Expressive Arts Workshop: The Relationship Between Educators & Trauma-Informed Care

From an early age, children are put into the educational system and this environment becomes one of the most consistent surroundings throughout the beginning and later chapters of their lifespan. Within some classrooms, some children present an abundance of cognitive and emotional behaviors such as inattentiveness, impulse control, and limited coping skills that, in some cases, are representations of trauma responses. Research explores the topic of trauma-informed schools and other frameworks that bring the role of the educator to attention when addressing the needs of children who have experienced trauma. I found that facilitating an Expressive Arts & Trauma workshop for educators in a public charter school to be successful for providing educational professionals with an opportunity to address aspects of trauma-informed care. The workshop offers the opportunity of self-discovery for educational professionals through an expressive arts lens and demonstrates a variety of interventions educators can use in the classroom to support children with trauma in a safe and healing way. After extensive research and personal experience, I propose that it is necessary that all educational spaces be trauma-informed and that this status be maintained via frequent expressive arts workshops, such as the one I facilitated, throughout the course of the academic year