With accessible strategies grounded in trauma-informed education and positive psychology, this book equips teachers to support all students, particularly the most vulnerable. It will help them to build their resilience, increase their motivation and engagement, and fulfil their full learning potential within the classroom.
Trauma-informed, strengths-based classrooms are built upon three core aims: to support children to build their self-regulatory capacities, to build a sense of relatedness and belonging at school, and to integrate wellbeing principles that nurture growth and identify strengths. Taking conventional approaches to trauma one step further, teachers may create a classroom environment which helps students to meet their own needs in a healthy way and progress academically.
Based on the successful Berry Street education strategies pioneered by the authors, this book also includes comprehensive case studies, learning points and opportunities for self-reflection, fully supporting teachers to implement these strategies within the classroom.

The secret to every positive learning environment? Belonging. When students feel that they belong in their school and classroom, commitment to learning goes up and behavioral disruptions subside. And when teachers embrace an SEL-infused approach to classroom management that helps every student feel valued, safe, and competent, belonging soars.

We Belong offers 50 targeted strategies to increase students’ sense of belonging and reinforce the habits that support classroom harmony and learning success. Authors and award-winning educators Laurie Barron and Patti Kinney explore the dynamic partnership of belonging and classroom management and share specific ways to

* Build authentic, positive relationships with students and among students
* Create spaces that feel physically and emotionally safe for all
* Teach and foster social-emotional competence
* Increase student engagement and motivation
* Foster a sustaining sense of community

Covering a range of key topics—from behavioral expectations to conflict resolution to more effective collaboration—this practical guide for elementary and secondary teachers includes downloadable forms and templates to support strategy implementation. Use it to revisit your priorities and reshape your practices so that all students in your classroom can say of themselves and their peers, “We belong.”

Peter Levine’s work in trauma is grounded in medical biophysics, psychophysiology, and psychology, as well as his own innovative research into the instinctual behavior of wild animals. Over the past 35 years, he has developed and refined a method called Somatic Experiencing (SE), which provides the foundation for this guide to dealing with trauma in children. At the core of this book is the understanding that trauma begets violence, and violence begets trauma. The effects of trauma can result not only from catastrophic events such as abuse and violence but from everyday, common incidents such as minor auto accidents, routine medical procedures, family stresses, even something as seemingly innocent as falling off a bicycle. Trauma Through a Child’s Eyes offers a hopeful alternative to children acting “in” (on themselves) or “out” (on others) in response to pain and injury. Most children possess an innate natural resiliency, and Levine explains how adults can help them tap into and strengthen that resiliency to resolve the effects of trauma and cope successfully with future harmful situations.

The stories in Born Into This throw light on a world of unique cultural practice and perspective, from Indigenous rangers trying to instil some pride in wayward urban teens on the harsh islands off the coast of Tasmania to those scraping by on the margins of white society railroaded into complex and compromised decisions. To this mix Adam Thompson manages to bring humour, pathos and occasionally a sly twist as his characters confront racism, untimely funerals, classroom politics and, overhanging all like a discomforting, burgeoning awareness for both white and black Australia, the inexorable damage and disappearance of the remnant natural world.

Nature’s Lessons in Healing Trauma…Waking the Tiger offers a new and hopeful vision of trauma. It views the human animal as a unique being, endowed with an instinctual capacity. It asks and answers an intriguing question- why are animals in the wild, though threatened routinely, rarely traumatized? By understanding the dynamics that make wild animals virtually immune to traumatic symptoms, the mystery of human trauma is revealed.Waking the Tiger normalizes the symptoms of trauma and the steps needed to heal them. People are often traumatized by seemingly ordinary experiences. The reader is taken on a guided tour of the subtle, yet powerful impulses that govern our responses to overwhelming life events. To do this, it employs a series of exercises that help us focus on bodily sensations. Through heightened awareness of these sensations trauma can be healed.

For nearly four decades, Russ Quaglia has been laying the groundwork to inform, reform, and transform schools through student voice. That deep commitment is reflected in this inspirational book.

Quaglia and his coauthors at the Quaglia Institute for School Voice & Aspirations deftly synthesize the thoughts and feelings of hundreds of thousands of stakeholders and offer a vision for schools where everyone’s voice matters. They posit that students, teachers, administrators, and parents must work and learn together in ways that promote deep understanding and creativity.

