Matthew S Bennett

Today, something is going to happen to an innocent child. Tomorrow, that child will walk into their school. What happens next will impact the rest of their life. What is this powerful event? Childhood trauma. Most students will experience some form of emotional, physical, or sexual abuse, neglect, family dysfunction, racism, homelessness, or poverty by their eighteenth birthday. If left untreated, their traumatic experience may have lasting implications on their physical and mental health and their success in school. Our growing knowledge of trauma is a call to action for every person that works in education and cares about the wellbeing of children in their community. Trauma-Sensitive Early Education: Helping Pre-School & Elementary Students Thrive explores the devastating effects that trauma inflicts on students, and how the resulting anguish manifests in the classroom as academic and behavioral struggles. Understanding the problem is just the first part of the journey taken in the book. This in-depth exploration guides educators in the process of creating trauma-sensitive classrooms and research-based instructional strategies that help students with trauma experience social and academic success.

As a follow-up to the successful Connecting Paradigms, Talking about Trauma & Change: A Connecting Paradigms' Supplement provides analogies and models to help people understand the complexity of changing behavior and healing psychological trauma. Talking about Trauma & Change presents the approaches that Matthew Bennett has used in his training and clinical work in a format that is easily integrated into individual or group conversations. Change and trauma are sensitive and complex topics; the use of these straightforward analogies and simple models helps people see their past, the present situation, and their future in a whole new positive light. This supplement has four parts. Part 1: Setting the Stage provides a brief overview of Connecting Paradigms: A Trauma-Informed & Neurobiological Framework for Motivational Interviewing Implementation. The first chapter serves as a quick refresher of the concepts presented in Connecting Paradigms. The second chapter explains the best way to implement the material in this book. Part 2: Talking about Trauma explores different analogies and models to help clients learn and reflect on their lives and traumatic pasts. There is incredible power in helping someone understand how their traumatic past is affecting them in the present. This material is liberating in that it helps people to realize many of their struggles are due to past trauma and not something inherently wrong with them as a person. In addition, the knowledge motivates many to engage in mental-health services in order to heal from their past suffering and get their children help as well. Analogies and models are effective in teaching about trauma in a safe way that minimizes the chance of retraumatization. The third section, Part 3: Talking about Change, provides several analogies and models that complement the Motivational Interviewing (MI) approaches presented in Connecting Paradigms. The focus of Part 3 is on how to help clients understand the change process and the neurobiological adjustments needed to support behavioral change. The analogies and models are a great way to build mindsight and elicit change talk. The final section, Part 4: The Hero's Journey, presents a model that brings together critical aspects of the healing and change process. This model helps people identify where they are in their journeys to healing and growth and what they need to focus on to successfully take their next step. The hero's journey provides many great opportunities for us to help people gain self-understanding while eliciting change talk about living the life they desire.