Giving Compass' Take:

• As schools are trying to solve chronic absenteeism, educators must prioritize listening to children who are experiencing trauma outside of school. 

• What are helpful resources for school districts that want to address childhood trauma, and how can donors provide access to them?

• Learn more about reducing childhood trauma through home visits. 

The audience had just heard two wrenching tales of Detroit children dealing with childhood trauma: a 9-year-old boy who witnessed his father kill his mother, and a 14-year-old girl who was sexually assaulted by an aunt’s friend.

And afterward, during a panel discussion on the stage of a theater at The Henry Ford in Dearborn, Detroit school counselor Quan Neloms made a sobering point: Those tales were not surprising.

“We deal with stories like that every year. We find ways to instruct those students, to help them to achieve,” said Neloms, a counselor at Bow Elementary-Middle School. Neloms recently transitioned from teaching to counseling in part because he’s dealt so often with children struggling with trauma and understands its impact on the classroom.

A recurring theme among the experts who spoke during the NBC News Learn event Thursday was this: Children dealing with trauma need help, but they also need adults to hear them.

Issues related to childhood trauma, chronic absenteeism, teacher morale, and lack of opportunities took center stage during a wide-ranging discussion about education. Much of the event was centered on education in Detroit, though the audience also heard from people like Terry Dangerfield, the superintendent of the Lincoln Park Public Schools District in Wayne County.

That district, the audience learned, has sought to train staff to better meet the needs of students dealing with trauma through its Resilient Schools Project.

During a panel discussion about chronic absenteeism, the audience learned that more than half of the children in the city meet the definition of chronically absent, meaning they’ve missed 18 days in a typical school year. It’s a problem both district and charter schools are dealing with.

Read the full article about children dealing with trauma by Lori Higgins at Chalkbeat.