Making this collaborative effort successful, however, requires widespread recognition that all stakeholders have something to teach, and they all have a role to play in moving the entire school forward. We must abandon the “”us versus them”” fallacy in education; there is only “”us.”” To that end, The Power of Voice in Schools:

• Offers a way forward that can be used in any school.
• Addresses the importance of everyone’s voice in the school community.
• Articulates the lessons learned from listening to these voices over the past decade.
• Suggests concrete, practical strategies for combined teams of students, teachers, parents, and administrators to make a difference together.

This book reflects the dream of a true partnership in listening, learning, and leading together. When the potential of voice is fully realized, schools will look and feel different. Cooperation will replace competition and conflict, collaboration will replace isolation, and confidence will replace insecurity. Most important, the entire school community will work in partnership with one another for the well-being of students and teachers.

In From Behaving to Belonging, Julie Causton and Kate MacLeod detail how teachers can shift from a “”behavior management”” mindset (that punishes students for “”bad”” behavior or rewards students for “”good”” or “”compliant”” behavior) to an approach that supports all students—even the most challenging ones—with kindness, creativity, acceptance, and love.

Causton and MacLeod’s approach:

• Focuses on students’ strengths, gifts, and talents.
• Ignites students’ creativity and sense of self-worth.
• Ensures that students’ social, emotional, and academic needs are met.
• Prompts teachers to rethink challenging behavior and how they support their students.
• Helps teachers identify barriers to student success in the cultural, social, and environmental landscape.
• Inspires teachers to reconnect with their core values and beliefs about students and teaching.

We need to transform our classrooms into places of love. To that end, this book represents a paradigm shift from a punitive mindset to a strengths-based, loving approach and encourages the radical act of creating more inclusive and caring schools.

• Build strong relationships with and among staff members.

• Better connect with students’ parents.

• Reduce conflict by eliminating problems before they get out of hand.

• Model and pursue the crucial issues of diversity, equity, and inclusion.

• Improve instructional leadership.

Fifty concrete strategies to help school leaders create a learning environment that better serves and supports students living with trauma.

Many educators have heard about the need to implement trauma-sensitive practices in order to help students heal and succeed. But what does this look like on a day-to-day basis? What does it require of teachers and of those who lead them?

In Trauma-Sensitive School Leadership, Bill Ziegler, Dave Ramage, Andrea Parson, and Justin Foster provide a framework to guide administrators and their teams through the process. With reference to research and their own experience as teachers, counselors, and school leaders, the authors explain how to

* Develop empathetic and supportive relationships among students and staff.
* Identify biases and barriers that hinder educators’ ability to support learners affected by trauma.
* Design all-school events and daily lesson plans to minimize the likelihood of retraumatizing vulnerable students.
* Retool discipline practices and physical spaces to foster a more trauma-sensitive culture and climate.
* Establish supports to help teachers and other staff deal with secondary trauma.

Accepting students for who they are and responding compassionately to their needs leads to greater success in academics and life. With 50 recommended strategies and real-life examples of trauma-informed healing practices, Trauma-Sensitive School Leadership can help you transform your school to better serve your students.

Learn the different types of upsets and traumas your child may experience-and how to teach them to be resilient, confident, and joyful in the face of anxiety

The number of anxious, depressed, hyperactive and withdrawn children is staggering-and still growing! Millions have experienced bullying, violence (real or in the media), abuse or sexual molestation. Many other kids have been traumatized from more “ordinary” ordeals such as terrifying medical procedures, accidents, loss and divorce. Trauma-Proofing Your Kids sends a lifeline to parents who wonder how they can help their worried and troubled children now. It offers simple but powerful tools to keep children safe from danger and to help them “bounce back” after feeling scared and overwhelmed. No longer will kids have to be passive prey to predators or the innocent victims of life’s circumstances.

In addition to arming parents with priceless protective strategies, best-selling authors Dr. Peter A. Levine and Maggie Kline offer an antidote to trauma and a recipe for creating resilient kids no matter what misfortune has besieged them. Trauma-Proofing Your Kids is a treasure trove of simple-to-follow “stress-busting,” boundary-setting, sensory/motor-awareness activities that counteract trauma’s effect on a child’s body, mind and spirit. Including a chapter on how to navigate the inevitable difficulties that arise during the various ages and stages of development, this ground-breaking book simplifies an often mystifying and complex subject, empowering parents to raise truly confident and joyful kids despite stressful and turbulent times.

