“I was watching really good people burning out from the [teaching] profession and suspending kids over and over and nothing was changing behavior-wise, and teachers were not happy about it,” says John Jimno, who was in his second year as principal at that time.

So, Jimno and the staff took advantage of a program that Contra Costa County was integrating into its Youth Justice Initiative and, in doing so, joined a national trauma-informed school movement that has seen hundreds of schools across the country essentially replace a “What’s wrong with you?” approach to dealing with kids who are having troubles with asking kids, “What happened to you?”, and then providing them help.

And, in just two years, by integrating this radically different approach into all parts of the school and rebuilding many of its practices from the inside out, suspensions plummeted more than 50% to just 8.4 percent of the student population in just two years.

The program that the Park Middle School educators piggybacked on in Fall 2015 was theSanctuary Model, a trauma-informed method for changing organizational culture from one that is toxic to one that is healthy. Jimno and a group of teachers and administrators participated in monthly county-wide “train the trainers” workshops where they learned how to integrate the model into their school; then they trained the rest of their staff. The model, developed by Dr. Sandra Bloom, a psychiatrist and assistant professor of Health Management and Policy at the School of Public Health at Drexel University in Philadelphia, has been implemented by hundreds of organizations and communities across the U.S., including public and private schools, health organizations, residential treatment centers, domestic violence shelters, and drug and alcohol treatment centers. The Sanctuary Institutehas been teaching the model since 2005; integrating it into an organization takes at least three years.

The Sanctuary Model is similar to a small group of organizations — including CLEAR (Collaborative Learning for Educational Achievement and Resilience), Turnaround for Children, Compassionate Schools, and HEARTS (Healthy Environments and Response to Trauma in Schools) — that teach a trauma-informed, whole-school approach based on the science of adverse childhood experiences.

“Adverse childhood experiences” comes from the landmark CDC/Kaiser Permanente Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) Study, which showed the link between 10 types of childhood trauma and the adult onset of chronic disease, mental illness, violence and being a victim of violence. Those traumas include living in a household where a family member has mental illness or substance use problems, or where parents have divorced or there’s been emotional or sexual abuse.

Subsequent ACE surveys include racism, witnessing violence outside the home, bullying, losing a parent to deportation, living in an unsafe neighborhood, and involvement with the foster care system. Other types of childhood adversity can also include being homeless, living in a war zone, being an immigrant, moving many times, and attending a school that enforces a zero-tolerance discipline policy.

The ACE Study found that most people (64%) have at least one ACE; 12% of the population has an ACE score of 4. Having an ACE score of 4 nearly doubles the risk of heart disease and cancer. It increases the likelihood of becoming an alcoholic by 700 percent and the risk of attempted suicide by 1200 percent.

Part of the trauma-informed training provided to Park Middle School educators highlighted how unpredictable, ongoing stress from ACEs can damage the structure and function of kids’ developing brains, and can cause them to be on high alert for danger, easily triggered into a state of fight, flight or freeze, and incapable of rational thought, according to 8th grade science teacher Sara Buckley. Buckley found the brain science around ACEs part of the training especially interesting. (For more information about ACEs science, go to ACEs Science 101; to calculate your ACE score, go to Got Your ACE Score?)

“After the training, you come in and you see it all and you think ‘I understand what’s happening with this kid. I know the neighborhoods they live in, and it has nothing to do with who you are as a teacher, classroom control or their respect for you. They’ve had some experiences that have altered the way they act, and the way they think and their brain development.”

Using tools from the training with her students, Buckley has been able to make new inroads in building trust. “I have a girl in class. When she’s angry, she will burst out cussing. She will walk out of class,” says Buckley. The student is also frequently tardy. So, Buckley talked with the girl and found out her anger stems from her not being able to live with her mother, who struggles with drug use, and having to live with another relative instead. Buckley acknowledged the student’s anger, but gently pressed upon her that she had to find another way to deal with it.

“So, I said, ok, what’s your plan when you’re angry? Because you can’t be cussing like that in the middle of a classroom, in a library, in a courtroom, or anywhere. It doesn’t work.” The girl came up with a plan that if she’s triggered, she’ll step outside the classroom until she calms down, explains Buckley.

Not long after she developed the plan, a classmate said something that angered the student, says Buckley. “She looked at me. I looked at her,” Buckley says. “And she left the classroom and came back a few minutes later when she felt calmed down.”

Buckley says the training also helps her communicate to students when she herself needs to have a moment. Just after the training, while her students were quietly taking a test, some students in the halls screamed out sexual obscenities. The next day in class she said to her students, “I want you to know it really upset me to hear that and that you had to hear it, and I’m still really upset. I need a moment here.” Her students obliged. “They understood and they were really quiet for a moment. I never would have said that five years ago. I would have kept it to myself, but they would have been able to tell I was upset.”

The Sanctuary Model puts as much emphasis on teacher and staff self-care as on caring for students. Sometimes teachers need more than a moment in their class. They need to step away. So, they have a “buddy system.” “I can call up Mr. Jimno and say I need a few minutes, could you take over my class?” says Buckley.

Or if there are students who are pressing a teacher’s buttons, they may be asked to sit in the back of a “buddy” teacher’s class. 7^thgrade teacher Johri Leonard says he often takes in those students who sit at the back of his classroom and calm down.

The ability of students and teachers to pay attention to what triggers them and pause and reflect before they react didn’t just happen. It has been made easier by a rich array of new practices — including mindfulness meditation, a staffed wellness center, individual student check-ins, restorative meetings after tangles between students, or students and teachers, teacher safety plans, and yoga — that have been embedded in the school culture to help students and teachers.

Mindful moments

At 9:30 am, a student stands at the front of Leonard’s ancient civilizations and history class. The lights are off. The student rings a chime and tells her peers to breathe in and out. Most have their eyes closed. One student is quietly examining her chartreuse-painted fingernails. The student at the front is leading them through mindful meditation, a practice that’s been taught to all students. This year the majority of teachers use it with students anywhere from daily at the beginning of class, to once or twice a week, or on an as needed basis, such as before students take tests.

Leonard says he thinks the three-minute meditation at the beginning of each of his classes has made a huge difference: “I have very few behavior problems in my class,” he says. Last year, he also started showing a mindfulness meditation video prior to tests and quizzes: “Test scores went up. In some cases, the kids still didn’t pass, but their scores went up. Can I say it’s because of the mindfulness?” he asks. “I don’t know for sure, but it certainly doesn’t hurt.”

6th grade meditators