Abstract:

According to Dr. Nadine Burke Harris (2018), “Twenty years of medical research has shown that childhood adversity literally gets under our skin, changing people in ways that can endure in their bodies for decade” (Kindle Edition). People who have had to deal with childhood adversity are more likely to develop chronic illness like heart disease, cancer, diabetes, obesity, and asthma. Children and teens who live with childhood adversity live in “a constant state of emergency” (Jennings, 2019) and many struggle mightily in school. Anecdotally, teachers have been reporting increased stress in their students that support descriptions of increased adversity in our students (e.g., school gun violence, opioid crisis, poverty, refugee children fleeing from violence). The good news is that these authors believe schools can make a positive difference for their students. With this in mind the present mixed methods study is the first of two related studies. In this study the authors, using qualitative and quantitative methods seek to gather data to be able to identify the extent of childhood adversity in students today and gather deeper information and advice from students for teachers to help students develop coping skills. The research questions guiding this study are: 1. To what extent have our university students been exposed to childhood adversity? 2. What advice, to help students of childhood adversity, do people, who have had to deal with childhood adversity, have for classroom teachers? Quantitative data will be collected through a survey that asks university student participants to indicate which adversities with which they dealt with prior to 18 years of age. Qualitative data will be gathered by asking participants to respond to three open ended questions: 1. What have teachers done that have helped you that you would like other teacher to do for students who have had to live with childhood adversity? 2. What have teachers done that you found to not be helpful or maybe even harmful that you want to make teacher teachers know to not do their students? 3. What do you wish teachers had done that they did not do to help you? Additional and deeper responses will be gathered by interviewing students who volunteer to share their ideas with the authors.

Keywords:

Childhood adversity, trauma, trauma-sensitive classrooms, compassionate teaching.