Positive student behaviors are desired outcomes, but this manual concentrates on inputs. How do you respond to difficult behavior in the moment when you know that punitive, compliance-based behavior management is so often ineffectual? What’s the best way to prevent students from acting out in the first place? The path to success requires behavioral leadership, in which teachers strategically model and affirm the behaviors they want to see in students.

Behavior expert Scott Ervin calls on his two decades of experience to share the most effective procedures and strategies to foster positive, prosocial student behavior that supports learning, including ways to
* Organize your physical classroom to support positive classroom management.
* Build positive teacher-student relationships.
* Share control with students in a way that best fosters their autonomy.

The Classroom Behavior Manual is a resource you can return to again and again, packed with more than 100 strategies and dozens of procedures and tools. Learn how to respond to negative behaviors in nonpunitive ways so that you can ensure all students’ school days are as calm, engaging, and educational as they possibly can be.

A guide to the intersection of trauma and special needs, featuring strategies teachers can use to build resilience and counter the effects of trauma on learning and behavior.

Childhood trauma is a national health crisis. As many as two out of every three children in any classroom across the country have experienced some form of trauma. Meanwhile, a recent study in Washington State showed that 80 percent of the children eligible for special education services were exposed to early childhood trauma, which has been linked to developmental disabilities. Add in the fact that Black children are four times more likely to be classified with intellectual disabilities and five times more likely than white students to be classified with an emotional or behavioral disorder, and the already daunting complexity of effectively serving kids with an individualized education program (IEP) becomes overwhelming.

This is a whole school problem that requires a whole school solution. All educators in both general and special education should learn how trauma affects the brain and how any resulting atypical neurological and psychological development affects learning and behavior.

In Trauma-Informed Teaching and IEPs, trauma expert Melissa Sadin presents strategies for supporting the most vulnerable students in general or special education settings, across grade levels, and across the curriculum. You’ll learn to

* Understand the effects of childhood trauma on the brain, learning, and behavior.
* Weave caring into trauma-informed instruction.
* Apply a trauma-informed lens to crafting IEPs.
* Conduct trauma-informed functional behavior assessments.

Once you understand the effects of trauma on learning and development, you will explore classroom strategies and IEP goals and modifications that can actually help to heal your students.With rich examples and helpful strategies, Trauma-Informed Teaching and IEPs gives teachers the most effective tools to help build resilience for every student, no matter their needs.

School discipline is broken. Too often, the kids who need our help the most are viewed as disrespectful, out of control, and beyond help, and are often the recipients of our most ineffective, most punitive interventions. These students and their parents, teachers, and administrators are frustrated and desperate for answers.

Dr. Ross W. Greene, author of the acclaimed book The Explosive Child, offers educators and parents a different framework for understanding challenging behavior. Dr. Greene’s Collaborative Proactive Solutions (CPS) approach helps adults focus on the true factors contributing to challenging classroom behaviors, empowering educators to address these factors and create helping relationships with their most at-risk kids.

This revised and updated edition of Lost at School contains the latest refinements to Dr. Greene’s CPS model, including enhanced methods for solving problems collaboratively, improving communication, and building relationships with kids.

Dr. Greene’s lively, compelling narrative includes:

• Tools to identify the problems and lagging skills causing challenging behavior
• Explicit guidance on how to radically improve interactions with challenging kids and reduce challenging episodes, along with many examples showing how it’s done.
• Practical guidance for successful planning and collaboration among educators, parents, and kids.

Backed by years of experience and research and written with a powerful sense of hope and achievable change, Lost at School gives teachers and parents the realistic strategies and information to impact the classroom experience of every challenging kid (and their classmates).

The key steps to leading a happier, more contented and fulfilling life.

THE NATIONAL BESTSELLER
*1 in 4 adolescents have a mental illness
*1 in 7 primary school kids have a mental illness
*1 in 5 adults will experience mental ill-health throughout the year
*65% of adolescents do not seek help for mental illness

Hugh van Cuylenburg was a primary school teacher volunteering in northern India when he had a life-changing realisation: despite the underprivileged community the children were from, they were remarkably positive. By contrast, back in Australia Hugh knew that all too many people found it hard to be happy, or suffered from mental illnesses such as depression and anxiety. His own little sister had been ravaged by anorexia nervosa.

