Denise Presnell had been a social worker for public schools in North Carolina for many years before she found out about ACEs. She first learned about adverse childhood experiences during an internship while earning her master’s degree in social work.
The experience, she says, was like “those moments of clarity in therapy when the earth moves and the light bulbs turn on.”
At first, “I really didn’t want to know my ACE score,” she said. But once she did assess her score – a 9 -- at the request of a trauma researcher, she said it changed her as a professional and as a person.
The mother of two – a son in college and a daughter in high school – says she realized she had been a “pretty tough parent. I realized it might not be the most ideal condition to raise my children in and I should be more compassionate with my kids.”
Learning about ACEs also changed how she viewed herself.
“I saw the person who grew up in trauma. I became less judgmental, and more encouraging and gentler with myself,” she said.
She had lost 10 years of her youth due to addiction before she met her husband, the first person in her life to treat her with unconditional love. She grew up in a family of eight from five different marriages. With the knowledge of ACEs science, she could see her previous behavior as doing what she had to do to survive.
Now halfway towards a Ph.D. online, Presnell had a slow start to a higher education. It took her seven years to earn a bachelor’s at Appalachian State University (ASU) in 1993. Decades later, at age 45, she decided to return for an MSW while working full time. That’s when she discovered ACEs, and her life has never been the same.
Presnell has been a social worker for public schools in Watauga County, North Carolina, for 20 years. When she asked to speak about ACEs at a faculty meeting at the school where she works -- with school psychologists, principals, and counselors in attendance -- she said people were astonished. “How are we walking around without having this innate knowledge inside of us?,” they asked.
Teaming up with eight people who approached her after her talk, Presnell and the prevention specialist for the county schools created a three-hour ACEs training based on a book, “The Heart of Learning and Teaching,” the curriculum developed by the state of Washington. Every principal in the county’s eight elementary schools and one high school, serving 5,000 students in all, requested what became the Compassionate Schools Project foundational training.
Presnell said each school did the training in their own way. Some schools partnered and did it together. One school had the team come for one hour each month. Last year, the team presented at the high school twice a month for six months, adding topics such as conflict resolution and restorative justice.
Next, the county office requested the creation of a districtwide Compassionate Schools team. This team, including teachers, school social workers, counselors, psychologists, translators, and other staff meets quarterly. They continue to implement trauma knowledge and resiliency techniques in the system, identifying barriers and gaps to implementation and supporting one another in the work.
All this training was done without the aid of grants. People volunteer their time because it is the right thing for kids. And Presnell says that they do not request ACE scores from staff and students, as this might become a trigger.
Extending beyond schools is the Watauga Compassionate Community Initiative (WCCI), which Presnell helped launch in 2017 “to promote health and resiliency in our community and to effectively prevent, recognize and treat trauma by creating safe, stable, nurturing environments and relationships.”
WCCI started off with a bang when Presnell decided to hold a conference for 400 people to talk about trauma, ACEs, and resilience. The number 400 “just came to her,” and she said wrote down the first 250 names in a minute and a half. “The next 150 pushed me to go outside my circles to the mailman, volunteers, and others and it helped make the conference more inclusive.”
She thought the conference would be a one-time event, but participants set up work groups and WCCI took on a life of its own. There are now 80 people meeting once a month in committees following guidelines from the CDC Essentials for Childhood. Presnell says 40 agencies are represented, including the health department, the school system, and social services, as well as ASU professors and their students, who focus on special projects. Nowadays, of course, they meet on Zoom.
Presnell and one of the project leaders developed a one-hour presentation, which has been delivered 63 times to a total of more than 1,100 people in the community. Except for a small stipend for someone helping part-time with administrative tasks, everyone’s participation is voluntary.
During the coronavirus pandemic, says this energetic school social worker, who speaks faster than the speed of sound, “No one is more impacted by trauma than the teachers.” Part of her responsibility is to provide WCCI members who have ACEs with financial and health support during what she says “is the most stressful and challenging time of our lives.”
To help support teachers and students, Presnell instituted “calm corners” in classrooms, where children (and the teacher) learn to identify their emotions on a scale from 1 to 5 and then regulate them. Presnell and the prevention specialist made calm corner kits, each containing $120 worth of gear: noise canceling headphones, weighted stuffed animals, coloring books, and more. The community trauma organizer “found all that money from churches, foundations, grants, individuals, and businesses, Presnell said. The demand for the kits snowballed and now there are 110 kits in the district.
Besides her day job doing all of the above and being an adjunct professor at ASU, Presnell also is still working toward her Ph.D. She plans to complete her degree next year with a thesis on the perceptions of a dozen public school superintendents on trauma-informed schools in the surrounding counties.
Her research thus far demonstrates that trauma-informed school practices help students learn. These practices include creating safe environments; teaching people about trauma’s impacts on the brain, learning, and behavior; giving students voice and choice; and developing relationships with positive, consistent, caring adults.
“Research shows that these techniques not only improve student outcomes academically, behaviorally, and socially, but also improve teacher morale, school climate, and parents’ satisfaction with their child’s school experiences,” Presnell said.
“I began to wonder, if we know this to be true, what are the reasons these aren’t in every school system? What are the barriers and challenges? That is what my study is about.”
Where does Presnell find the time for her work, community projects, and studies as well as her family? She attributes her energy and ability to juggle so many tasks to the Greek concept of time, or kairos.
“Things happen as they are supposed to in the time allotted for them to happen,” she says. “That’s how things happen. I feel that I have opportunities and I have to take advantage of them.”
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