Joe Brecht.
• by Jeremy Tepper, AIU Communications Specialist •
The Sto-Rox staff is always growing and learning as it finds the best ways to reach its students.
On Friday February 17 - an in-service day for the distict - Sto-Rox staff underwent Trauma 101 and 102 training. Joe Brecht, from the Community Care Behavioral Health Organization, put on the training.
“The Trauma 101 and 102 are the basic and introductory skills to trauma-informed care,” Brecht said. “It’s really about having an understanding of how trauma impacts individuals and what as professionals we can do to try and really help mitigate the effects of trauma on individuals.”
As part of the training, Sto-Rox staff learned about self-care plans and active listening, among other items. Brecht stressed how trauma can be debilitating to the learning process. Finding ways to be mindful of that trauma can be crucial to being an effective teacher.
“Until we can mitigate the effects of the trauma or teach skills that can help them self-regulate, it’s hard to reach them on a cognitive level, because we’re really just trying to get them to be able to regulate (themselves), versus getting them to be able to reason,” Brecht said.
Friday’s training represented another step in Sto-Rox's growing efforts to be trauma-informed. Recently, Sto-Rox announced the V.I.B.E. (Violence Intervention Building Empowerment) team, a three-person group that will try to interrupt violence in the district and wade off trauma in the process.
“In general, we’re learning so much about trauma and constantly studying it,” Brecht said. “Communities and school districts are all really trying to move towards being trauma-informed.”