Giving Compass' Take:

• Students from Wheelock College in Boston, MA are traveling to Belfast, Ireland to study how educators follow peaceful programs that address childhood trauma in the classroom after Ireland's violent history. 

• How can this international approach to reducing childhood trauma and increasing problem-solving skills translate in American classrooms? 

• Read about the approach of trauma-informed schools in the United States helping Native American students. 

When two bombs went off at the Boston Marathon finish line in 2013, children in the city were paying attention. In day cares and schools, youngsters told their teachers they couldn’t go to the city anymore because of the bad people there, and that they couldn’t run races because they would get hurt.

But a group of Boston student-teachers was prepared to respond to just these types of fears among young children. They attended Wheelock College, a teacher training school in the city, and had just returned from Belfast, where they were learning about an early childhood curriculum created to help Northern Ireland’s youngest generation heal from the region’s 30-year sectarian conflict, known as the Troubles.

The Northern Ireland program is proving to be a path to peace in areas across the globe where violence has created trauma. Not only does the program serve nearly 3,000 preschools and schools in Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland, but it’s been adopted in other war-torn regions of the world, including Kyrgyzstan, the Balkans, and Tajikistan.

Media Initiative for Children launched in 2004 by Early Years, a nonprofit that supports young children in Northern Ireland, and the U.S.-based Peace Initiatives Institute, the curriculum uses cartoons, puppets, and teacher professional development to help children work through conflict with peers, become more accepting of diversity, and utilize tools to express their feelings.

In the U.S., Wheelock is the only teacher training school that sends its students to Belfast to learn about this work. Although there hasn’t been anything resembling the Troubles in the States, trauma from poverty, racism, immigration, and violence affects small children every day, and prejudices make themselves known at a young age.

Read the full article about addressing child trauma in Northern Ireland  by Kate Stringer at The 74