How was it that young people he knew at home, who had food, shelter, friends and a loving family, struggled with their mental health, while these kids seemed so contented and resilient? He set about finding the answer and in time came to recognise the key traits and behaviours these children possessed were gratitude, empathy and mindfulness.

In the ensuing years Hugh threw himself into studying and sharing this revelation with the world through The Resilience Project, with his playful and unorthodox presentations which both entertain and inform. Now, with the same blend of humour, poignancy and clear-eyed insight that The Resilience Project has become renowned for, Hugh explains how we can all get the tools we need to live a happier and more fulfilling life.

In this book you will discover:
* Powerful and touching stories from people Hugh has met and helped during his years on the road spreading the message of resilience.
* An exploration of the neuroscience of ‘resilience’ and how we can address it.
* The crucial role of parents in helping raise happier children (and how to do it).

The Teachers Guide to Trauma provides an introduction to the neurobiological and psychological impact of early childhood trauma. This guide is designed to provide an overview of how trauma impacts learning and behavior in school. True stories and practical strategies help teachers and parents understand how best to meet the learning and behavior needs of children with trauma.

Each year hundreds of thousands of children in the United States experience trauma, such as abuse, neglect, or community violence; that creates tough obstacles to academic achievement and social success. Now there’s a practical, strategy-filled book that shows educators how to reach and teach students exposed to trauma. Through clear and readable explanations of current research and enlightening vignettes, educators will understand how violence and other forms of trauma affect the key elements of a child’s school and social success, including behaviour, attention, memory, and language. Then they’ll find dozens of simple, creative ideas; easy to use in any classroom, on any budget; that show them how to adapt instruction to address the learning characteristics of children exposed to trauma; help students develop the most important skills they need to succeed in school; use positive behaviour supports so children can stay calm and focused on learning; build meaningful, appropriate, and supportive teacher-student relationships; encourage positive peer relationships through cooperative games, group projects, and buddy systems; provide predictable routines that instil a sense of safety and control; avoid burnout and reduce the effects of ‘compassion fatigue’; integrate a trauma-sensitive perspective across an entire school.

Throughout the book, realistic sample scenarios demonstrate how teachers can make the strategies work in their classroom and challenging What Would You Do? quizzes sharpen educators’ instincts so they can respond skilfully in difficult situations. With this timely, much-needed guidebook, education professionals will create supportive classrooms and schools that meet the complex learning needs of children who hurt; and help the most vulnerable students build resilience and hope.

 Our children can become violent, detached, or shut down when early development is toxic, severely disrupted and is met with significant adverse childhood experiences.

Children are our nation’s greatest natural resource and their emotional, mental and physiological well-being are at stake.What can we do? We begin with the awareness and research that adversity just doesn’t happen to a child — it attacks and hijacks a child’s brain, body and nervous system function reprograming how they react and respond to all life.

For educators, counselors, social workers, mental health professionals and law enforcement–this book presents the neurobiology of adversity and trauma in youth and the resiliency of hope and mindfulness … and how to help.

Traumatic or adverse experiences are pervasive among school-aged children and youth. These experiences undermine students’ ability to learn, form relationships, and manage their feelings and behavior. Meanwhile, educators and school-based professionals often remain unaware of the complex needs of their students or how to meet them within the hours of the typical school day, all while possibly dealing with their own stressors. Supporting and Educating Traumatized Students: A Guide for School-Based Professionals provides a practically oriented tool for understanding and assisting students with a history of trauma. Designed specifically for professionals in mental health and education settings, this volume combines content and expertise from practitioners, researchers, and other experts with backgrounds in education, school psychology, school social work, school administration, resilience, school policy, and trauma. The book provides a thorough background on current research in trauma and its impact on school functioning; administrative and policy considerations; and a broad set of practical and implementable strategies and resources for adapting and differentiating instruction, modifying the classroom and school environments, and building competency for students and staff impacted by trauma. Rather than provide complex treatment protocols, the chapters in this book offer simple techniques and strategies designed for all types of educational environments within the context of multiple potential sources of trauma. Supporting and Educating Traumatized Students is an essential resource for classroom teachers, administrators, and school-based professionals, as well as courses that address crisis, trauma, and education across a broad spectrum of specializations.

