Teachers These Days by Jody Carrington & Laurie McIntosh BEd

Author:Jody Carrington & Laurie McIntosh, BEd [Carrington, PhD, Jody & McIntosh, BEd, Laurie]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781948334372
Publisher: Impress

Do the Next Right Thing

From this psychologist’s chair, I have to tell you that it’s often not what happens in individual therapy sessions that has the most profound impact on healing, but what happens in day-to-day interactions. We have failed, I think, to equip the adults who are most accessible to children on a daily basis with even the basics for understanding difficult emotional experiences. Many times, I have sat with teachers who, when we talk about trauma, say: “But I’m not a social worker. I’m not trained to handle these things. I got into teaching to teach. Not provide therapy.” My response to that, in my head (and sometimes out loud), is “bullshit.” If I take you back to why you got into this business, I’ll bet you’ll tell me it’s because someone inspired you. They got it. They saw you. Or they didn’t get it and you didn’t want that to happen to other children. You got into this because, at your core, you understand the importance of human connection.

The goal isn’t necessarily to equip you with the skills to “fix” trauma. That, sweet teachers, is not your job. In fact, there are no fixes. Even if you’re all sorts of amazing (which you probably are), you cannot single-handedly alter multiple generations of abuse, neglect, or trauma. You can’t protect our most vulnerable children from all the racism and discrimination they face every day. What’s so critically important to know is that empathy is created when we understand the meaning behind behavior. I can promise you that understanding and developing empathy for your most emotionally dysregulated students (and colleagues) will enlighten you with an understanding of how trauma can affect the ways we show up in the world. Then it will more clearly guide our responses and our teaching.

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