By Rebecca Rider
rebecca.rider@salisburypost.com

SALISBURY — They’re only 5, 6, 8, 10-years-old — but life has already thrown some elementary school students more punches than they can handle. Rowan County children walk into school every day with the scales stacked against them; bearing the weight of abuse, poverty or community violence — and when one more weight is added to the pile, they break.

“The response could be fight or freeze,” Christy Lockhart, a social worker at Koontz Elementary said. “And it’s out of their control.”

Lockhart, and others who specialize in working with children, refer to childhood trauma as Adverse Childhood Experiences, or ACEs; and have seen firsthand how multiple instances of trauma can cripple a student’s future. The CDC reports that one in six children nationally have experienced one or more adverse childhood experiences.

According to the CDC, ACEs can range from a divorce or mental illness in the home to sexual abuse, and have been linked to future substance abuse, risky behaviors, chronic illness and even early death. In school, it can impair memory and learning.

“Trauma and stress have significant effects — physical, psychological, social and emotional,” Lockhart said.

And for some students at Koontz, it’s become a crisis.

“Koontz has been touched by some great trauma,” principal Lori Marrero said.

In December 2016, 7 year-old A’yanna Allen, a first-grader at Koontz, was shot dead while sleeping in her grandmother’s Harrell Street home. Her death hit Koontz hard, but it isn’t the only trauma students there have experienced.

“We recognize that so many of our students live not only in poverty but with trauma in their daily lives,” Marrero said. “…We have students who can tell you where the guns are in their house. …We have students who witness violence, physical violence.”

Marrero estimates that at least a third of her students have been exposed to one or more adverse childhood experiences — and some children enter kindergarten with five or more.

“That might be a conservative number,” she admitted.

And it’s not limited to Koontz. According to the Rowan County Department of Social Services, Child Protective Services received 2,440 reports in the 2017 fiscal year. Total, Rowan County saw 1,406 cases of neglect, 112 cases of physical or emotional abuse, 113 cases of abuse or neglect and 30 cases of sexual abuse. More than 200 area children are currently in foster care. According to N.C. Child, a non-profit child advocacy organization, by 2013, 27.8 percent of Rowan County children were living in poverty; and the school system clocks more than 60 percent of students that qualify for free and reduced lunch.

Administrators at Koontz, and in Rowan-Salisbury Schools, realized something had to change.

“It impacts every school in the district,” Carol Ann Houpe, Rowan-Salisbury Schools director of student services, said.

While Rowan County, as a whole, has initiatives working to stem the tide of childhood trauma, many believe the initiative has to start in the schools.

“If we want to be a trauma-sensitive community, our schools have to be trauma informed and trauma sensitive,” Houpe said.

It’s part of what let Koontz to a partnership with the Public School Forum of N.C. Every few years the forum, a champion for students and schools, launches a year-long research and study group. This time, the organization has chosen to focus on trauma in education and tapped Koontz as a participant.

Koontz Elementary is one of only three schools in the state to be part of the forum’s North Carolina Resilience and Learning Project — the other two are located in Edgecombe County.

“It really just came down to the top two or three that showed the most interest; and readiness is also a big piece of it,” Elizabeth DeKonty, director of the Resilience and Learning Project, said. “…Koontz was one of those schools that they felt like had a lot of kids living in trauma, a lot of kids living in poverty.”

As a partner with the Public School Forum of N.C., staff members at Koontz have undergone training in identifying children who have experienced trauma and have also formed a steering committee to develop specific strategies on how to address the issue on a school-wide level.

But it can be hard to identify a child who’s experienced trauma. Children often process these events differently than adults, or have delayed reactions. According to DeKonty, students may react with “fight, flight or freeze.” Students could express their trauma by becoming aggressive, by being hyper vigilant, jumpy or by withdrawing completely.

“A lot of times those kids in the classroom go unnoticed because they’re just trying to hide,” she said.

Marrero spent more than 30 years in public schools before coming to Koontz in February 2016, and said she quickly realized that a large number of the school’s students were dealing with far more stress and trauma than any child should have to.