The Trauma-Informed School is an all-inclusive guide designed to give school administrators of any school (elementary, middle or high school), step-by-step instructions of how to turn a school of any size into a trauma-informed school. With over 250 pages of content, this guide gives you the protocols you need along with a link to download all the documents needed for a successful implementation.

This well written and well-organized guide was developed from the vast experience of a nationally recognized retired school principal and school consultant (Jim Sporleder) and a nationally recognized trauma expert (Heather T. Forbes, LCSW). The combined work of these two authors is a winning combination that will equip and empower you to become a trailblazer in the area of trauma-informed education.

Drawing on her extensive experience as a school counselor, trainer, and mother, trauma expert Jen Alexander delivers a comprehensive framework for building a safe, supportive school environment that helps all students learn and thrive. You’ll start with an evidence-based introduction to the profound impact of trauma on a child’s development, attachment, and behavior. Then you’ll get an effective multi-tier system of support (MTSS) for developing a trauma-sensitive learning environment, including both universal strategies (Tier 1) and more intensive interventions (Tier 2 and Tier 3) for students who need more support. Compelling anecdotes and sample scripts illuminate challenges and solutions, and the included forms and worksheets are valuable tools for helping educators build the mindset and skills necessary for becoming trauma-sensitive. With this engaging, highly practical guide to what works and why, your school team will gain insights and develop action plans that make a real difference in the lives of all kids, including our most vulnerable youth.

DISCOVER HOW TO:

• make five key shifts in the way you view and approach students, so that you’re better equipped to support them
• work together to prioritize resilience by actively putting relationships first in your school
• implement universal instructional strategies that foster safety, connection, regulation, and learning for all students
• use special supports, supplemental instruction, and coaching when universal strategies aren’t enough
• collaborate effectively with families and colleagues to meet each student’s needs
• incorporate restorative discipline practices that focus on restitution, not retribution
• create a personalized self-care plan to promote wellness and reduce the effects of job-related stress

PRACTICAL MATERIALS: Creative activities for teachers, powerful case stories, sample dialogues and scripts for educators and counselors, reflection and brainstorming worksheets, downloadable forms, and templates and handouts for use with students.

Build resilience by helping all students

• Feel safe
• Be connected
• Get regulated
• Learn

Growing evidence supports the important relationship between trauma and academic failure. Along with the failure of “zero tolerance” policies to resolve issues of school safety and a new understanding of children’s disruptive behaviour, educators are changing the way they view children’s academic and social problems.

In response, the trauma-sensitive schools movement presents a new vision for promoting children’s success. This book introduces this promising approach and provides K–5 education professionals with clear explanations of current research and dozens of practical, creative ideas.

In today’s schools, students and teachers feel unprecedented-even alarming-levels of stress. How can we create calmer classrooms in which students concentrate better and feel more positive about themselves and others? Author Thomas Armstrong offers a compelling answer in the form of mindfulness, a secular practice he defines as the intentional focus of one’s attention on the present moment in a nonjudgmental way.

In Mindfulness in the Classroom, Armstrong:

• Explains how mindfulness affects the structure and function of the brain.
• Provides an overview of mindfulness as both a personal practice and a classroom methodology that aligns with such educational models as Social and Emotional Learning (SEL), Positive Behavioral Intervention and Supports (PBIS), and Universal Design for Learning (UDL).
• Shares and explains the extensive research that shows the positive effects of mindfulness practices in the classroom.
• Describes how to adapt mindfulness for different grade levels, integrate it into regular school subjects, and implement it schoolwide.
• Offers guidelines for teaching mindfulness responsibly, without religious overtones.

Dozens of observations from teachers, students, researchers, and practitioners provide striking evidence of the power of mindfulness and offer hope to anyone who wants to make classrooms more productive places of learning.

What happens when a young child is traumatized? How does terror affect a child’s mind-and how can that mind recover?

Child psychiatrist Bruce Perry has treated children faced with unimaginable horror: homicide survivors, witnesses to their own parents’ murders, children raised in closets and cages, the Branch Davidian children, and victims of extreme neglect and family violence.

In The Boy Who Was Raised as a Dog, Dr. Perry tells their stories of trauma and transformation. He explains what happens to the brain when children are exposed to extreme stress and trauma and reveals his innovative (non-medicinal) methods for helping to ease their pain and allowing them to become healthy adults. In this deeply informed and moving book, Perry shares with the reader the lessons of courage, humanity and hope he learned from these scarred children. He dramatically demonstrates that only when we understand the science of the mind and the power of love and nurturing, can we hope to heal the spirit of even the most wounded child.

