This autumn, 75 K-12 public and private schools across Arkansas were awarded $2,500 each from Arkansas Blue Cross and Blue Shield to install calming rooms. Max Greenwood, the insurance company’s vice president of government and media relations, said the initiative was announced last summer, and awards revealed earlier this month.
“It has been found that these rooms provide a space for students to help regulate their emotions, take a time out if they're just having a day," Greenwood said. "So these rooms generally have soft lighting, tranquil colors, and comfortable furniture. There can be some positive and inspirational messages throughout the room, lots of journals or even even coloring books. We all forget how much we love to color and how relaxing it is, so there's lots of things that schools being creative can do in these rooms to help give their students a place really to just chill out.”
Nikki Edge is a professor at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences in Little Rock, where she teaches and conducts research on childhood trauma and interventions in the Department of Family and Preventive Medicine.
“Calming rooms are really consistent with an overall approach, a more comprehensive approach that schools are taking to build trauma informed schools," she said, "to consider the needs of the whole child including supporting the mental health and emotional well-being of kids.”
According to the National Education Association, trauma-informed schoolsemploy teachers, administrators and staff who are able to respond holistically to traumatized students. Edge said that schoolchildren in Arkansas experience trauma at some of the highest rates in the country.
“Just to give you a few examples, we know that 16% of our children have lost a parent to incarceration, between 10-15% of our kids are living with a parent with mental illness or a parent with a substance use concern, about 10% of our kids are living right now with domestic violence, and we know that about one in seven in any given year are experiencing abuse or neglect in their homes,” she said.
Trauma can also be a consequence of homelessness, peer pressure, social media aggression, and lingering pandemic experiences — all of which can impact learning, behavior, and school safety.
“So calming rooms give kids a space to take a moment when they're having difficulties," Edge said, "when they're feeling anxious or frustrated, disappointed or upset, to be able to take a break, to be able to use some tools that they've been taught, to be able to regain their composure, to be able to refocus in order to reenter the classroom ready to engage in learning.”
Edge recently visited the state’s first Arkansas Blue Cross grant-funded calming room in Little Rock.
“They tend to be painted in calm colors, have really comfortable furniture, sometimes low lighting," she said. "And then kids have tools in the room to help them think about emotions that they're feeling and to have some prompts or ways to think about calming down or getting back into a healthier space emotionally.”
Nikki Edge is also director and founder ofThe Arkansas Trauma Resource Initiative for Schools -- T R I S for short, funded by Blue & You Foundation in partnership with the Arkansas Department of Education. The program provides training and resources to K-12 schools to recognize and respond to students in trauma.
“But not just students," she said. "Trauma is impacting families, it's impacting staff. And so what are the steps that schools can take to help ensure that kids with experiences of trauma are able to succeed in school and thrive. We know that kids with experiences of trauma are more likely to fail a grade, more likely to drop out of school, they're more likely to be expelled from school and so that's the story that we want to change.”
Calming room facilitators aim to cultivate resilience among students dealing with trauma, especially those who lack support at home. Edge said that recognizing and responding to trauma is a key TRIS program goal, which has provided training to more than 8,000 Arkansas teachers.
“And now we're moving into a next phase where we're offering a more in-depth training series," she said. "So we are working with teachers to build classroom environments that feel emotionally, physically and psychologically safe for kids, as well as how to build supportive relationships with kids who might be more difficult to connect with, because of their experiences and lack of trust in adults around them. We equip teachers to support kids’ self regulation, teach about managing big emotions, modeling that good self regulation. We teach problem solving and conflict resolution."
For those questioning if this extracurricular trauma training burdens busy teachers who daily have to negotiate best education practices — Edge said it helps.
"They’re already dealing with disruptive behavior and it's already the biggest driver of teacher stress and burnout," she said. "And so if we can take a little time to tackle the problem from a different angle, you know, that's really what we're trying to equip teachers to do.”
Parents and guardians can play a role, Edge said, monitoring for key symptoms of trauma.
“Sometimes it looks like physical health symptoms like frequent stomach aches or headache," she said. "Sometimes it looks a little bit like attention deficit disorder. We know that one thing that trauma can do is disrupt what we call our executive function skills, our thinking, focusing, planning, managing timelines, being organized, managing our emotions, controlling our impulses. Those skills can be disrupted by experiences of trauma and so that’ll show up in the way we manage our homework, and the way we engage in the classroom, and also the way that we engage with our peers, behaviorally.”
Max Greenwood with Arkansas Blue Cross and Blue Shield said the 75 school calming rooms, to be strategically installed in 75 counties, will serve as pilot facilities. The methodology is spelled out in grant applications and promotional literature, which can be replicated within districts.
"The only thing we do is provide funding to establish the rooms," Greenwood said. "It is up to individual schools to determine who on staff is going to manage the space and what the guidelines around the use of that space will best fit their enrollment.”
Grant recipients have until May 1, 2024, to complete calming room installations.
