The Alberta Teachers’ Association

Insights from a recognized expert Jody Carrington is a clinical psychologist who has spent most of her career working with children and families who have experienced trauma. She believes in the power of the relationship in helping children and families who are struggling with emotional dysregulation. A regular speaker at teachers’ conventions, she is the author of Kids These Days: A Game Plan for (Re)Connecting with Those We Teach, Lead, & Love.

It seems like we’ve been hearing a lot about trauma in the media in the last year or two. Is this an accurate assessment? If so, why do you think that is?

I would certainly agree that a desire to be “trauma- informed” has been a big and important shift in the world of mental health in recent years.

I believe that a contributing factor to this shift is the fact that, as a society, we have never been more disconnected than we are right now. Being able to process or make sense of hard things requires human connection; face-to-face connection is the best, from a physiological perspective, and we have never been more disconnected from one another than we are right now. Subsequently, kids (and us big kids) are struggling to make sense of hard things. The result in the classroom is significant increases in emotional dysregulation that are often identified as violence.

Why are we struggling to understand what trauma means?

What is considered traumatic is very difficult to articulate because it’s not an entity. The definition of trauma is simply this: any experience encoded in terror. Depending on your circumstances, this can be nearly anything for anybody. If you are in a state of terror and have nothing or nobody to help you make sense of that experience, it will mess you up.

How well do we understand the effects of trauma, and how much remains to be learned?

From a neurological perspective, I think we have a lot of insight about just how damaging disconnection following an event that was encoded in terror can be. I think where we need the most shift is in understanding how best to connect to each other again.

In previous generations, many were raised from a very behavioural perspective— reward the good behaviour, punish the bad behaviour and results should happen. In previous generations, however, we had much more physical connection to one another. We lived in smaller spaces, taught in one-room schoolhouses. We had more opportunity to make sense of hard things because we made much more eye contact.

We are struggling, I think, to understand the root cause of the increase in school shootings and violence in the classroom by looking for answers like “it must be the guns,” or “it’s the video games.” I think our main understanding of trauma and the subsequent emotional dysregulation that our most “difficult” students struggle with comes down to one thing—connection. And here’s the kicker: the ones who need it the most are the hardest to give it to.

In Alberta, to what extent are teachers learning about trauma?

It has been so amazing to witness (and to be a part of) a shift in education toward attempting to understand the “why” behind the “behaviours” that some kids present with. There is certainly a focus on becoming trauma-informed across this province (and this country). Incredible resources are emerging, developed from a relationship-based perspective, that are allowing our educators to understand behaviour (even the most off-putting and unacceptable behaviours) as connection-seeking and not attention-seeking.

There is, however, no standard of practice in education to date that helps to clarify what it means to be trauma-informed.

You can’t learn even the finest presentations of literacy and numeracy if you are emotionally dysregulated. I think the answer lies in creating a trauma-informed, relationship-based practice for every mental health team in every school division across this province. There needs to be a standard of practice when assessing, treating and building intervention plans that allows educators to feel competent and confident when faced with trauma in the classroom.

Along with four divisions in this province, we have created the Carrington Connections Network and are currently training divisions across this country to become trauma-informed and relationship-focused, which we hope will change the face of education in North America.