She's been helping her students with trauma for decades. Now, her methods are catching on.
Long-time educator, Arlinda Davis opens up about how she’s turned trauma in her own life into healing in the classroom.
She's been helping her students with trauma for decades. Now, her methods are catching on.
Long-time educator, Arlinda Davis opens up about how she’s turned trauma in her own life into healing in the classroom.
By Jesse Mintz
“If you don’t meet the needs of a child physically, mentally, emotionally, you can’t reach that child academically,”
It took a quarter of a century, but the teaching world is finally catching up with Arlinda Davis.
For years, Davis—a first grade teacher in Birmingham, Alabama—has been just as concerned with whether her students feel safe and supported as she is with how they’re performing on reading and math tests. “If you don’t meet the needs of a child physically, mentally, emotionally, you can’t reach that child academically,” the Avondale Elementary School teacher says of her philosophy.
Now experts are lining up to agree.
Davis is not only a WE Teachers Award recipient, she has embraced the WE Teachers program and is an active member of the WE Teachers community. She has shared WE Teacher’s no-cost resources and training to 4,500 educators in her districts, which supports them in addressing critical social issues with their students, helping them become active, engaged citizens.
According to the National Survey of Children’s Health, nearly half of all children in the United States have experienced at least one type of serious trauma. Violence, abuse and neglect can all affect how students learn, behave and relate to others. Experts point to a trauma-informed approach as a solution for teachers trying to reach students in pain, something both Davis and WE Teachers stand behind.
Davis’ success in addressing trauma in the classroom comes from approaching students with radical empathy. That means always trying to understand what’s behind their feelings and actions. That philosophy, so in-tune with her students’ needs, stems from trauma in her own life.
“I was on my way to being the next Oprah,” she says with a warm laugh. She was studying journalism in college at 17, having skipped several high school grades, and already reading the news on the radio. She saw a career path opening before her. Then, a traumatic life event threw her off trajectory and made her reevaluate her goals.
Davis is a survivor of sexual assault. Part of moving past the trauma was family support—“I have a wonderful family who helped me through it,” she says—and switching from journalism to teaching. “Dealing with the trauma made it even more important that everything I went on to do would make a positive impact on people’s lives.”
Teaching, in fact, had been her first passion, sparked by working with children in her church growing up. With both drive and life experience, Davis charged into teaching, ready to make a difference. From the moment she began her career, she used her trauma—and the self-awareness it led to—to help inform her actions in the classroom. ”Having that experience gives me perspective,” she says, allowing her a window onto the pain young people are experiencing and insight into how to help them through anger and trust issues.
The empathy Davis exudes has taken physical form, transforming her learning space into a clubhouse mimicking the comforts of home, drawing on the type of advice offered by the WE Teachers module on creating a trauma-informed classroom. Here, students find a cozy-corner full of pillows, mobiles dangling from the ceiling, stuffed animals to snuggle, and a fridge with snacks. It’s no wonder that over the years, her classroom has been a haven for students too tired to stay awake, having been kept up the night before by gunshots outside; or too hungry to focus, having not eaten breakfast.
In her 25 years, Davis has seen the rates of poverty and violence in Birmingham climb. Today, the poverty rate in her city is 31 per cent, well above the national average, and the violent crime rate is double the state average. Meanwhile, 86 per cent of students in her school are on free or reduced lunches. “I’ve seen the face of children change from being innocent and wanting to learn everything to now coming in with so much baggage,” she says. “It’s across the city, it’s nationwide—children are dealing with adult things, contending with more abuse and negativity, they’re forced to be responsible and they’re not ready.”
That upswing has led to the increased interest in the trauma-informed approach tirelessly practiced and championed by Davis. When a former student nominated Davis for a WE Teachers award, she discovered resources on the exact types of issues long dealt with in her classroom.
She says: “The Bullying module was a perfect answer to identifying and provide for students being bullied as well as why students bully.” The school hosted a month-long anti-bullying celebration and education with its students.
She immediately shared the WE Teachers program with her former principal who went on to work on social and emotional learning for the district, helping organize a seminar on a trauma informed approach for a professional development day.
“I have made it my new purpose to share and inform teachers across America using the WE modules. In a nutshell WE has given me life!” she says.
Walgreens knows that at the heart of every community are our unsung heroes—teachers. That’s why they’ve partnered with WE to develop a program that provides free tools and resources to teachers nationwide to help them address the changing needs of their classrooms, like funding and addressing critical social issues.
