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ConVal High School's Story: Becoming Trauma-Informed for Substance Abuse Prevention

 

As a student assistance counselor, I regularly receive flashy emails from various organizations promoting materials for drug-free schools.  Secretly I roll my eyes and strike the trash icon.  “Drug free schools - ha, right?!”  

It may sound cynical or jaded that I don’t believe in drug-free high schools. It’s not that. The truth is I don’t believe a drug-free high school exists. This isn’t from a lack of effort or concern. As a product of the “Just Say No” era, schools have worked for decades to educate students about the dangers of substances. Somehow this has not translated into a reduction in substance abuse. Why is that?

In Fall 2015, I gathered with a group of concerned educators, including the principal at ConVal High School in Petersborough, NH.  Dr. Gerry Scarano and I expressed concern in what we perceived as an increase in student reported substance misuse.  More than ever, students were talking about this new form of marijuana they were using, with dire consequence — Dabs. I also had many students reporting improper use of prescription pills. I was worried. Was the problem getting worse or was I just hearing more about it?  Were we on the verge of a heroin crisis at our high school?

From that initial meeting, several more conversations followed and in May 2015, I volunteered to lead a grassroots effort to address the substance misuse problem at ConVal High School. Voila, the ConVal Substance Abuse Task Force was born. We initially comprised members from the Student Support Team, which included counselors, a social worker, a school psychologist, and several administrators. In those early meetings, we took time to formulate how we were and what we were. Because I have “process-driven” facilitation ingrained in my way of being, I led the group in setting norms, exercises to increase psychological safety, careful discussions about uncomfortable topics (e.g. "how has addiction affected your life?”), learning about change models and network theory, defining a mission statement and terms such as substance misuse, abuse, and addiction. I wanted us to have a strong sense of solidarity and purpose before embarking on addressing a delicate and complex problem. There was whining; copious amounts of whining.  “When are we going to DO SOMETHING?”  The group was primed for meaningful strategic planning.

In the Summer 2015, we developed our first strategic plan for 2015-2016 with three goals:  raise awareness, educate, and revise the substance abuse policy in the district. We accomplished these things with gusto. Steve Bartsch, dean of students at ConVal, and I facilitated focus groups and gathered input on our policy from students, staff, parents. We met with the school board several times. We partnered with Lee Ann Clark and her task force (“Be The Change”) at Monadnock Community Hospital and co-sponsored numerous events. Many of the events involved documentaries and stories of addicts in recovery. Events were well attended. We hosted events at ConVal High School, such as “High and Seek,” “Chucky’s Fight,” and a student production known as “Project Crash.” All events were well received. All events made us feel good, but something was still missing. I felt we were not really getting to the root of anything.

In June 2016, I attended the 27th Annual International Trauma Conference in Boston, MA. Those few days changed my life. It was an epic “A-HA”, paradigm-shifting, world-view altering life experience. Listening to Dr. Peter Levine and Dr. Bessel van der Kolk speak about nervous system dysregulation and its relationship to mental health, physical health and substance use sounded an alarm so loud in me I had to bring their findings to the work of our task force.

At our Summer 2016 strategic planning retreat, I read an excerpt of Bessel van der Kolk’s book, The Body Keeps the Score. It resonated with everyone. There was a resounding, “We agree; we must address childhood trauma if we want to affect change with substance abuse and addiction.”  Our second year strategic plan emerged: To raise awareness about the relationship between ACES (adverse childhood experiences) and addiction, review inter- and intra-district communication protocols, pilot trauma-informed intervention strategies across grade levels. 

To date, we are a task force comprising 40 stakeholders from across the district and community. We have facilitated eight community ACES presentations, educating more than 100 community members. We have facilitated seven school ACES presentations, educating more than 250 staff members. We are producing a student-created documentary about the relationship between ACES and substance misuse.

As one of our student participants wrote, “We are going straight to the issue. This is going to be raw, real, and impactful. Kids do not just show up to school drunk or high just to be cool. There is a deeper entrenched suffering occurring in that student’s mind and life. And, we are going to talk about that.” 

We have even developed our own trauma-informed strategies based on our increased knowledge about trauma and strategies to address it. At ConVal High School, we are in our second cohort of a trauma-informed intervention for substance-abusing teens called, “core regulation.” Unlike pre-contemplative and motivational interviewing approaches to substance misuse, “core regulation” is a 12-week group designed to increase self awareness about inner states of regulation and dysregulation. Students track their nervous system activation with various conversations and exercises. They then reflect on how they feel after engaging in a regulating practice such as mindfulness, meditation, qi gong, and cooking. Shawn King, fellow school counselor, and I developed the curriculum from several resources. It has been a huge success!  

The pilot groups were boys, and they often remark that they love group because it also helps them thwart their “inner meathead.” The “inner meathead” is a ConVal-coined phrase to describe the male phenomenon that is alive and well when most boys gather. It often involves teasing, joking, minimizing, and dismissing emotional/psychological matters of importance. It’s a genuine threat to authentic connection. This phenomenon is so prevalent our students intend to address it in their ACEs documentary. 

ConVal is still at the beginning of defining its trauma-informed approach to substance abuse prevention. But as the facilitator, I no longer ask myself the question, “Why is that?” I no longer feel we are missing something. For the first time in my life, I know we are accomplishing the real work of prevention. I can’t believe seeing the world through the lens of “childhood trauma” could shed the light on our future direction. Imagine that?

Emily Read Daniels is a student assistance counselor at ConVal High School in Peterborough, NH.  She is also launching a business, Here This Now, which provides technical assistance in the form of training, coaching, and facilitating to organizations that seek to bolster employee resiliency and to build capacity for trauma informed systems.

