Children who experience four or more adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) before they’re 17 years old are more likely to experience unemployment and incarceration as adults, and often attain lower levels of education and low-wage jobs.
That’s according to Santa Barbara County’s 2017 Children’s Scorecard, which defines an ACE as any traumatic or stressful event–ranging from sexual abuse to witnessing family violence–endured by a child. The scorecard also includes a retrospective study of Santa Barbara County adults released in 2014, which shows that roughly 57 percent had experienced at least one ACE while growing up, and more than 13 percent had faced four or more ACEs.
Greg Dickinson, assistant principal at Pioneer Valley High School, is not one of those adults. Dickinson, a self-described “privileged white guy” who was raised in a family of six, said his childhood was essentially trauma-free.
“It’s sad,” Dickinson said on Aug. 10 in Pioneer Valley’s library, where dozens of teachers gathered to learn about increasing resilience among local high school students who have experienced childhood trauma.
“Well, it’s not sad,” Dickinson laughed. “It’s great. But I can’t relate.”
That’s why Dickinson wanted to learn about childhood trauma and how it impacts the students he works with every day.
At the event on Aug. 10, Edwin Weaver, executive director of Fighting Back: Santa Maria Valley, presented a condensed version of the Community Resilience Model to Pioneer Valley teachers. The model, Weaver said, is a recently developed training program that gives community members a set of simple tools that can reset the nervous system during stressful events and increase resilience.
Stressful or triggering situations often bump people out of their “resiliency zones,” Weaver said at the event, the stable emotional state where we feel most adept at handling life’s challenges. When an individual is bumped out of his or her zone–a more frequent occurrence for those who have experienced some form of trauma–the brain becomes reactive, and it can be nearly impossible to think and react to situations appropriately.
That, Weaver said, often makes it difficult for students with stressful or abusive home lives to focus at school.
But the Community Resiliency Model could give teachers easy-to-learn, free tools to help themselves and students combat that reactive experience.
“There is a lot of resistance to mental health services,” Weaver told the Sun. “There is a lot of stigma. So this is a real easy way to get things into the community that are helpful.”
At the beginning of the event, the teachers discussed difficult personal experiences that they’d had in or outside the classroom. As teachers around the room told stories about students they felt they couldn’t help, more-than-stressful days at school, and the ACEs they experienced growing up, the room’s energy shifted down.
But later Weaver asked the teachers to tell a happy story. He told the audience it could be about any joyous person, place, or activity. He told them to bring in as much detail as possible and said to focus on any physical reactions they had while telling the stories.
Some teachers talked about their kids, others camping, but all of them smiled. Some stood up straighter while telling their stories, some laughed, and others took deeper breaths. The energy was back up.
Simply focusing on a joyful memory and the body’s reaction to it can be a cathartic experience for someone feeling stressed, Weaver said. Teachers can use it for themselves on bad days, he said, or guide struggling students.
However, Weaver said happy memories won’t help someone who is already breaking down. In a situation of panic, Weaver said pushing on a wall, drinking a glass of water, or counting backwards can help immensely.
After the presentation, several teachers thanked Weaver for the help. Treating trauma can be difficult, and Weaver said he’s heard lots of positive reinforcement from community members since he started teaching the Community Resilience Model about two years ago.
“So often mental health is for the affluent, for those who have time, who have money, who have insurance, and who have access,” Weaver told the Sun. “So I’m pretty passionate in this intervention, because once you give it to somebody it’s theirs and they can teach it to other people. So it’s very exponential. It has the potential to be exponentially helpful.”
Staff Writer Kasey Bubnash writes School Scene each week. Information can be sent to the Sun via mail, fax, or email at mail@santamariasun.com.
This article appears in Aug 16-23, 2018.