Online: Masters in Education with a concentration in Trauma and Resilience in Educational Environments

Most children experience traumatic events, and those events can profoundly influence their cognitive, physical, emotional, and social development. School staff may be unaware of the specific traumatic events impacting each child, and school environments may inadvertently exacerbate the impacts of trauma. Traumatic events may cause a child to have academic difficulty, behavior that interferes with learning or violates codes of student conduct, and troubled relationships with peers and school staff. Conversely, trauma-informed, resilience-fostering school environments can mitigate the impact of trauma and enhance the protective factors that provide the foundation for health, academic success, and positive peer and staff interactions. This course will introduce school personnel to the core concepts of adverse experiences, toxic stress, trauma, restoration, self-care, and resilience in the school environment, and provides a research-based, strength-based approach to creating a trauma-informed, resilience-fostering school environment.

Educators experience stressful work events and environments that contribute to burnout, compassion fatigue, and various forms of trauma. As a result, educators may feel less effective, engaged, and motivated. To best serve students, meet their own professional goals, and maintain their own health and well-being, educators benefit from an awareness of self, and an on-going practice of self-care. This course provides information and strategies for the development of individual, collaborative, and organizational practices to address burnout, compassion fatigue, and promote resiliency.

Research in the neurological and cognitive sciences has generated a new frontier of knowledge on how the brain processes, stores, and retrieves information. In this regard, advances in neuroscience and the cognitive sciences provide insight into how educational and learning experiences reshape brain structure and function in ways that can support or hinder a student’s achievement, performance, and/or skill development. Neuro-education is emerging as an essential knowledge base that all instructional leaders and educators should have. Using what we know about the brain and learning can help transform practice; however, we need more highly knowledgeable advocates in the field who can teach students and coach colleagues. This course will equip participants with research-based practices and strategies to train and guide learners with an emphasis on K-12, but recognition of applications for learners of all ages. It is intended for teachers, instructional coaches, and administrators who teach and/or provide professional development for teachers. Prerequisite: EDDA 571 or director approval)

This course examines the research-base for understanding risk and resiliency and explores protective factors within the child, family and community that nurture resilience and mitigate risk factors.  Participants will become conversant on research related to risk factors and at-risk populations, as well as, gain insight regarding politics and social structures that facilitate or impede the resiliency of at-risk learners.  Tools that identify and assess interventions designed to assess resiliency will be utilized.  Focus is placed on case studies, review of the research literature, and demographic studies of adolescents and communities.  Participants will engage in research, review literature, and participate in online discussions to reflect on the changing world of today’s adolescent and ways to build resiliency in educational and community settings. Prerequisite: EDDA 571 or director approval