191. What Educators Need to Know About Childhood Trauma with Julianna Burmesch

And I would love to hear a little bit more about just, you know, what was that process like in terms of how you came back and thought about working with kids who are dealing with trauma themselves? Mm-hmm.

One thing... that i realized when i was a teacher is that you can't always be your best self all the time because we all have stresses in our lives um and sometimes if you are either in a dysregulated state or for me, sometimes when I'm triggered, I go into a fight or flight feeling and I don't have access to my logical brain.

Because what happens is I have very solid pathways to my limbic system, which is the emotional center of my brain.

And those were built throughout my childhood.

When someone with childhood trauma or any kind of PTSD are when they're triggered, they lose access to the part of their brain responsible for logical thought.

So knowing that I made sure in when I was an early childhood principal, and I feel this is really important because it's not happening right now.

A principal's job, their job is to make sure learning is happening in the classroom.

And so often in administration, we are as principals forced onto the next bandwagon from the top down.

Luckily in my early childhood program, I didn't have to implement a new reading series or I didn't have, you know, it was at a lot more control over that.

But I sincerely believe that it's the principal's response first and major responsibility is to make sure learning is occurring in the classroom.

And that means that when teachers can't be their best self for whatever reason, they have the ability to call for help at any time.

I have a friend who just recently quit teaching because she had a dysregulated student in the classroom who was going around breaking everybody's pencils and she could not continue the lesson and the child would not respond to her.

And she called to the office to see if they could send somebody to help.

And they said, sorry, all three principals are in a meeting and they can't be interrupted.

Oh no. It's like this meeting was more important than the learning that was happening in that classroom.

And that should never happen.

Yes.

And

it's not fair to the teacher or the student, honestly, who's dysregulated and needs some extra support there too.

Right.

And

in my school, we used a team approach.

We identified... staff members who could free themselves up if there was an emergency or if there was a dysregulated child.

And it could be a custodian.

It could be a librarian.