information on that, check out Understanding Trauma Responses in Children with Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities and When to Seek Help. This is especially the case if these changes leave caregivers feeling overwhelmed.

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Transformative SEL

“Transformative SEL” is a form of SEL implementation where young people and adults build strong, respectful, and lasting relationships to engage in co-learning. It facilitates critical examination of individual and contextual factors that contribute to inequities and collaborative solutions that lead to personal, community, and societal well-being. Through SEL, students and adults develop social and emotional skills needed for school and community engagement, with a focus on rights and responsibilities for creating learning environments that are caring and just. 

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Building a Culture of Joyful Learning

Research shows that students who feel known and valued are more prepared to meaningfully engage in learning. Students who experience a sense of belonging have better self-esteem, higher rates of classroom participation, and higher academic achievement (Korpershoek, 2018). As a result of creating a positive school climate for both students and educators, the elementary school featured in this report had the conditions in place to make rapid academic gains. When educators implemented the instructional improvements described in this case study, student proficiency improved dramatically because children were in the right mindset for learning.

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Healing Centered Framework

This framework is designed to articulate what it will require to be a school district that centers healing and wellness in its work. The information aims to clarify what being “healing-centered” looks and feels like for the different members of the CPS community in different roles. It also outlines five different components of a healing-centered district that apply, in unique ways, to each stakeholder.

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