CHILDREN IN CRISIS

Traumatized kids are not a rarity in Michigan classrooms

Former Free Press Columnist Rochelle Riley has studied how trauma impacts how children learn. Children In Crisis explores the problem and solutions.

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ILLUSTRATION BY Jerry Lemenu

About this series 1

Ninety percent of teachers and principals across the Detroit Public Schools Community District reported that more than half their students have been impacted by trauma that impedes their learning.

The culprits, identified as adverse childhood experiences, or ACES, range from physical, sexual and emotional abuse to physical and emotional neglect. They also include: exposure to domestic violence, abuse of household substances, mental illness, parents’ divorce or separation and having an incarcerated household member.        

In interviews with school officials across the region, it is clear that districts in Michigan like many across the country are struggling to meet their primary goal of educating children because they are not equipped to deal with teaching children in pain. 

The way many districts handle the problem is to place children — even those with no learning disabilities — in special education classes. Or they suspend them when their behavior becomes disruptive and teachers and principals have to choose the many over the few. 

In Romulus, a suburb west of Detroit — where the largest employer is the Detroit Metro Airport and the average income is about $42,000 a year, according to SEMCOG, the Southeast Michigan Council of Governments, nearly 400 of the 2,600 students in the school district receive special education services. But a third of those students are not learning disabled and don’t belong in special ed, officials have said. They are victims of trauma who have no place else to be. 

Related stories:

Michigan kids are coming to school traumatized — and teachers lack training, resources to help

► Flint boy was suspended, sent home from school 50+ times. His mom blames water crisis.

► Michigan's teachers, counselors experiencing trauma 'on a regular basis'

► He's changing the way Michigan teachers help children with trauma

► Detroit teacher: I'll never forget day my students saw mutilated body on way to school

In Flint, which garnered international attention when its residents were forced to use lead-tainted water for years, traumatized students were shunted into special education classes or suspended for behavior problems that some parents contend were caused by lead. And suspensions in the district rose from 144 to 425, according to state officials who said the numbers are low because they do not release figures if a school suspends fewer than 10 students. One young boy was suspended or forced to go home nearly 50 times. 

In Detroit, Dr. Nikolai Vitti, superintendent of the Detroit Public Schools Community District since 2017, surveyed his staff this year to confirm what he suspected, that student achievement is being affected by the sometimes dangerous, fearful environments where kids live or the violence they witness or experience. Kids in Detroit routinely score at the bottom of national standardized tests.

Superintendent Nikolai Vitti listens to students talk about their school concerns during the Student Leadership Development meeting at the Detroit Public Schools Community District headquarters in Detroit on Friday, May 10, 2019
Superintendent Nikolai Vitti listens to students talk about their school concerns during the Student Leadership Development meeting at the Detroit Public Schools Community District headquarters in Detroit on Friday, May 10, 2019 Kimberly P. Mitchell, Detroit Free Press

Increased awareness of the impact that trauma has on learning comes as school districts struggle to meet children’s needs. In Detroit and elsewhere, leaders are working with budgets that don’t cover all special education costs. Last year, DPSCD received $93.3 million for Exceptional Student Education (ESE), but had to spend $131 million on mandated ESE services. That $37.6 million shortfall had to come from its general fund intended, said district spokeswoman C.J. Wilson.

And Vitti’s students need more because they deal with more.

How do you teach a sobbing child?

In Detroit, one in 14 children experienced violence personally, according to a 2015 Free Press analysis of police data, but neither Detroit nor Michigan offer programs to help. And African American children are more likely to experience more than one ACE, or adverse childhood experience. 

Vitti’s decision to survey his employees comes as educators nationwide begin to pay more attention to a very real challenge for cash-strapped school districts: how to address the growing number of adverse childhood experiences that affect student learning and achievement.

“We know that there is chronic trauma, or complex trauma, where a child is constantly exposed to traumatic events, in their home or neighborhood, overwhelming events that create powerlessness and an ongoing sense of danger,” said Jim Henry, professor of social work at Western Michigan University and director of the Children’s Trauma Assessment Center, which studies stress and the impact of abuse on a child’s neurodevelopment. 

“Children’s brains literally are changed into a continually triggering fight, flight or freeze mode within the brain," he said. "So, the stress-response system that we all have is on hyper alert.”

