Post Pandemic Support for Students – Part 1: Early Considerations

The COVID-19 pandemic is first and foremost a health crisis. The severe disruption is felt by many families around the world and home schooling is not only a massive shock to parents’ productivity, but also to children’s social life and learning. The global lockdown of education institutions is going to cause major (and likely unequal) interruption in students’ learning. This course explores an urgent and growing issue--childhood trauma--and its current profound effect on learning and teaching. Grounded in research and the experience of working with trauma-affected students, this course will help you cultivate a trauma-sensitive learning environment for students across all content areas, grade levels, and educational settings. Within this course, you will begin to understand what trauma is and how it hinders the learning, motivation, and success of all students in the classroom. In addition, strategies will be offered that will help you to build strong relationships and create a safe space to enable students to assimilate back into learning once schools are back in session. There will also be some consideration in ways to deal with stress and burnout with essential self-care techniques that will help you and your students flourish. The projected outcome of this course is to provide educators with the knowledge, understanding, and methodologies for creating trauma sensitive classrooms as we move through the pandemic, as well as offer ideas to help build relationships that allow students to grow, thrive, and learn at high levels once school is back in session.