When children are exposed to violence at home, the aftershocks can ripple into classrooms.
Often on edge and sometimes depressed, those students can struggle to concentrate and control their emotions, causing their grades and relationships to suffer. And with spotty training and limited insight into students’ home lives, teachers can fail to recognize the cause of these problems, much less put a solid plan in place to tackle them.
“Often teachers don’t have the language to talk about this stuff,” said James Waslawski, principal of New Directions Secondary School in the Bronx, a middle school for older students who are behind academically.
He estimates that 90 percent of his students have experienced some form of trauma, the majority of it related to domestic violence. Yet most teachers receive minimal training on how to help students deal with such issues, he added.
“It’s like one-fifth of what they need,” he said.
[For more of this story, written by Patrick Wall, go to http://ny.chalkbeat.org/2015/05/04/in-areas-with-high-rates-of-domestic-violence-teachers-to-get-special-training/#.VUgYWflVikq]
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