Speaker: Tabitha Bahu Elwood, Educator, AHA! Santa Barbara
Could you describe your overall experience with the Trauma-Resilient Professional certification program?
Tabitha Bahu Elwood: Every educator, every educational environment needs TREC as educators, we know that our students are hurting, we can see it on their faces, we can read it in their body language. We see the manifestations of trauma daily and it's overwhelming. It's overwhelming for our students. It's overwhelming for us. The TREC training develops our understanding of the impacts of trauma and gives us tools to develop resilience in ourselves and in our students through trek, we are better able to live through the lens of love and connection instead of fear and anxiety. The trauma resilient professional certification program has changed my life path and became my calling. It has transformed my teaching practice to address the whole student. I now know and understand the way that the brain works and the importance of embedding social emotional learning and well being. As the foundation to learning academic content, I have witnessed the entire ecosystem of our school site becoming one built on trust between administrators and teachers and trust between students and teachers. TREC social-emotional learning curriculum opens a way for teachers to model and facilitate mindfulness strategies such as heart math, cognitive behavioral techniques. All of these strategies reduce stress, reduce anxiety and increase happiness. Students and teachers are more connected through these curriculum and our school culture is one in which everyone has a layer of support. The TREC model teaches us tools that enable us to pause and choose our responses. It's absolutely empowering to make an individual choice with organizational ripples. For example, now our team talks constructively about our work related stress and in doing so, we are creating and cultivating a culture of caring rather than complaining throughout the training, we practice vulnerability, we practice building trust and we practice understanding our common experiences which are foundational to humanizing our organization trek is transformative and it's transforming my teaching practice as I listen to my students stories and I speak into their lives in a truly trauma, resilient, informed way.
How have you implemented what you have learned in your day-to-day life?
Tabitha Bahu Elwood: Through the TREC training. I've learned about heart math and heart math is a practice that I use every single day to create capacity in my nervous system. And when I do heart math proactively, it prepares me for what is to come in the day, whether that's a student crisis or just um a heavy workload, I'm much better prepared and it also creates self-awareness. So then I'm able to do my own inner work. I know what to work on when I'm self aware. And a theme that is woven throughout TREC is the essential state of pausing between the stimulus and the response. So, one of the outcomes of going through the training for me is being aware of that space between stimulus and response and doing my very best to inhabit it. So the way that that manifests itself is that I don't have as many automatic negative thoughts because I'm pausing. I'm taking a heart focused breath and then I'm actually making a decision on how I wanna respond, whether it's to someone else or whether it's to myself. So my conversation with myself is much more positive now and the spillover of being more connected within is that I'm able to connect with others more and I'm able to be attuned more to my colleagues and to my students. Um And as a result of that, uh my students feel safe with me, um they know that I have their back because of that attunement that they're sensing and that grounding that they're sensing in me because of these practices that I have learned through the TREC training.
What was your most meaningful takeaway from the Trauma-Resilient Professional certification program?
Tabitha Bahu Elwood: One of the most meaningful takeaways from the Trauma-Resilient Professional Certification program for me is that of neuroplasticity. Neuroplasticity is powerful and learning about the plasticity of my brain is so empowering because it's up to me to practice things like heart math and just different ways to increase my intelligence through learning a language or through music. Um I can become smarter, I can become stronger, I can become more resilient. And another part of that module on neurobiology that has been so encouraging to me is understanding my nervous system, understanding how the brain works, how there is a parasympathetic part of my brain and a sympathetic part that can put me in flight or fight or freeze mode. So when I'm in those stressful situations, when I understand what's happening neuro, biologically, it helps me to pause between that stimulus and that response and be able to talk myself through it. Ok. This is what's going on right now. Your body is releasing stress hormones. And if you do some heart focused breathing at some point, there's gonna be an ebb in those hormones and you're gonna be able to um make a more logical decision So, it's, again, some of the best news ever that our brains can change for the better.
Would you recommend this certification to a friend or colleague? If so, why?
Tabitha Bahu Elwood: I would recommend this training to every educator, every educator needs TREC to become trauma aware and not just trauma aware but to learn how the brain works and how resilience is built. And then to actually learn the practical tools of how to, to build that resilience within themselves and within their students. So the impacts of trauma on our Children is a national crisis and there is something that educators can do about it. They can take the TREC training.
