Reflections on My "Why"

I mentioned in a previous post (or at least think I did, lol) about how I participated in a book study on trauma this year for my professional development. (I know I at least recommended the book on my post about surviving mental illness. Here’s a link to purchase the book if you’re interested; I highly recommend it!)

Each chapter, we were asked to dig a little deeper into some of the content and answer some questions related to the topics in that chapter. My response to the first assignment is the one I’m including in this post because 1) I think it’s a worthy post, 2) I think it’s essential to continuously reflect on your “why”, and 3) I plan to talk a LOT more about trauma on the blog as I learn more and more... both as a professional and as a regular ol’ human.

Our discussion leader posed the following question: 

Week 1:

What is your WHY?  Why do you think it is important to learn about trauma in our schools?

I’ve been thinking A LOT about this question since starting the study.  To be honest, this has not been what I would call my most successful or productive school year.  I have reflected much on what I think has contributed to that, and I have been examining all these factors in my heart. 

That said, it’s easy in such a state to lose your “why.” I think that’s why I’ve struggled so much in exactly what to respond to this question.  Furthermore, I think it would be accurate to say that my “why” has changed over my 13 years in education. I decided to begin by re-examining a “why” list that I made for myself a few years ago when I began my National Boards pursuit (see photo below).  It included, among other things, how my students deserved the absolute best and how determined I was to become that for them. It also included my belief in how God had brought me to that point and that pursuit, as well as how I wanted to show my students that they were not the only ones working toward goals and learning new things.  I also wrote about how I believed in my profession and how I had the responsibility to be a peer coach model to improve my profession.

While I still believe in these principles and hold fast to them daily to keep persevering, I think my “why” has certainly shifted. In recent years, I have had numerous students with critical ... issues and traumatic situations who needed my emotional support for survival.  I’ve always known that the role I play in my students’ lives is much more than that of a teacher because of the connections I build with their families to overcome linguistic and cultural barriers and ease their transition into a new country. As these situations began to plague one after another of my students, I found myself struggling to meet their emotional and academic needs, and I knew I had to prioritize their emotional needs above all else.  I reached out for professional development on the subject of childhood trauma and was eventually recommended this study.

Reading this book, and the personal events I’ve recently endured, have taught me so much about trauma in general, with my students, and even my own personal trauma.  I am one of those that the book mentions as having a high ACES score (I will return to these ideas later in a future post). I had a traumatic childhood, and recent personal events have resurfaced some of those experiences for me.  As I study, I am overcoming many of the things explored in this text and others that I’ve been reading. As I do so, I learn more and more about myself and more about how to be a better teacher and leader for these children.  I believe that my own personal experiences, though incredibly painful, have perhaps uniquely prepared me to work with the students who have been under my care and tutelage.  

For this reason, it’s essential to inform ourselves about trauma and the trauma response. Our students need and deserve professionals who can identify and respond in appropriate ways to ease their burden and create an environment conducive to healing and success.  If I, a student who on the outside looked like she had it all together, could be “this student”, then any one of the students on our rosters could need supportive interventions for trauma. That’s why we have to study it and make it a foundational part of our platform in EVERY classroom to hopefully reach EVERY child. It also helps us to understand our own personal histories and to know and reflect on the mark we are leaving… in our schools, in our families, and in the world.

So, now my “why” has changed.  I believe that my “why” is to create climates of safety and love for international, multicultural, and multilinguistic children.  Our world can be a very unkind place, particularly in recent political climes, and I want more than anything for my children to look back on their time in my classroom as esteem-boosting and meaningful.  I want them to know that they matter and they have the potential to do incredible things to make this world a better place because they are in it! My “why” is to show students struggling with the same (or different) trauma that they can overcome and learn to be successful.  My “why” is to make a difference in a life… even if it’s just one life.