Trauma Informed Schools

3. Provide choices

Flexibility and choice are important with the Trauma Informed perspective, moving away from ridged systems that do not tolerate individual student needs. Many times, students feel like they are told what to do all day long and how to do it, that everything is dictated to them. When it comes to being flexible and giving students choices, it's about looking at how many small choices can I give them across the day.  Some examples would include:  

1) Would you like to write with the red pencil or a yellow pencil, or green pencil? You could write with the crayon or marker, or a colored pencil.

 2) Do you want to write on lined paper or unlined paper? 

3) Do you want to use the red eraser, or the yellow eraser? 

Students need to be provided with many different choices over the course of the school day. It is also important to increase the student awareness of the number of choices that they make each day.