ISTE Coaching Standard 3 Collaborator reads, “Coaches establish productive relationships with educators in order to improve instructional practice and learning outcomes”. ISTE Coaching Standard 3.1 specifically reads: “Establish trusting and respectful coaching relationships that encourage educators to explore new instructional strategies”. In my previous blog I talked about “resilience”. I would like to continue building upon the idea of constructing resilience with a new question: can technology help foster resilience touch points for educators to use that will strengthen positive relationships with children who have ACEs, and enrich greater strategies for teaching and learning?
A 2019 blog written by Dominic Cappello titled, Using Technology to Prevent ACEs and Childhood Trauma, in PACEs Connection explores this very idea. Cappello asserts that technology “today can vastly improve the prevention of adverse childhood experiences”. Cappello highlights how technology plays an important role in the “four steps of data-driven ACEs prevention: assessment, planning, action and evaluation”. In this blog, Cappello speaks specifically to forms of technology, and how they impact our understanding of the magnitude ACEs have on families and students. Of note, Cappello highlights the value of technology such as Mapping Software, which can help professional practitioners to identify the communities that have the highest rates of trauma. By doing so, we acknowledge that ACEs impact all socio-economic groups, and this technology can then be used to “customize strategies to achieve optimum results”. Cappello also highlights the value of Digital Surveys for educators, parents and students to “help track access to the critical services that have been shown to prevent ACEs and treat trauma, informing community leaders of which areas are underserved”. The value of these surveys allow “immediate, online feedback on how well services are preforming – [and] can ensure that services are performing at the highest level”.
These forms of technology are great at prevention – and even useful in making sure that children with ACEs identify and receive the very best community care and services available to them – but how does technology address resilience touch points? What are “resilience touch points”? A 2018 article written by Lori Desautels titled, Connections Go A Long Way For Students With Trauma, notes that while “ACEs impact people’s ability to self regulate and form healthy relationships, and they impair learning”. Desautels reports that “children and adolescents spend an average of 1,000 hours a year in school, interacting not just with teachers but also with bus drivers, instructional assistants, administrators, counselors, social workers, security officers, and custodial and cafeteria staff. When these interactions are guided by the goal of helping students form positive attachments and relationships, they can increase the relational wealth and well-being of our most troubled children and adolescents”. These are resilience touch points. Interactions between youth who have experienced interactions with these trusted individuals “can lessen the feelings of despair and hopelessness of students who are bringing their significant adversity and trauma into our schools”.
Desautels notes that resiliency touch points for older students may be “exchanging genuine greetings, listening to learn about a student’s life, asking a question, or noticing a new hairstyle”. For younger children with ACEs, resiliency touch points may include “playing with them, giving them a hug, or showing them movement strategies that help to calm the nervous system”. Resiliency touch points are targeted and intentional. Research has clearly shown that the power of relationships lies within the safe and predictable connection with safe adults, of which as these attachments and relationships take shape, help to grow and spread “the seeds of resiliency”.
Capello identified technology to help plant these “seeds” such as online conferencing software, like FaceTime, Skype, and Google Hangouts, as useful tools to help build positive relationships with children who have experienced ACEs. He notes that these technology platforms “help connect health care providers, social workers, tutors and mentors to vulnerable families in urban and rural settings”. This technology can also provide avenues for educators, school administrators and professionals to consult with, mentor and support one another, strengthening networks for local caring professionals. The most impactful technology to help resilience touch points for children and students who have experienced ACEs may very well be artificial intelligence (AI). Cappello notes how AI creates virtual coaches, mentors and educators, providing every student and parent with 24 hour advice, information and resources”. Cappello notes such AI tools for this purpose like Pocket Confidant which was designed to help students overcome challenges in real time.
Recognizing that technology does not replace human compassion or courage, Cappello does present the idea that technology, data and countywide collaborations, can “strengthen community systems and lifelong learning to create: safe childhoods, successful students, resilient families, and healthy communities”, and in the end, that is what we all want for all of our students.
References:
Capello, Dominic. 2019. Using Technology To Prevent ACEs and Childhood Trauma. Paces Connection. https://www.pacesconnection.com/blog/using-technology-to-prevent-aces-and-childhood-trauma
Desautels, Lori. 2018. Connections Go A Long Way For Students With Trauma. Edutopia. https://www.edutopia.org/article/connections-go-long-way-students-trauma/