Henry said that children suffering from trauma or constant exposure to dangerous or toxic environments “are continually perceiving danger when danger might not be there because of their chronic exposure. That impacts the emotional system of the brain and compromises their ability to access their thinking center of the brain. Your emotional system becomes overdeveloped because you’re in constant fight, flight or freeze” mode.

“Your ability to think is compromised, which is very significant in terms of your ability to learn,” he said.

The false narrative is that children who suffer from adverse childhood experiences are mostly in urban or large, poor districts. But no district is too small, no child immune.

Officials statewide are looking for solutions. The Romulus school district has created a special program equipped with a social worker, a police officer and a counselor for students, including those suffering from trauma, to go to when they need to.

State and local officials plan to lobby for more funds. 

But much more needs to be done, said Dr. Michael Rice, Michigan Superintendent of Public Instruction. 

“I think we’re doing better than we were five years ago, but change is inadequate, and we as educators are going to have to do much more in this area in the coming years,” he said. 

Rice said that the need for trauma training and services is not limited to any particular part of a state with 842 school districts that serve 1.5 million students and spent $2.5 billion on special education services last year.  

“This is not an urban issue. This is far broader than that,” he said. “If you go up into the U.P., they talk about it. If you go to some of our suburban districts, they talk about it.”

Rice said he will be pushing for more funding from the Michigan Legislature to help address trauma and toxic stress.

“Kids experience a lot at their homes and in their communities, suburban, urban rural. But they also experience a lot at school,” he said. “The more school becomes a refuge or sanctuary where they are capable and comfortable and can feel good about themselves, the more they can be better served.” 

School districts are beginning to adapt to handle the challenge. But they are late, and they are bringing tiny water hoses to a raging, spreading fire. 

How big is the problem? More than two thirds of American children reported experiencing at least one traumatic event by the time they were 16, according to a 2015 study by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. 

But school district spending to help those children has not caught up with the need. 

“The impact is clear,” Vitti, the Detroit superintendent, said in an interview. “We as a school system — and school systems generally — have not addressed adequately the barriers that negatively influence learning.” 

Teachers are not immune to trauma

Districts also have not done enough to deal with the secondary trauma that teachers experience.

Michelle Davis, a former teacher who is now Dean of Climate, Culture and Community at Davis Aerospace High School in east Detroit, recalled a day that began with a child talking about returning to school after attempting suicide and ended with her trying to find a mattress for a homeless student to use at a friend's house.

Michelle Davis is a former teacher and is now Dean of Climate, Culture and Community at Davis Aerospace High School in east Detroit.
Michelle Davis is a former teacher and is now Dean of Climate, Culture and Community at Davis Aerospace High School in east Detroit. Rochelle Riley, Detroit Free Press

There was a time when a teacher having a traumatized child to teach was a rarity, and teachers had more time to work with them. The challenge now is teaching thousands of them at a time when classes are overcrowded, more students have witnessed or experienced violence and adverse experiences — and teachers are not trained to add this duty to the long list of jobs they already perform. 

In some school districts, especially districts like Detroit, these children represent a majority. 

“We have a lot of students who show up traumatized every day," Davis said. "They are experiencing trauma from their environments or situational trauma. It is prevalent in our district and definitely in our schools.”

That is what motivated Vitti to take action in Detroit.

The district received a $5 million mental health grants last month to expand behavioral and mental health support in six schools that faced "significant achievement obstacles." Called the Detroit Children’s Success Initiative, the strategy provides a dedicated health service team comprising a social worker, counselor, community-based mental health provider or behavioral health therapist and a nurse. Additionally, families will be connected to community-based resources.

The initiative is a start, but the district has 102 schools. 

“Our plan is to scale this across the district over the years,” Vitti said. Eventually, “district-wide, all staff will be trained in the methods to identify behavioral health conditions, respond to mental health crises and administer evidence-based strategies to reduce symptoms of anxiety and depression.”

Vitti said the district is now surveying students to get a handle on the impact that trauma is having on their learning. But, he said, “we are not waiting to begin the process of expanding resources and programs to address the mental health support our students require.”

For Davis, the Davis High dean, help couldn’t come soon enough.

“I appreciate what Dr. Vitti is doing,” said Davis, whose school is one of  22 high schools in the predominantly black, predominantly poor city district. “He is doing intentional work around creating trauma-informed centers in our schools. "

Davis said that her school, like nearly all Detroit schools, has no trauma-trained teachers. And she welcomes the resource teams that will be in six schools. But she says she wishes her school was one of them.