For many students, that manifested in behavioral issues. Marrero says that some children who walk through the doors are already on a hair-trigger from tragedies at home — and every straw is the one to break the camel’s back.

“Small things become really big crisis moments for them,” she said.

Whether it’s a small insult to their outfit, or another student glancing in their direction, many students can’t brush these moments off — they feel they have to react.

“They’re either gonna fight or they’re gonna flee,” Marrero said. “…They don’t understand that there is middle ground in there. They don’t have anyone to teach them that.”

“This is not a choice a first- through fifth-grader has. It is an automatic response that their body uses to protect them,” Lockhart said.

But with help from the Public School Forum of N.C., as well as other partnerships, staff at Koontz are trying to show students that there’s another way. Over the past year, Koontz has worked hard to integrate resiliency awareness and learning into every aspect of the school day.

The school’s specific strategy is threefold: to change the school’s climate, to adopt a new school culture and to tackle teacher stress while teaching positive coping skills.

On paper, it sounds simple — but the reality is anything but.

“It’s been a challenge to think about how you do have a mindset change or a change in culture. It’s an enormous job,” Lockhart said.

One of the big focuses has been coaching teachers to tweak the way they react to student meltdowns. Instead of thinking “what’s wrong with you,” Lockhart and DeKonty have been training teachers to think, “what happened to you?” But that’s not the only change.

“Some of the things are really small, like saying the kid’s name in the morning and the way we greet them — making sure they feel loved and cared for,” Lockhart said.

Lockhart also works with teachers and students to teach them positive coping skills. Classrooms focus on mindfulness and have isolated cool-down areas, lessons include discussions on identifying emotions, on catharsis and on calm-down strategies.

“So they’re able to calm down, versus having an outburst that in a school setting is seen as a negative thing,” Lockheart said.

It’s a small thing that makes all the difference.

“It’s more than significant — it is life-changing,” she said of the strategies.

On a Wednesday morning, Lauren Thomas’s kindergarten class takes a few minutes before their library time to learn about calm-down breathing techniques. Sitting on a checked carpet in the school’s media center, the group laughs and giggles as they fill the air with shimmering clouds of bubbles.

“The key to blowing bubbles is to breathe out slowly,” Lockhart said. “Which is also what you do to calm down.”

If children learn positive coping methods early on, they’re more likely to handle stress and traumatic experiences in a healthy manner in the future, instead of turning to unhealthy habits like substance abuse.

When it comes to tackling teacher stress, Koontz has an oxygen mask mentality. Sometimes, Lockhart said, you have to get help yourself before you can help others.

The school is surveying teachers to find out what supports they need, and plans to offer ongoing training, have teacher of the month shout outs, staff social events and even offer services like in-house yoga lessons.

“I think the whole thing about being trauma sensitive is creating a safe and supportive environment,” Lockheart said of the move.

Koontz’s administration is also working on using resilience strategies when a student acts out instead of taking punitive measures.

“Research tells us it doesn’t work,” Lockhart said of traditional punishments like suspension. “…It takes something away. And that I think in the education system doesn’t work — we should be adding to their lives.”

In the six months or so since Koontz launched its resiliency focus, Lockhart said she’s seen improvements — from children coming to teachers for help, to learning that they can ask to go to a calm, cool-down area when they’re feeling overwhelmed.

“I think there are successes — a hundred a day in a thousand little ways,” she said.

Lockhart acknowledges that there’s still a long road ahead. And while DeKonty and the Public School Forum of N.C. will scale back involvement after a year and just provide support during year two, Koontz plans to keep the wheels in motion.

“The hope of the program is that it’s not just a one-time, one-year thing. …The hope is that it really is kind of a culture shift,” DeKonty said.

But organizers acknowledge that the resiliency program isn’t a silver bullet.

“It’s not a one thing is going to fix everything,” Houpe said of the program at Koontz.

But she, and others invested in local children, hope that, step by small step, they can make a difference.

Contact reporter Rebecca Rider at 704-797-4264.