Violence & Crisis Prevention

Educators are accustomed to designing road maps that amplify confidence, structure, and ultimately successful outcomes for students and staff in known conditions. But what is the plan when the known becomes unknown? Navigating the Unexpected empowers school leadership to create and utilize trauma-response teams.

Lead a foundational shift in the way your school approaches student behavior. Using straightforward language, the authors offer research-based, practical strategies for understanding and supporting trauma-impacted students and providing a safe environment for them to learn.

Create safe classrooms where students are empowered to build resilience, cope with traumatic experiences, and achieve at high levels. Learn how to cultivate a trauma-informed classroom environment and utilize classroom management strategies to encourage positive learning experiences for trauma-impacted students.

Learn how teachers, school counselors, psychologists, and social workers can harness their collective power to support the complex needs of students through meaningful team building. Foster productive social-emotional learning (SEL) that promotes a whole-child education.

With this timely guide, you will discover actionable steps for launching and sustaining wraparound services embedded within your school that support the whole child. Amplify student voice and build mental health with strategies that improve academic achievement and classroom behavior.

Reach alienated youth using the unique strategies of the updated Reclaiming Youth at Risk book by Larry K. Brendtro, Martin Brokenleg, and Steve Van Bockern. Learn how cultivating the Circle of Courage values of belonging, mastery, independence, and generosity can combat core hazards that dominate the lives of youth at risk.

Steve Van Bockern is a professor of education at Augustana University in South Dakota. Formerly a teacher and principal, his research interests include resiliency, alternative education, restorative justice, bullying, discipline, and creating well-being.

Chavez Phelps, PhD, is an assistant professor of school psychology at Indiana State University. There he directs the Hoosier Whole Child Resilience Initiative, which offers professional development and technical support to schools and other community agencies that support youth with trauma-related behavior and emotional needs.

Brandie M. Oliver, PhD, is an associate professor at Butler University teaching in the Masters in School Counseling program and a frequent presenter for local, state and national education conferences. Her specific areas of interest include social-emotional learning, trauma-responsive education, suicide prevention and intervention, comprehensive school counseling, restorative practices, and ensuring work is done through a lens of equity and cultural responsiveness.

Deborah Ricker is principal of Glenwood Ridge Elementary School in Basehor, Kansas. Prior to going into administration, she spent 19 years as a school psychologist in the Kansas City area.