From birth, when babies’ fingers instinctively cling to those of adults, their bodies and brains seek an intimate connection, a bond made possible by empathy—the ability to love and to share the feelings of others.
In this provocative book, renowned child psychiatrist Bruce D. Perry and award-winning science journalist Maia Szalavitz interweave research and stories from Perry’s practice with cutting-edge scientific studies and historical examples to explain how empathy develops, why it is essential for our development into healthy adults, and how it is threatened in the modern world.
Perry and Szalavitz show that compassion underlies the qualities that make society work— trust, altruism, collaboration, love, charity—and how difficulties related to empathy are key factors in social problems such as war, crime, racism, and mental illness. Even physical health, from infectious diseases to heart attacks, is deeply affected by our human connections to one another.
As Born for Love reveals, recent changes in technology, child-rearing practices, education, and lifestyles are starting to rob children of necessary human contact and deep relationships—the essential foundation for empathy and a caring, healthy society. Sounding an important warning bell, Born for Love offers practical ideas for combating the negative influences of modern life and fostering positive social change to benefit us all.

“Essential reading for anyone interested in understanding and treating traumatic stress and the scope of its impact on society.” —Alexander McFarlane, Director of the Centre for Traumatic Stress Studies

A pioneering researcher transforms our understanding of trauma and offers a bold new paradigm for healing in this New York Times bestseller

Trauma is a fact of life. Veterans and their families deal with the painful aftermath of combat; one in five Americans has been molested; one in four grew up with alcoholics; one in three couples have engaged in physical violence. Dr. Bessel van der Kolk, one of the world’s foremost experts on trauma, has spent over three decades working with survivors. In The Body Keeps the Score, he uses recent scientific advances to show how trauma literally reshapes both body and brain, compromising sufferers’ capacities for pleasure, engagement, self-control, and trust. He explores innovative treatments—from neurofeedback and meditation to sports, drama, and yoga—that offer new paths to recovery by activating the brain’s natural neuroplasticity. Based on Dr. van der Kolk’s own research and that of other leading specialists, The Body Keeps the Score exposes the tremendous power of our relationships both to hurt and to heal—and offers new hope for reclaiming lives.

*Previously published as The Deepest Well*

Finally after thirty years, I finally understood . . . this book holds the answers youve been searching for. Kerry Hudson

The Surgeon General of California reveals pioneering research on how childhood stress leads to lifelong health problems and what we can do to break the cycle. Perfect for fans of The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel van der Kolk, this eye-opening book includes a free Adverse Childhood Experience test and looks at the widespread crisis of trauma and childhood adversity through the objective lens of science and medicine, providing a roadmap for deeper understanding and change. It is vital now more than ever, as a result of the * pandemic, that we find a way to address, understand and heal trauma.Two thirds of us have experienced at least one adverse childhood experience, from the likes of bereavement and divorce to abuse and neglect. In Toxic Childhood Stress Dr Burke Harris reveals the science behind childhood adversity and offers a new way of understanding the adverse events that affect us throughout our lifetime. Based on her own groundbreaking clinical work and public leadership, Dr Burke Harris shows us how we can disrupt this cycle through interventions that help retrain the brain and body, foster resilience, and help children, families, and adults live healthier, happier lives.When a young boy walked into Dr Nadine Burke Harris’s clinic he looked healthy for a preschooler. But he was seven, and hadn’t grown a centimetre since a traumatic event when he was four. At that moment Dr Burke Harris knew that her gut feeling about a connection between childhood stress and future ill health was more than just a hunch and she began her journey into groundbreaking research with stunning results.

In this stirring follow-up to the award-winning Fostering Resilient Learners, Kristin Van Marter Souers and Pete Hall take you to the next level of trauma-invested practice. To get there, they explain, educators need to build a “”nest””—a positive learning environment shaped by three new Rs of education: relationship, responsibility, and regulation.

Drawing from their extensive experience working with schools, students, and families throughout the country, the authors:

• Explain how to create a culture of safety in which everyone feels valued, important, and capable of learning.
• Describe the four areas of need—emotional, relational, physical, and control—that drive student behaviors and show how to meet these needs with interventions framed around the new three Rs.
• Illustrate trauma-invested practices in action through real scenarios that identify students’ unmet needs, examine the situation from five stakeholder perspectives, and suggest interventions to support students and their families.
• Offer opportunities to challenge your beliefs and develop deeper and different ways of thinking about your role in your students’ lives.

