Trauma Informed Practice - BSEM

Berry Street Education Model

At Melrose Primary School, the Berry Street Education Model (BSEM) supports our understanding of students with complex unmet needs, alongside the creation of trauma-informed, strengths-based classrooms.

It is our belief that the classroom has the potential to be a place of healing when students feel safe, secure, welcomed, and accepted. For students who experience trauma and disadvantage, supporting them to achieve the best academic outcomes possible is an essential pathway to widening their future possibilities.

The BSEM is a developmentally informed, no harm approach. The model is structured on the five domains of Body, Relationship, Stamina, Engagement, and Character.

BODY helps teachers and students to develop strategies for deescalating strong emotional and physiological responses to stress.
RELATIONSHIP helps to nurture strong student-teacher relationships and ground students in a sense of safety and belonging.
STAMINA supports students to maintain focus and attention in the classroom through learning skills and strategies in areas such as emotional intelligence, resilience and growth mindsets.
ENGAGEMENT provides pathways to cultivating students' interests, curiosity, and flow, and focuses strongly on building positive emotions in the classroom.
CHARACTER helps students to identify, develop, and grow their strengths and psychological resources.

Teachers implement explicit lessons, strategies and trauma-informed, strength-based classroom practice throughout the school day and as part of the Emotional Intelligence curriculum. The following is an overview of topics covered in the BSEM.

Getting Students Ready to Focus

Before students can be successful at school, they need to be supported to come into a state where they are ready to learn. A child who is ready to learn is not in a state of dysregulation and internal chaos. Their heart is not racing at an elevated rate. When a child is ready to learn, they can concentrate, reason and remember. They have access to the parts of their brain that help them integrate new information and connect different ideas together. They are tracking the teacher and focusing on the learning task, not scanning the room for threats.

The BSEM common practice described below support two key ideas:

A trauma-informed classroom explicitly integrates strategies that help students to regulate their state of arousal, and soothe their dysregulated stress-response system.
A trauma-informed classroom is one in which the teacher seeks to develop nurturing and healing relationships with students built on consistency, warmth and respect.

The Morning Circle

The Melrose PS daily timetable has been created to ensure that the morning circle runs across the school from 9.00 - 9.20 in every classroom. The morning circle is a calm and predictable routine to start each school day. The morning circle will include:

Students form a circle
Check in using Ready to Learn Scale
Students greet the person on either side of them by using their name and safe touch (hand shake, elbow touch, foot tap)
Talk with the class about focus/goal/value for the day (WWW)
Share expectations and what the daily timetable looks like
Share any positive news - birthdays, students achievements, event etc
Finish with a positive brain break

Ready to Learn Scale

The Ready to Learn Scale is displayed in every Melrose classroom. This is used as a tool for students and teachers to gather information about how students are feeling throughout the school day. Teachers can then support students to use strategies to regulate their state of arousal, and soothe their dysregulated stress-response system.

Individual Ready to Learn Plans further support students to understand their thoughts, feels and actions on an individual level so that they can respond to moments of dysregulation in safe and healthy ways.

Calm, Predictable Routines

Consistency and predictability are 2 key ways to support all students, and especially students who struggle to self-regulate. A calm, consistent, positive environment is enriching and routines are a practical way to support a sense of calm, consistency across the school. Routines are a powerful tool for learning AND wellbeing.

Brain Breaks, Movement Breaks & Positive Primers

Brain breaks, movement breaks and positive primers are embedded throughout the day as part of the schools' consistent routines. These short breaks chunk the lesson and give teachers an opportunity to the check-in if needed, and calmly and consistently reset the learning environment.

Creating a Trauma-informed, Strengths-based Language

Having a well-developed language for conceptualizing and describing student behaviours is central to responding to students in respectful and nurturing ways.

The following key terms can help us to understand and respond to students who present a range of unmet, complex needs.

Additional Resources/ Reading

Alongside professional learning facilitated throughout the year by the Melrose Berry Street Team, the following resource can be found in your EQ Teacher Resource Box.

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