“And we did not have a social worker,” she said, until she arranged for one to come in twice a week last year to speak to students, especially those in the school’s in-school suspension program, where many traumatized students wind up, “because their pain manifests as anger.” 

But Davis later praised Vitti for taking action when he can. After a discussion with her last week about the secondary trauma that teachers suffer, he authorized $1,000 to provide some trauma training for staff at her school. 

“I almost cried,” she said.

“Once we learn to identify trauma, we need to be able to say, ‘This is how we treat that specific kind of trauma because all trauma is different,' ” she said. “But teachers cannot become psychologists. Our plate is already full."

“You have to be healthy and well before you can concentrate on algebra or sociology or biology,” she said. “You’d be surprised at the issues we deal with, from sexual abuse to verbal abuse to physical abuse. And they show up in all of their resilience and persistence and greatness and they get through the day. But then they have to go home back to that same environments that caused the trauma. School is an escape.”     

One student’s story: Remember Sunshine?

That was never truer than for Sunshine Sterling.

Sunshine was 15 years old when she walked into a police station and signed herself into foster care. Her parents, both drug addicts, were no longer able to raise her. So, she decided that, with the state’s help, she would raise herself. 

Sunshine gained some national attention when I wrote a column about her science project being chosen to win the top prize — a gold ribbon — as the best of 215 entries at the 61st Science and Engineering Fair of Metro Detroit in 2018. 

Sunshine S. Sterling, 16, of Detroit is recognized by Detroit City Councilman Andre Spivey with an Award of Recognition for winning first place in the Regional Metro Detroit Science and Engineering Fair as a junior at Davis Aerospace Technical High School in Detroit at the Coleman A. Young Municipal building on Tuesday, March 27, 2018.
Sunshine S. Sterling, 16, of Detroit is recognized by Detroit City Councilman Andre Spivey with an Award of Recognition for winning first place in the Regional Metro Detroit Science and Engineering Fair as a junior at Davis Aerospace Technical High School in Detroit at the Coleman A. Young Municipal building on Tuesday, March 27, 2018. Kimberly P. Mitchell, Detroit Free Press

Her science teacher, Sharon Holloway, told the Free Press then that it was “great that she had the perseverance to stick with it” and win the top prize — a gold ribbon. 

That perseverance included commuting to school from 10 different group homes or homeless shelters over four years.

Sunshine’s story wasn’t about how she excelled. It was about how she consistently woke up in strange places and traveled miles to a place that for everyone else was school, but for her was home. 

Michelle Davis said that, for Sunshine, school was not just an escape; it was home. The day she met Sunshine, the student was sobbing. The student told her, “ ‘Nobody loves me. Nobody wants me. I don’t have anything, and I don’t have anybody. And I said, ‘I love you, and I want you.’ ”

Sunshine’s mother, Shant’le Hayden, then 44, told me last year how proud she was of her daughter.

“I’m grateful for all the help from everyone that helped my child. And I’m blessed that they came into my child’s life in the time that I couldn’t be there. I want her to live her dream, do college like we didn’t do it. She’ll be the first one to go to college in our family.”

Three years, a dozen suspensions, three homeless shelters and a group home later, including National Honor Society induction and a night at the prom, Sunshine graduated.

Davis, her mentor and teacher, was there for it all. And Davis also was there when 18-year-old Sunshine graduated in June — one month after her mother died of a drug overdose. 

Before graduation, Sunshine had planned to go to college. Traumatized by her mother’s death, she began working at a Detroit McDonald’s, the last time her favorite teacher saw her.

“We need to really make sure that our children are getting the things that they need," Davis said, which includes counseling and services for trauma. Educators may not have realized how much trauma was affecting learning before, but she said: "When you know better you do better.”

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Footnotes

1 About this series
Former Free Press Columnist Rochelle Riley studied how trauma and toxic environments impact how children learn. She unravels this issue through the eyes of three children and their caregivers in Detroit, Romulus and Flint. And she offers some solutions to ensure that children are mentally prepared to learn. This special report was sponsored by a $75,000 Eugene C. Pulliam Fellowship from Sigma Delta Chi. The award is given to "an outstanding editorial writer or columnist to help broaden his or her journalistic horizons and knowledge of the world" and can be used to cover the cost of study, research and/or travel  that may result in editorials, writings or books.
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