Story Behind Childhood Trauma Overview

Dr. Isaiah Pickens

Understanding the role of adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) and trauma in shaping the academic experience of young people is integral for youth exposed to challenging experiences outside the classroom. This presentation will illuminate the key skills adults who work with young people can use to identify trauma, understand its impact, and practically promote skills within young people that promote academic achievement, improved connections with others, and living more productive and fulfilled lives. Individuals will leave this presentation with practical evidence-informed tools for supporting youth impacted by trauma from a diversity of backgrounds.

Using Trauma-Informed Principles to Infuse Self-Care into Schools

Dr. Isaiah Pickens

The trauma-informed movement has illuminated the challenge and promise of having educators address the needs of youth impacted by trauma.  While these trauma-informed practices can support the healing of students, it can create significant drain for adults working with those students—in addition to the other life and professional stressors that demand their energy.  This presentation will provide evidence-informed strategies for identifying secondary traumatic stress (STS), building compassion satisfaction, and understanding how to prevent burnout while finding fulfillment in work.

Building Trauma Sensitive Schools

Greta Colombi

This interactive session will focus on building trauma-sensitive schools by first introducing the concept of trauma sensitivity and then providing examples of trauma-sensitive practices that can be adopted in the classroom and schoolwide across six domains: 1) supporting staff development; 2) creating a safe and supportive environment; 3) assessing needs and provide support; 4) building social and emotional skills; 5) collaborating with students and families; and 6) adapting policies and procedures.

Embrace the Brain to Change YOUR Game from Survival to Thriving!

Katrina Jefferson

Learn about how trauma and ACEs impact the brain, development and behavior. Understanding how experiences are processed in the brain empowers you to change the game. Learn to recognize behavior patterns resulting from brain and body functions and how to respond to improve cooperation and outcomes. Learning these key concepts will take you from just surviving the day to thriving in your role.

Journey of Hope Overview

Tony Richards 

Journey of Hope is a psychosocial support program that employs a child-centered, strengths-based approach to facilitate children, youth, and caregivers identifying positive resources to understand and cope with emotions caused by distressing situations. The intervention model is organized into five developmentally appropriate curricula, thereby reaching ages four and up.  Children and youth programs are divided into eight or nine one-hour sessions that can be implemented within a school term or in a summer camp. Each session maintains the same structure as the previous but covers a different emotional topic, such as anger, sadness, or self-esteem.  Caregiver workshops focus on stress management and self-care and help adults to identify types and sources of stress, how stress manifests in our bodies and minds, resources and coping mechanisms, and envision their ideal community.

Compassion Fatigue

Amy Cunningham

Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) is a health issue most people are familiar with, but what about those individuals who dedicate their lives to caring for the traumatized? What is the cost to them? Every day, police officers, firefighters, doctors, teachers, therapists, nurses, and others selflessly serve traumatized patients and victims. However, research has shown it comes at an extreme cost. The empathetic nature of caring professionals exposes them to an increased risk of vicarious trauma, or Compassion Fatigue, where the helper during a crisis can also become personally affected without personally experiencing the trauma. The PTSD symptoms can begin to manifest in those serving the traumatized and begin to create significant personal, emotional, and psychological changes within a person.

In this talk you will learn how to differentiate between stress, burnout, and compassion fatigue.  You will learn to recognize the signs and symptoms of compassion fatigue, identify the trajectory, and begin to implement the five resiliencies needed to assist you achieving post traumatic growth.

A Better Stress Mindset

Amy Cunningham

Recognizing the presence of stress and understanding the repercussions is vitally important to your personal health. In this talk, you will learn to identify stress, the causes of increased stress in the workplace, and how the perception of stress affects your health. Stress is subjective; however, when people change how they think about and react to stress, research shows that the body will then react differently, allowing you to better cope with stress. Through this talk you will also begin to implement the 5 resiliencies needed to assist you in achieving post traumatic growth. Activities will be introduced to encourage physical, spiritual, emotional, psychological, and workplace resilience.

Helping Traumatized Children in the Classroom

Holly Sly

This session focuses on being able to identify what trauma is and what it looks like in children.  It then goes into how it affects our children in the classroom (both academically and behaviorally), and a few take away tips to help these children right now.

Handle with Care

Andrea Darr

This workshop offers innovative best practices for helping to mitigate the negative effects experienced by children’s exposure to trauma and highlights a promising initiative (Handle with Care) between schools/child care agency, law enforcement and treatment providers.  “Handle with Care” provides the school with a “heads up” when a child has been identified by law enforcement at the scene of a traumatic event.  Schools are responding with interventions to help mitigate the trauma, and mental health providers are co-locating at the school to provide services.  Handle with Care programs promote safe and supportive homes, schools, and communities that protect children, and help traumatized children heal and thrive.

Legal Issues Arising in the Educational Setting:  Questions and Answers!

Leslie Tyree

This session will discuss legal pitfalls, issues, and solutions that arise for educators on a daily basis in the ever changing landscape of public education. 

Thinking Outside the Box with Behavior

Meredith Ramey

Lincoln County Schools has seen a dramatic increase of difficult behaviors in our younger students. Through the SAT process and WVBTT transitions, we discover, more often than not, the children were exposed to drugs, abuse, or neglect, are in the state’s custody within foster care, or were adopted out of foster care. At an elementary school that had the highest percentage of at-risk students, we built a “calming space.” Along with several other measures within a trauma-informed approach, these calming spaces have given our educators another option to have a student calm themselves and return to class.

Trauma Informed Schools:  One District’s Journey

Dr. Rikki McCormick

ACE Study. Opioid epidemic. Drug-endangered children. Extreme behaviors. Public schools are facing challenges that they have never before faced. In an effort to support the whole child, Lincoln County Schools is now in year four of becoming trauma-informed/trauma-sensitive to support the needs of the entire child. 

Tips, Tricks, and Strategies to Move the Brain from Survival to Thriving!

Katrina Jefferson

Are behaviors getting in the way of teaching and learning? Learn how behaviors result from experiences and how to respond to behavior to improve academic results. You will be provided a variety of neurologically supported strategies and techniques to impact behavior and move brain functions from survival to executive functioning for improved results. 

Brain and Body:  How to Use Both to Help Traumatized Kids and Adults

Dr. Lori Ellison

Trauma is a virtually universal phenomenon in today’s world. Almost everyone has been through something traumatic, but different people deal with it in different ways. This workshop will discuss the primary physiological and psychological processes common to dealing with trauma. Participants will have the opportunity to discuss and practice some skills and interventions to use personally, with a friend, or in the classroom to address both the physical and psychological residues of traumatic experience. A resource list and handouts will be provided.