Principal Progress: Trauma-Informed Efforts at One Alaska Elementary School

The Boys' Club of New York addresses the mental health crisis among at-risk boys by providing structured programming, peer mentorship from alumni staff, and a culture of belonging across three clubhouses and roughly 2,500 members.

The Graficka Street school uses flexible classroom design, dedicated assistants for children with special needs, participatory school culture, and proactive family outreach to create a more inclusive learning environment. Since inclusive education legislation was passed in 2016, the share of students with disabilities educated in mainstream schools has grown from 65% to 77%, with schools like the Graficka Street elementary school helping increase access.

The Wisdom Hub Nursery and Primary School enrolls students alongside those who are differently-abled, allowing them to learn in the classroom together. The combined classroom approach teaches students to embrace diversity, nurturing an inclusive educational environment where each child can thrive. The Wisdom Hub opened in 2013 and has since seen over 300 children with special needs cross into secondary school.

A school in the city of Port Angeles has been reopened since October 2020, it offers valuable pandemic lessons for other schools that are in the process of reopening. Aside from logistical things like temperature checks, there are other things teachers are looking out for in classroom: mental health, energy levels, and teaching kids how to learn again. “Right now, my priority is less about content, and more about executive functioning — reteaching students how to learn."

Spurred by state changes, an elementary in Tulsa, Oklahoma has transformed its approach to chronic absenteeism, adding frequent positive reinforcements for good attendance and building strong relationships with students to get to the root of attendance issues. “This is a solvable problem as long as people keep in mind," the executive director of Attendance Works said. "The solutions take time to unpack and address what’s keeping kids from coming to school.”

In a preschool outside of San Francisco, mental health consultants are sitting in on classes and meeting one on one with teachers to help them build strong relationships with their students.

At Ohio Avenue Elementary School, where many students live below the poverty line, all teachers receive training on the science of trauma and how it impacts the children in their classrooms. What teachers do with this knowledge is up to them - Katherine Reynolds Lewis asks, "What if the most effective way to help kids learn self-control is for adults to stop being so controlling?" The school has seen many students gain the ability to "self-calm," a coping mechanism that is hard to teach students who have experienced domestic or police violence or periods in the foster care system.

The state of Arkansas cares deeply about the wellbeing of its students, as evidenced by its flourishing system of alternative schools that provide extra counseling in academics, social and mental support, and research-backed techniques that reduce bad behavior, poor grades, and absenteeism. The schools even work to dismantle the taboo around alternative schools, presenting them as an intervention rather than a punishment. The introduction of these schools correlates with a decline in Arkansas' overall dropout rate from 2002 to 2012, and nearly 10% of its graduates have spent time in alternative education.

Albuquerque is a regional center for homelessness, with the number of those without homes increasing due to diminished services and resources. However, the city is taking a holistic approach to solving homeless, implementing "Housing First" policies, a van program that finds panhandlers and offers them work for the day, and other comprehensive services.

Healing trauma has never been an easy process but programs like Healing Hurt People help to promote recovery in traumatized, angry young men. This program, in partnership with local medical services, aims to provide therapy in place of violence, which would only cause more trauma down the road. Those who stick with the program have found great success in overcoming their pasts.