Educators have a unique opportunity to influence students’ learning, attitudes, and futures. This book will invigorate your practice and equip you to empower those you serve—whatever their personal histories.

Oprah Winfrey and renowned brain development and trauma expert, Dr. Bruce Perry, discuss the impact of trauma and adverse experiences and how healing must begin with a shift to asking, “what happened to you?” rather than “what’s wrong with you?”

Through wide-ranging, and often deeply personal conversation, Oprah Winfrey and Dr. Perry explore how what happens to us in early childhood – both good and bad – influences the people we become. They challenge us to shift from focusing on, “What’s wrong with you?” or “Why are you behaving that way?,” to asking, “What happened to you?” This simple change in perspective can open up a new and hopeful understanding for millions about why we do the things we do, why we are the way we are, providing a road map for repairing relationships, overcoming what seems insurmountable, and ultimately living better and more fulfilling lives.

Many of us experience adversity and trauma during childhood that has lasting impact on our physical and emotional health. And as we’re beginning to understand, we are more sensitive to developmental trauma as children than we are as adults. ‘What happened to us’ in childhood is a powerful predictor of our risk for physical and mental health problems down the road, and offers scientific insights in to the patterns of behaviors so many struggle to understand.

A survivor of multiple childhood challenges herself, Oprah Winfrey shares portions of her own harrowing experiences because she understands the vulnerability that comes from facing trauma at a young age. Throughout her career, Oprah has teamed up with Dr. Bruce Perry, one of the world’s leading experts on childhood trauma. He has treated thousands of children, youth, and adults and has been called on for decades to support individuals and communities following high-profile traumatic events. Now, Oprah joins forces with Dr. Perry to marry the power of storytelling with the science and clinical experience to better understand and overcome the effects of trauma.

In conversation throughout the book, the two focus on understanding people, behavior, and ourselves in the context of personal experiences. They remove blame and self-shaming, and open up a space for healing and understanding. It’s a subtle but profound shift in our approach to trauma, and it’s one that allows us to understand our pasts in order to clear a path to our future – opening the door to resilience and healing in a proven, powerful way.

Grounded in the latest brain science and brought to life through compelling narratives, this book shines a light on a much-needed path to recovery – showing us our incredible capacity to transform after adversity.

Based on the popular Soles of the Feet program, this groundbreaking resource for teachers offers a proven-effective, mindfulness-based intervention to reduce disruptive behavior in the classroom—so everyone can get back to learning.

As a teacher, you know that some kids need extra help staying focused in the classroom. You’ve probably also lost countless hours of precious learning time in class due to student disruption. Whether kids are suffering from stress, a behavior disorder, or emotional issues—the good news is that there are real tools you can use to help children manage their feelings, stay on task, and reach their full potential. This book will show you how.

In Mindfulness in the Classroom, two experts in the field of mindfulness research, child psychology, and school psychology offer a mindfulness-based intervention to help support a healthy learning environment. Based on the authors’ Soles of the Feet program, this book provides an evidence-based strategy to help you put a stop to disruptive behavior in the classroom, and help kids be their very best.

Without early intervention for disruptive behaviors, many students will maintain these behaviors as adults. The Soles of the Feet program not only decreases disruptive behavior and increases teaching time, it also improves the long-term outcome for children experiencing behavior challenges—so they can thrive well into adulthood.

Trauma-Informed Practices With Children and Adolescents is a sourcebook of practical approaches to working with children and adolescents that synthesizes research from leading trauma specialists and translates it into easy-to-implement techniques. The approaches laid out address the sensory and somatic experiences of trauma within structured formats that meet the “best practices” criteria for trauma-informed care: safety, self-regulation, trauma integration, healthy relationships, and healthy environments. Each chapter contains short excerpts, case examples, and commentary relevant to the chapter topic from recognized leaders in the field of trauma intervention with children and adolescents. In addition to this, readers will find chapters filled with easily applied activities, methods, and approaches to assessment, self-regulation, trauma integration, and resilience-building. The book’s structured yet comprehensive approach provides professionals with the resources they need to help trauma victims not just survive but thrive and move from victim thinking to survivor thinking using the current best practices in the field.