CTRC4 - Creating and Leading Trauma Sensitive Schools

Participants will learn how to create safe and supportive spaces and implement trauma-informed practices at the leadership level. The focus will be on examining school-wide systems to foster trauma-integrated environments. By the end, leaders will have actionable tools to lead with empathy, examine current practices and implement new practices to reduce re-traumatization for students, staff and community members.

Learning Outcomes:

• Participants will use a critical lens to analyze and create systematic school practices, policies and values that decolonize, are sensitive to trauma informed practices and reflect a holistic view of education.
• Participants will create data stories to reflect the demographics of their school and their community to inform themselves of the real lives of students they are working with.
• Acknowledge and plan for a variety of learners coming from all types of trauma and using informed practices to create schools and scenarios where students and their families can feel safe.
• To reflect on ourselves as individual educators and identify our own triggers, traumas, sensitivities, and background - what we bring to the profession and to wade through what we need to hold on to and what is not going to serve us or our students.
• To choose strategies and practices that make participants feel confident to lead in a trauma informed way and create schools where colonial practices and values are not the norm.

Skills/Competencies:

• Students will learn how to shape physical, psychological, social, and spiritual aspects of schools to align with trauma-integrated practices
• Students will be able to identify ways to support their own mental wellbeing as well as the wellbeing of all staff with whom they work.
• Students will draw on trauma-informed practices and principles to assess current policies, practices and protocols and investigate areas for change.

Applies Towards the Following Certificates

• Trauma-Informed/Sensitive Pedagogies and Practices Microcertificate : Trauma-Informed/Sensitive Pedagogies and Practices Microcertificate