Conference Brief - Psychological Trauma and Schools: How Systems Respond to the Traumas of Young Lives
Alexandra K. Margevich
June 2017
On May 5, 2017, the Rutgers Center on Law, Inequality and Metropolitan Equity (CLiME) hosted an interdisciplinary all-day conference on the institutional responsibility of schools in responding to childhood psychological trauma, particularly in low-SES communities where early life trauma exposure is disturbingly ubiquitous. The conference brought together a group of panelists and audience members from diverse fields related to childhood trauma.
David D. Troutt, Professor of Law and founding Director of CLiME at Rutgers Law School—Newark, welcomed attendees and briefly described the genesis of this multi-stakeholder conference, which was borne out of his own research and conversations with colleagues who work with children at-risk for trauma exposure outside of law and policy. Professor Troutt, himself an experienced civil rights attorney with expertise in systemic causes of concentrated poverty in metropolitan areas, realized that lawyers and policy-makers often narrowly focus on targeting rules and structures as sources of widespread disparities we see too frequently in cities like Newark, New Jersey, without fully understanding or engaging with the very people those systems impact. Indeed, “[structural inequalities] manifest in the most personal possible ways, through people’s psychology, physical well-being and relationships.” In turn, these extensively documented individual and group-level effects critically contribute to issues that draw the attention of social justice advocates across disciplines and sectors, notably among them the school to prison pipeline. This inspired Professor Troutt to draw from the wealth of knowledge on childhood psychological trauma from a breadth of fields in addition to law and policy, from psychology to social work to education, to best understand and ultimately combat this incontrovertible social justice issue.
Transitioning into opening remarks, Professor Troutt humbly acknowledged the incredible support he received in building capacity to get CLiME’s Trauma, Schools and Poverty project off the ground from then recently appointed RU-N Chancellor, Dr. Nancy Cantor. In fact, it was her support for publically engaged scholarship that partly made possible Professor Troutt’s attainment of a Chancellor’s Seed grant that eventually enabled this conference’s occurrence.
Chancellor Nancy Cantor, a social psychologist who brought with her to RU-N an anti-ivory tower mentality and a passion for community engagement, commenced by emphasizing the need for action-oriented collaborations of this sort across both disciplines (e.g., law, psychology, public health) and systems (e.g., K-12, law enforcement, housing services) in cities like Newark, where the “sequela of poverty and racism haunt the halls of education, derailing genuine effort in heartbreaking ways.” These collaborations further recognize the potential for spaces and places, such as neighborhood centers, hospitals and schools, to either cultivate or railroad young talent based on their responses to the diverse manifestations of childhood trauma (e.g., hyperarousal, aggression, depression). Critically, anchor institutions like RU-N can play a major role in spurring these collaborations to create well-informed, sustainable interventions and preventions that ultimately address what Newark Mayor Ras J. Baraka refers to as the public health crisis: the derailment of youth from schools to the criminal justice system.
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