Dive Brief:

• Students come to class with traumas large and small that impact the way they behave, and a program called Unconditional Education helps teachers understand the root causes of behaviors and new strategies for responding to them.
• KQED News reports a typical training starts with teachers describing their students’ strengths and then moving on to observed behaviors and their responses to them as well as how students may be inviting them to respond, all to develop a model of how the child operates and an intervention that will build a sense of trust to break down the source of classroom behavior problems.
• The theory is that a school culture focused on trauma-informed interactions will lead to higher reading and math outcomes, better attendance rates and fewer suspensions and expulsions — and, with a small sample in Oakland, African-American, Latino and special education students had measurable gains.

Dive Insight:

Schools are expected to teach children, but the expectation does not always take into account the mountain of work that needs to be done to get a child ready to learn. Like the trauma students bring to classrooms, they also bring their hunger. School breakfast and lunch programs have helped address childhood hunger since World War II, when malnutrition was first considered a national security issue.

These programs have expanded with weekend backpack programs, where students take food home for the weekend, and even school-based pantries, where parents can pick up food for their entire family when they pick up or drop off their children. As schools close for the summer, however, millions of students will be left without access to these food sources, and it will show when they return to school in the fall.