Providing school-based mental health providers with the necessary tools to help intervene on behalf of students struggling to overcome trauma, this volume features engaging case studies and an overview of evidence-based interventions.

What would a school look like if it was designed with mental health in mind? Too many public schools look and feel like prisons, designed out of fear of vandalism and truancy. But we know that nurturing environments are better for learning. Access to nature, big classroom windows, and open campuses consistently reduce stress, anxiety, disorderly conduct, and crime, and improve academic performance. Backed by decades of research, Schools That Heal showcases clear and compelling ways--from furniture to classroom improvements to whole campus renovations--to make supportive learning environments for our children and teenagers. With invaluable advice for school administrators, public health experts, teachers, and parents Schools That Heal is a call to action and a practical resource to create nurturing and inspiring schools for all children.

With accessible strategies grounded in trauma-informed education and positive psychology, this book equips teachers to support all students, particularly the most vulnerable. It will help them to build their resilience, increase their motivation and engagement, and fulfil their full learning potential within the classroom. Trauma-informed, strengths-based classrooms are built upon three core aims: to support children to build their self-regulatory capacities, to build a sense of relatedness and belonging at school, and to integrate wellbeing principles that nurture growth and identify strengths. Taking conventional approaches to trauma one step further, teachers may create a classroom environment which helps students to meet their own needs in a healthy way and progress academically. Based on the successful Berry Street education strategies pioneered by the authors, this book also includes comprehensive case studies, learning points and opportunities for self-reflection, fully supporting teachers to implement these strategies within the classroom.

Educators must both respond to the impact of trauma, and prevent trauma at school. Trauma-informed initiatives tend to focus on the challenging behaviors of students and ascribe them to circumstances that students are facing outside of school. This approach ignores the reality that inequity itself causes trauma, and that schools often heighten inequities when implementing trauma-informed practices that are not based in educational equity. In this fresh look at trauma-informed practice, Alex Shevrin Venet urges educators to shift equity to the center as they consider policies and professional development. Using a framework of six principles for equity-centered trauma-informed education, Venet offers practical action steps that teachers and school leaders can take from any starting point, using the resources and influence at their disposal to make shifts in practice, pedagogy, and policy. Overthrowing inequitable systems is a process, not an overnight change. But transformation is possible when educators work together, and teachers can do more than they realize from within their own classrooms.

Hope and Healing in Urban Education proposes a new movement of healing justice to repair the damage done by the erosion of hope resulting from structural violence in urban communities. Drawing on ethnographic case studies from around the country, this book chronicles how teacher activists employ healing strategies in stressed schools and community organizations, and work to reverse negative impacts on academic achievement and civic engagement, supporting their students to become powerful civic actors. The book argues that healing a community is a form of political action, and emphasizes the need to place healing and hope at the center of our educational and political strategies. At once a bold, revealing, and nuanced look at troubled urban communities as well as the teacher activists and community members working to reverse the damage done by generations of oppression, Hope and Healing in Urban Education examines how social change can be enacted from within to restore a sense of hope to besieged communities and counteract the effects of poverty, violence, and hopelessness.

Can community-building begin in a classroom? The authors of this book believe that by applying restorative justice at school, we can build a healthier and more just society. With practical applications and models. Can an overworked teacher possibly turn an unruly incident with students into an "opportunity for learning, growth, and community-building"? If restorative justice has been able to salvage lives within the world of criminal behavior, why shouldn't its principles be applied in school classrooms and cafeterias? And if our children learn restorative practices early and daily, won't we be building a healthier, more just society? Two educators answer yes, yes, and yes in this new addition to The Little Books of Justice and Peacebuilding series. Amstutz and Mullet offer applications and models. "Discipline that restores is a process to make things as right as possible." This Little Book shows how to get there.