NCSBE and Starr Commonwealth

Resilient Students, Proven Results

Starr Commonwealth’s flagship Resilient Schools Project is an evidence-informed and comprehensive systems approach to establishing a culture of resilience and trauma-informed practices in K-12 school buildings and districts nationwide. The goal is to equip school professionals with knowledge, training, and support to foster resilience in children.

Through Starr’s Resilient Schools Project efforts with partnering schools, the Resilient Schools Project whitepaper documents the many gains that meet the immediate needs of children.

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Empowered Professionals

Starr’s Certified Trainers are ready to bring specialized, trauma-informed and resilience-focused training to your school, agency, or organization. Our professional training curriculum on trauma-informed and resilience-focused care is based upon, and aligned with, the research of Bessel van der Kolk (2014), Peter Levine (2015) and Bruce Perry (2002), among others, including a library of Starr’s own extensive research. Starr focuses on how trauma has a different impact at different stages of development. What the research shows is that trauma is a body experience (van der Kolk, 2014). While talk therapy can be an approach, it is not as effective in trauma since the pre-frontal cortex (the logical and linguistic part of the brain) is offline when an individual is experiencing trauma. Medicinal intervention may also be ineffective, as it cannot address the complex ways trauma can manifest (Green et al., 2016). Therefore, practitioners must utilize treatment modalities that address healing and resilience through the body, or they run the risk of misdiagnosing the child and misapplying interventions. Put simply, Starr trains professionals to understand that healing and resilience must incorporate the body—and it is all possible in an educator's everyday routine.

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Go beyond training with certification

Starr Certified Trauma & Resilience Practitioners (CTRP) have a fundamental understanding of the impact trauma and stress have on learning; the social, emotional, and physical development of students; and the role resilience plays in creating positive, future health outcomes. With a specialization in educational settings, each understands the importance their own curiosity of a child’s life experiences plays in diagnosing behavior, developing trusting relationships, and creating a strong learning environment for all children to thrive.

"I think every educator needs this. I think it really well-rounds you as an educator but also as a person because kids aren't the only ones struggling with trauma... it just changes the lens with which you look at people with." - Rachael, Certified Trauma & Resilience Practitioner, Michigan Title 1 school teacher

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In addition to Starr's dynamic training and coaching, we feature a robust suite of resources and materials to implement trauma-informed practices on a daily basis in an accessible way for students.

Questions? Let us work with you

Contact Gregg Strand to learn more about how Starr Commonwealth can transform the lens through which your staff sees and reacts to student behavior.

Schedule your consultation today