“Positive relationships are necessary for healthy human development, but trauma undermines these life-giving connections” (Bath, 2008, p. 19).  The road to recovery begins in an environment of healing that fosters positive relationships between students and their teachers, and research has shown better results when intervention is applied earlier as opposed to later (Downey, 2007). “Both the plasticity of brain development and the scaffolding nature of skill development are strong reasons to intervene as early as possible with supportive, ameliorative, and protective experiences” (Cole et al., 2005, p. 18).

What does this mean for educators? Quite a lot.

As Cole and her colleagues wrote in 2005, “it is critical for educators to understand that a person’s social context can have a tremendous impact on the severity of trauma symptoms” (p. 19). Teachers are tasked with building and sustaining the social learning environment of their classrooms, and a lot of this has to do with how they enable their students to interact in emotionally-healthy ways.

Because these children may not have experienced many other positive relationships with adults, the student-teacher bond can be the most important gift educators have to offer. Teachers who are reliable, honest, and dependable can offer the stability these students so desperately need. (Lahey, 2014)