District finds that creating more trauma-informed schools requires a change of culture

Former Stoneleigh Fellow and the Philadelphia School District’s current Deputy Chief of School Climate and Safety Abigail Gray spoke to the Philadelphia Notebook about the challenges of creating trauma-informed schools in under-resourced settings.

Joanna Schwartz, a second-grade teacher at Eliza B. Kirkbride Elementary School, was about to take a scheduled break and desperately needed a place to have peace and quiet.

But the only place she could find was a broom closet.

A few years earlier, in another school, Schwartz said teachers were baffled by a third grader who continually fell asleep in class. Was he bored? Hostile? Disrespectful?

None of the three, as it turned out.

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