Our students are experiencing trauma. We teachers need training to help them cope. Now is the perfect time to provide trauma training to teachers. Our students need and deserve it.

The following is taken from an opinion piece that was written by Gina Caneva and appeared in the Chicago Sun-Times of March 13. I believe that the writer is speaking prophetically.

In all of my years as an educator, I’ve never attended a meeting or professional development session on how to help students cope with trauma. My bet is that teachers in most districts in our country have not either.

Think about the last couple of years: Mentally and emotionally, we’ve been ravaged as a society. We’ve faced worldwide sickness, intensifying racial tension due to police brutality toward people of color, gun violence in some of our most safest places — our schools and churches — and a war launched by Russia just months after the war in Afghanistan ended.

Many of us watch this news unfolding on the convenience of our phones, any time we want. Doom-scrolling, as it’s called, takes a hefty mental toll on us.

Our children and young adults are not oblivious to these events. Some, like the two students mentioned earlier, experience it directly; they are a part of traumatic events. Others are deeply impacted by witnessing and watching the events, and/or by the environment these events have created. Researchers from the University of Calgary conducted studies globally during the COVID-19 pandemic and found that anxiety and depression doubled compared with before the pandemic.

As adults, we are often told kids are resilient. But we can’t ignore their trauma and just move on to the next part of the curriculum. Coping with students’ trauma should be a top priority in our professional development, taking precedence over workshops on the latest tech tool, standardized test scores or grading practices.

Teachers need tools beyond writing a pass for a student to a counselor’s office. Our students see their teachers every day, the effects of trauma often first present themselves in the classroom, and school counselors are already burdened with high caseloads.

Now is the perfect time to provide trauma training to teachers. Our students need and deserve it.

Gina Caneva is the library media specialist for East Leyden High School in Franklin Park. She taught in CPS for 15 years and is Nationally Board Certified. Follow her on Twitter @GinaCaneva