I have been operating in the context of trauma aware schooling for less than 3 years. The majority of my 35-year career in schools, has been spent in academically focused girls’ schools often labelled as ‘elite’. I learnt my craft as a teacher and an educational leader over a 24-year period in one such school. Given the seemingly disparate contexts in which I have worked, and my relative inexperience in trauma aware schooling, one may ask what insights I have to offer.

This presentation explores my learnings since taking up a Principal role in a strengths-based, trauma aware special assistance school. It tracks the change in my language from 'recognising the value of a learner' to 'unconditional positive regard'. It references my growing confidence in facilitating exceptional teaching and learning in the context of a school for 'disengaged' (a seriously loaded term) young people. It details my ongoing struggle to strike a balance between the principles of safety, respect and engagement when leading a school of young people who have been disenfranchised and are disconnected from any sense of an educational community.

In my relatively short stint in this space I have come to believe that trauma aware schooling demands a strengths-based learning environment utilising principles of adult education, a sophisticated curriculum, refined pedagogy, and a reflective approach to professional growth. Together these elements foster the creation of positive learning relationships.

So, what is the difference between where I have been and where I am now?

Is it that the margin for error when working with young people who are suffering from the impact of trauma is smaller?

Is it easier to confuse learning gaps with an inability to learn, in schools which cater for students who have missed significant periods of time in the classroom?

We must strive to make the quality of the teaching and the importance of the learning offered in trauma aware schools, equal to that of more stereotypical academic institutions. To do this we must address the automaticity of the interactions occurring in many classrooms so that the rhetoric around trauma informed strength based practice becomes consistent reality.

My colleagues and I continue to learn as we seek to lift our gazes and those of the students we spend our days with.

This presentation tells my story of a quest to be better and do better as a trauma aware practitioner and leader.

In addressing the complexity of the impact of childhood trauma in a secondary school, a collaborative approach was implemented between Evolve Therapeutic Service (Queensland Health) and a local state high school. The high school operates in a community facing complex challenges, including socio-economic issues like domestic violence, low income households, mental health concerns, and substance use. Recognizing the impact of these factors on students, the school prioritized becoming trauma-informed to better support student engagement in learning. In partnership with Evolve Therapeutic Service, the school developed a program to enhance educators' understanding and response to trauma. This included comprehensive training sessions, ongoing skill-building sessions, and a coaching initiative to empower trauma champions within the staff. The program emphasized the importance of using relationship-based and evidence-supported approaches to not only benefit students with trauma experiences but also the entire school community in their learning journey. This presentation explores the advantages of collaborating with community-based mental health services to enhance educators' ability to respond effectively to students' needs.

Background: Schools are powerfully involved in shaping the mental health of young people. School belonging refers to the extent to which a child feels acceptance and has caring relations at school and with the school community. Emerging evidence suggests that students exposed to trauma may be particularly influenced by school belonging – with a lower sense of belonging further exacerbating mental health problems and greater belonging providing an even greater benefit to students affected by trauma relative to their peers. This suggests that school belonging may be an important factor that schools can prioritise to promote healing from traumatic exposures. We examined associations between experiences of childhood trauma and school belonging in a sample of young Australians, and tested whether school belonging moderates the relationship between trauma and symptoms of anxiety and depression.

Methods: Data for this study is drawn from the baseline assessment of a cluster randomized controlled trial of a mental health prevention program with 9 schools across Australia (N=752, Mean age = 13.3 years). Students completed the Psychological Sense of School Membership scale, an 18-item scale assessing school connectedness and prosocial relationships at school. Anxiety symptoms were measured by the Generalised Anxiety Disorder 7 scale (GAD-7) and depressive symptoms were measured by the Patient Health Questionnaire for adolescents (PHQ-9A). Traumatic experiences were measured using the Child and Adolescent Trauma Screen. Regression analyses with interaction terms between trauma and school belonging were conducted to predict depression and anxiety symptoms.

Results: There was very strong evidence that any exposure to trauma, and the number of traumatic events experienced by the student, were significantly associated with a lower sense of school belonging, after adjusting for age, gender, and school-level clustering. School belonging moderated the associations between trauma and both depression and anxiety symptoms. Higher levels of school belonging buffered the impact of trauma on both depression and anxiety. For those exposed to trauma, increases in school belonging showed a greater reduction on symptoms of anxiety and depression compared to students not exposed to trauma.

Conclusion: School belonging significantly moderated symptoms of depression and anxiety among students with trauma. The findings from this study demonstrate the profound role schools play in the mental health of their students, particularly those students exposed to trauma. Future research with longitudinal data is needed, but results suggest that efforts to promote a sense of school belonging among students exposed to trauma should be prioritized.