Trauma-Responsive Schooling: Centering Student Voice and Healing

Trauma-Responsive Schooling outlines a novel approach to transforming American schools through student-centered, trauma-informed practices.

The book chronicles the use of an innovative educational model, Trauma-Responsive Equitable Education (TREE), as part of a multiyear research project in two elementary schools in rural Maine. In this model, Lyn Mikel Brown, Catharine Biddle, and Mark Tappan endorse whole-school change, encouraging educators to upend traditional classroom power dynamics by listening foremost to student voices, validating student experiences, and promoting student agency.

The authors provide complex real-life examples of student involvement in the creation and implementation of trauma-responsive and equitable practices. Their work offers readers concrete, actionable examples of such practices, which include supporting the whole child by promoting social and emotional learning (SEL) as well as academic achievement; providing access to basic needs such as food, clothing, and health care; and meeting the instructional requirements of dual-language learners.

Many rural schools in the United States experience low student achievement and high absenteeism rates as their geographically isolated communities struggle with poverty, substance abuse, and other significant stressors. Yet, as the authors demonstrate, supportive learning environments, even in under-resourced rural schools, are able to mitigate adversity, stress, and trauma--and thus promote healing.

This heartening work illustrates that, when educators and school leaders put student needs and interests at the core of school life, long-lasting change for all students is possible.


About the Author
Lyn Mikel Brown is a professor of Education at Colby College in Waterville, Maine. She uses qualitative, voice-centered methods to explore the intersections of culture, context, and development, with a particular focus on youth voice and engagement in schools and communities. She is a founder of three youth-driven organizations and the author of six books, including her first, Meeting at the Crossroads: Women's Psychology and Girls' Development (with Carol Gilligan), and her latest, Powered by Girl: A Field Guide for Supporting Youth Activists. Past research projects include a five-year longitudinal study of girls' psychological and social development, an analysis of social class differences in girls' experiences of schooling, and an exploration of the ways adults can effectively scaffold youth-driven social change work.

Catharine Biddle is an associate professor of Educational Leadership at the University of Maine. Her research focuses on ways in which rural schools and communities respond to social and economic change in the twenty-first century. She's particularly interested in how schools can partner with community organizations or groups to address issues of social inequality and how nontraditional leaders--such as youth, parents, and other community members--may lead or serve as partners in these efforts. Prior to joining the faculty at UMaine, she spent five years as a research affiliate with the Center on Rural Education and Communities at Pennsylvania State University. Catharine also served as the executive director of the Nanubhai Education Foundation, an international education nonprofit working in rural India, and as an out-of-school-time educator for the national nonprofit organization Citizen Schools.

Mark Tappan is a professor of Education at Colby College in Waterville, Maine. He is a developmental and educational psychologist whose early work focused on narrative and sociocultural approaches to identity development, moral development, and moral education. Currently, his research interests include equity and social justice in elementary, secondary, and higher education; the development of healthy forms of masculinity among children, adolescents, and young adults; and trauma-responsive education in rural schools and communities.