Area Back to School 2017

Havre has been one of 20 national districts selected to be part of a national rauma-recognizing pilot program intended to help school employees learn to identify trauma in students.

Havre Public Schools Superintendent Andy Carlson said the program and its implementation is in its infant stages.

A small handful of district staff and school board Trustee Curtis Smeby attended a trauma sensitive conference April 5 and 6 in Seattle. But it will take years to have enough staff trained to recognize trauma and learn to work with students affected by it, Carlson said.

“We’re not anywhere near where we’re actually able to help kids,” he said.

The trauma-sensitive schools program is about learning how trauma impacts students and using that knowledge as a tool to better educate students and provide calm and secure learning environments. The program was was approved during the second half of the last school year after attention was brought to it by Montana State University-Northern education professor Smeby.

The crux of the program, Carlson said, using Smeby’s illustration, is it changes how educators approach troubled students.

“It’s moving from the mindset of what’s wrong with you to what happened to you,” Carlson said.

The Havre district is at a stage where they are learning to recognize students with trauma, he added.

“I’m in the stage of being trauma informed,” he said.

The district faculty and staff comprises about 300 people, with just slightly under half of those are educators. To have a handful of people out of nearly 150 educators indicates how long the road to being trauma informed is, Carlson said. The plan, he added, is to have the people who are trained pass that knowledge onto others.

According to the Adverse Childhood Experience study, done by the National Council for Behavioral Health, adverse childhood experiences can cause neurodevelopmental disruption and social, emotional and cognitive impairment, among other things.

“A child impacted by trauma may experience physical ailments, intrusive thoughts and fears, and decreased attention and concentration, all which impact learning,” a statement from the NCBH says.

NCBH statistics say that at least 59 percent of the general population has experienced at least one adverse childhood event; four of every 10 children in America say they experienced a physical assault during the past year, with one in 10 receiving an assault-related injury; and more than 60 percent of youth 17 and younger have been exposed to crime, violence and abuse either directly or indirectly.