​Tools, resources, a vision, a theory of action, an evaluation plan, an internal or external consultant who specializes in the social-emotional development of youth (School Social Workers, School Counselors, and/or other mental health professionals)- you need those things.

But do you need a curriculum? No, probably not. The amount of time it takes your school to find, adopt, train, implement, and evaluate (and you really should evaluate it) a curriculum is no more time than to do the alternative, flexible approach. 

Imagine this: Teachers are given the autonomy and flexibility (and specific tools and resources) to choose which SEL practices to use in their classrooms, and when. Imagine researchers spend less time assessing whether you're maintaining fidelity to their model curriculum, and more time studying how the SEL tools you've selected to use impact the children and youth in your school. 

Social Emotional Learning opportunities happen in the real world, not in a curriculum.

No worries. Despite my rant thus far, I truly believe it's not a bad thing to use a curriculum, and in some schools it is feasible. In many, however, it is not. My point here is really for the schools where an SEL curriculum feels out of reach--impossible to implement given current standards and time constraints. It's also important to keep in mind that SEL curricula have been around before, just called something different (bullying prevention, character education, 21st century learning, etc...). If your reasons for adopting a new curriculum had anything to do with the fact that your old SEL/Prevention curriculum was not implemented with consistency or fidelity across classrooms or schools, or that it never seemed like the right fit for you or your students--that may end up being the case again 2-4 years from now. If that happens again, please don't give up on SEL, and consider looking toward a more flexible and adaptable model referenced in this article. 

Coming soon! Learn how to talk about school-based substance use policies and create a school climate that responds to student alcohol, marijuana, tobacco, and vaping using the best-available research evidence.

ACEs (adverse childhood experiences) include adversities like: abuse, neglect, family substance abuse, and parental incarceration. The term ACE comes from the "ACEs Study",  which was a Kaiser Permanente research project that built upon decades of research on the effects of child maltreatment and adversity on social, educational, and health-related outcomes in adulthood. This research spanned the fields of Social Work, Public Health, Medicine, and Psychology. The ACES study found that MOST people have been exposed to some level of trauma or adversity, and that there is a cumulative toll of adversity on adult health outcomes. Basically, the more adversity someone experienced in childhood, the greater the risk of poor social and health outcomes in adulthood.

I'm so happy you're eager to hit the ground running, but please don't give this screening tool to your students (and I would actually suggest you avoid giving it to staff as well). This screening tool was originally designed as part of a research study, and was intended for adults. Providing students with the ACEs screener and requesting they fill it out doesn't actually give you information you can take action on in a proactive way. It tells you about what's happened to a child, or on the whole to children in your school (if you're looking at whole-school data) but nothing of their interpersonal strengths or resilience factors. If you're looking for actionable universal or targeted screenings, consider looking at social-emotional skills or developmental assets. The ACEs screener, when used as a tool to identify needs, can unfortunately lend itself to very deficit-oriented thinking about students, families, and communities. Additionally, the ACEs survey does nothing in the way of considering the impact of ACEs on historically oppressed populations. The ACEs survey does not account for the ways in which interpersonal ACEs (things like abuse, neglect, witnessing domestic violence) interact with community and systemic adversity (things like mass incarceration, community violence, structural oppression, historical trauma, etc...). 

The main take-aways that I would hope educators learn from the research on adversity, trauma, and toxic stress are:
1. Behaviors may be symptoms of toxic stress, trauma exposure, and disregulated brains (e.g., the fight, flight, freeze response). 
2. As educators, we have an amazing opportunity to help students rewire their brains for resilience, regardless of their lives outside of school. Students spend 8 hours a day with us! By creating safe and supportive environments at schools and by responding to student behaviors with compassion and curiosity, we help students who have been exposed to trauma. 

Want support on incorporating trauma-informed, restorative, and positive discipline and classroom management practices into your school or district? I provide consulting and training for K-12 educators, school-based mental health professionals, and administrators. Contact me for more information.
Tammy Dee, MSW, LICSW

Prior to implementing Restorative Practices, Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports (PBIS), or any other school-wide behavioral support system, districts, buildings and teachers in traditional school systems may benefit from developing ongoing opportunities for leaders (especially!) and staff to reflect on, and challenge, systemic racism and implicit bias; and learn about how trauma impacts the brain and behavior.

Without these transformational elements as our foundation, we are failing to get at the root causes of disproportionality in discipline. 

We must be willing to put the brakes on moving forward with PBIS and Restorative Practices implementation in schools, and recognize the importance of transforming our foundations and our soil.  School staff need to understand what is happening inside a student's brains when they act out, so that they can more effectively respond in a way that allows the child to develop new neural pathways (and new ways of responding to stress). We need to engage in conversations with our professional colleagues about our own implicit bias and prejudices, as well as learn about the prevalence and impact of daily exposure to microaggressions that our students are exposed to. We must support one another through that work.  

We cannot rush this process and we cannot "fix" disproportionality in school discipline without talking about bias, racism, oppression, privilege, and trauma. 
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Take your time. Find the mess. Stay there for a while. ​