This first appeared in the Spring NHSCA (New Hampshire School Counselor Association) newsletter.

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Emily

Your approach (addressing the underlying childhood trauma) seems exactly correct to me, especially as it directly involves the students learning through experience and teaching each other. Although your focus appears to be on prevention among students, the question of how best to deal with substance use and addiction problems in the wider population is a pressing issue that may benefit from the same "A-Ha moment" you experienced. Until treatment programs begin to effectively address the need for healing from the underlying trauma, I think relapse will continue to be the norm. Do you have any thoughts on wider application of what you have learned to our addiction/overdose crisis?

Thanks, Frank

Beth Grady MD posted:

Thank you for this post. As a pediatrician in a community clinic I am looking for ways to help teens understand the connection between trauma and substance misuse in ways that do not sound like kids who have experienced trauma are doomed to failure. Will your students' documentary be available online? Have you found any other resources such as handouts or online videos that are useful for teens? Also, have you talked about the connection between undiagnosed or unaddressed learning differences such as dyslexia (in students or their parents) and substance abuse? I have found these issues to co-occur frequently, especially in my patient population of low income, largely immigrant children. 

Hi Beth,

Thank you for your comment!  Your comment has so much for me to reply to - I don't feel I can do it justice in a written response.  But I will say the following:

1.  In my experience with urban, impoverished youth - there is a huge relationship between setting, environment, attachment and academic achievement.   As someone married to a school psychologist and practiced for years as a school counselor, I struggle with how much we have "pathologized and labeled" children unavailable for learning in these settings.  Most of my urban youth lived in horrific circumstances - with chronic violence, drug abuse, and insufficient resources to meet their needs.  They arrived at school with nervous systems on full fight, flight, or freeze mode - it only makes sense they were unable to learn.   We have been quick to label these kids as learning disabled - which is of course what they appear as - since they are unable to learn in our traditional approaches to teaching.  Teaching that is done in the context of a warm, loving relationship with lots of movement, opportunity for building a sense of safety in the classroom and instruction that is truly multi-modal successfully reaches many of these children.  There is a body of neuroscience research to support this.  You probably already know this, but I would suggest Dan Siegel's work as the best place to locate evidence for this claim.  

2.  I am not sure if my district will allow us to circulate our ACES video outside the school district.  We made a video last year and were not permitted to circulate it for fear of litigation.  If our ACES documentary is well received by our community, I may push for permission to be able to use it on a broader scale.  

3.  Brene Brown's video clip on empathy is one my students love.  On May 4th, we have secured a licensed viewing of "Screenagers" for our entire student body. I have several students currently watching, "13 Reasons Why" - which I think is a useful teaching tool if viewed and discussed with caring adults connected to kids.

 

Again, thank you for your comment and your interest in this work...

Ellen Smith posted:

Thank you so very much! Would you be willing to share your "core regulation?" I find so many of the exercises in mindfulness to seem too hokey or simple for adolescents. Again, excellent work!

Hi Ellen,

I am happy to share Core Regulation with you - are you a trained in group counseling?  What makes this particular curriculum so powerful is that it offers an abundance of opportunity for authentic connection between group members. The curriculum invites members to explore and reflect on awareness that usually flies underneath acknowledgement - especially with adolescent boys.  I think any curriculum in the absence of a well facilitated process has only marginal benefit.  I say that as a fair warning...but share with me your email address and I will send it to you.    Many Thanks, Emily

Last edited by Former Member

Thank you so very much! Would you be willing to share your "core regulation?" I find so many of the exercises in mindfulness to seem too hokey or simple for adolescents. Again, excellent work!

Being an old woman who lives in a Shoe, with all these children with different diagnosis and personalities and working in the mental health field, it is exciting to me to see that it's really happening.  I so believe in "Trauma Informed Care" and I practice it with my clients, and by the way for the first time in some of their lives they are starting to understand "what caused" my problems.  Once you recognize "What"  then you can move on to understanding "How" to change the thinking pattern and then to recovery.  It's not easy but it's so worth it.  I can't tell you how many times I've heard, "No one ever ask me "what happened to you", You're the first person who ever cared."  Everyone talks about my "Big Heart" but I believe with education, practice and love lives can be changed.

 

This is a great post, thank you! I can relate to your statement "It was an epic “A-HA”, paradigm-shifting, world-view altering life experience."I have also taken so much from  Dr. Levine and Dr. Bessel van der Kolk work with. Dr.Bruce Perry is also excellent and focuses on childhood trauma & stress response systems... which gets to the roots.  It really is a process, rather than a program.

Kudos to you and your team (students and all)!  I work at a residential drug and alcohol treatment facility as a teacher of all subjects grades 6-12.  I have shared "Zones of Regulations" but was wondering if you would be willing to share what you have developed (or maybe just an outline).  Your work is amazing and I am interested in having something similar here in Pensacola, FL.  My school email is bnall@escambia.k12.fl.us if you would like to contact me.  Again, awesome work and I look forward to hearing how you continue to progress with the program.

Barbie Nall

Thank you for this post. As a pediatrician in a community clinic I am looking for ways to help teens understand the connection between trauma and substance misuse in ways that do not sound like kids who have experienced trauma are doomed to failure. Will your students' documentary be available online? Have you found any other resources such as handouts or online videos that are useful for teens? Also, have you talked about the connection between undiagnosed or unaddressed learning differences such as dyslexia (in students or their parents) and substance abuse? I have found these issues to co-occur frequently, especially in my patient population of low income, largely immigrant children. 

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