Words Unspoken: How to Create Innovative Models of Trauma-Informed Care to Meet the Needs of Our Most Underserved Youth

Presenters

Marina V. Gillmore, Full Circle Press and Educational Outreach CenterFollow

Location

School Climate - Bowie A/B

Focused Area

Improving School Climate for Youth-At-Risk

Relevance to Focused Area

Trauma and how it affects our most at-risk youth is not just an individual "problem" that some children face, but a modern day public health crisis that affects most all of our children and the educators who work with them daily. A paradigm of trauma-informed care that looks at what schools can do at a broader systems level to implement innovative, courageous, and research-based programs will effectively help us move towards a solutions-based approach to ensure that all young people, especially our most at-risk and underserved students, get the comprehensive care within the school setting to reach their full potentials.

Primary Strand

Mental & Physical Health

Relevance to Primary Strand

Research on trauma and trauma-informed care has made clear links between the adverse exposure to risk that children face and their capacity to be healthy adults, both physically and mentally. This interactive and hands-on workshop will give participants an opportunity to engage deeply with some of the most pressing issues surrounding trauma in our youth and strategies that they can begin to implement immediately in their schools, agencies, and non-profit youth organizations to help young people not only cope with the trauma they've faced, but thrive academically, socially, and emotionally.

Brief Program Description

In this interactive workshop, participants will explore the implications of cutting-edge research on trauma and trauma-informed care on the work we do every day with our most at-risk youth. Participants will leave this session with both strategies for engaging struggling students and a more comprehensive understanding of our role in developing best practices to instill hope, resiliency, and promise in our students.

Target Audience: Teachers, Administrators, Counselors, District Level Leaders, After-School Care Providers

Summary

In this interactive and engaging workshop, participants will have an opportunity to explore what the cutting-edge research on trauma and trauma-informed care has to do with the work we do every day with our most at-risk and disenfranchised youth. The session will give participants the opportunity to look at some case studies of youth who have been deeply affected by trauma and examine not only their early risk factors, but also the long-term effects of trauma on their social, emotional, and academic development.

Participants will then look at a variety of best practices of trauma-informed care as they relate to school climate, models of classroom instruction, and comprehensive and collaborative strength-based systemic solutions.

Participants will also look at what they need to do to be well in their own life and work and what it will take to show up with authenticity and compassion to continue to do the deep work of meeting some of our students’ greatest needs.

Participants will leave this session with not only tools and strategies for how to engage our most struggling students, but also with a more comprehensive and authentic understanding of the implications of trauma on our students, our schools, and our society and what our role is in helping young people develop resilience, hope, and promise.

Target Audience: Teachers, Site Level Administrators, Counselors, District Level Leaders, Non-Profit Leaders, and After-School Care Providers

Evidence

The body of cutting-edge research provides us with many opportunities to look at trauma-informed care from a more comprehensive and holistic vantage point. All strategies shared during the session will be based on research and its implications for positive change. A selection of applicable research is as follows:

Day, A. G., Somers, C. L., Baroni, B. A., West, S. D., Sanders, L., & Peterson, C. D. (2015). Evaluation of a Trauma-Informed School Intervention with Girls in a Residential Facility School: Student Perceptions of School Environment. Journal Of Aggression, Maltreatment & Trauma, 24(10), 1086-1105. doi:10.1080/10926771.2015.1079279

Harden, T., Kenemore, T., Mann, K., Edwards, M., List, C., & Martinson, K. (2015). The Truth N' Trauma Project: Addressing Community Violence Through a Youth-Led, Trauma-Informed and Restorative Framework. Child & Adolescent Social Work Journal, 32(1), 65-79. doi:10.1007/s10560-014-0366-0

Koffman, S., Ray, A., Berg, S., Covington, L., Albarran, N. M., & Vasquez, M. (2009). Impact of a Comprehensive Whole Child Intervention and Prevention Program among Youths at Risk of Gang Involvement and Other Forms of Delinquency. Children & Schools, 31(4), 239-245.

Zeller, M., Yuval, K., Nitzan-Assayag, Y., & Bernstein, A. (2015). Self-Compassion in Recovery Following Potentially Traumatic Stress: Longitudinal Study of At-Risk Youth. Journal Of Abnormal Child Psychology, 43(4), 645-653. doi:10.1007/s10802-014-9937-y

Format

Individual Presentation

Biographical Sketch

Dr. Marina V. Gillmore is an educator, author, and social justice thought leader who has built her professional career around working with youth and teaching, training, researching and writing about issues related to equity and access, social justice, belief and value exploration, and self-efficacy. She holds a doctorate in Leadership for Educational Justice and has conducted award-winning research on the experiences of underserved youth in urban environments. Her work as a scholar-practitioner in the field of social justice comes from her passion for and experience with deconstructing the complexities of injustices in our society and her focus on using the power of the personal story to incite deep conversations and transformations centered around how our perceptions and belief systems impact everything we do. A teacher at heart, Dr. Gillmore has taught extensively in both traditional and non-traditional settings at the K-12 and university levels.

Start Date

10-25-2016 10:00 AM

End Date

10-25-2016 11:30 AM

Recommended Citation

Gillmore, Marina V., "Words Unspoken: How to Create Innovative Models of Trauma-Informed Care to Meet the Needs of Our Most Underserved Youth" (2016). National Youth-At-Risk Conference, West (2015-2017). 8.
https://digitalcommons.georgiasouthern.edu/nyar_vegas/2016/school/8