I was ten years old when I lost my home in Chalmette, Louisiana, because of Hurricane Katrina. The storm uprooted my entire life and left lasting impacts on my brain. Eighteen years later, as an educator, I am still working through those impacts, but I have come to a deeper understanding of the profound impact of trauma on learning. The good news, if there could be good news in trauma, is that the brain is adaptable due to our brain’s amazing ability to change and rewire itself, known as neural plasticity (Dovetail, Qld, 2019).
When someone experiences a traumatic event – such as a life-altering natural disaster, a pandemic, or abuse – the amygdala, the part of the brain responsible for emotions, can become hyperactive (Payton, 2023). This leads to a heightened stress response and decreases the hippocampus and prefrontal cortex function. This prevents cognitive function, including memory formation and retrieval (Vogel and Schwabe, 2016). Sometimes, the brain uses a defense mechanism called dissociation, where people mentally distance themselves from a traumatic event (Ohwovoriole, 2021). This leads to a person forgetting certain memories as the brain attempts to protect itself from overwhelming distress. In my case, the years immediately preceding and following Hurricane Katrina are fragmented memories. Clinically, this phenomenon is called dissociative amnesia and is linked to the brain’s response to stress and the body’s defense mechanism (Ohwovoriole, 2021).
Following Hurricane Katrina, my family enrolled me in a few different school districts throughout Louisiana as we moved to other family member’s houses. I had just started 5th grade when the storm hit. I remember being teased for small things, such as my clothes (provided by government assistance) and my accent (provided by my dad). A teacher asked me a question, and I replied using the word “y’all” only to be chastised for my informality and unladylike behavior – this was the deep South, after all. This may have been neuroplasticity in action. My developing brain responded to an experience and adapted accordingly (Cherry, 2024). I made a mental note to change the way my voice sounded so as not to be ignorant in my teacher’s eyes. Perhaps she would have benefited from some trauma-informed teaching practices. The accent remarks really stuck with me, and over the years following, I forgot my Chalmette accent almost entirely.
After months of moving around and changing schools, I moved back to Chalmette in a FEMA trailer with my dad and had teachers who were going through the same life experiences as their students. From what I remember of school during that time, we were all doing our best to survive, rebuild a community, and learn from one another. My 6th grade teacher assigned us to create a documentary of our storm experiences using the brand-new Macbooks our school received through federal funding. The experience now seems deeply rooted in trauma-informed instructional design, focusing on agency and collaboration (Charr-Chelman & Bogard, 2023). The experience allowed students to work individually through some of the trauma they had endured while emphasizing the importance of working together to create a product we would be proud to share with our families. Many of my experiences in school post-Katrina were like this. The education we received, especially in the years immediately following the storm’s aftermath, was not always the most academically rigorous, and I can remember entire class periods being spent discussing the home-rebuilding process, but I cannot remember a single literary text that we read. Still, I recall the teachers focusing on the whole person’s growth. They were able to provide social learning experiences that supported our ability to work through trauma and allow our brains to eventually come out of the heightened arousal and reduce some of the anxiety that we were all experiencing.
It was not until my mid-twenties that I even felt comfortable calling Hurricane Katrina a traumatic part of my life, and I wonder why this is. Perhaps I felt uncomfortable with the stigma associated with trauma and what that meant about me as a person. Perhaps my brain had done such a powerful job of blocking out the worst memories that I had convinced myself that what I endured was not even that bad. The ways my brain worked to keep me going, to keep me learning, and, most importantly, to keep me growing are genuinely incredible. Working through my own trauma has allowed my brain to, in part, begin the process of healing and rewiring.
References
Charr-Chellman, A. & Bogard, T. (2023, May 25). TI-ADDIE: A trauma-informed model of instructional design. Educause Review.
Cherry, K. (2024, May 17). How neuroplasticity works. Verywell Mind.
Dovetail Qld. (2019, August 7). Trauma and the brain [Video]. YouTube.
Ohwovoriole, T. (2021, November 18). What is dissociative amnesia? Verywell Mind.
Payton, D. (2023, December 15). Trauma on the brain: The neurobiological effects of PTSD | Daisy Payton | TEDxMeritAcademy [Video]. YouTube.
Vogel, S., Schwabe, L. (2016). Learning and memory under stress: Implications for the classroom. npj Science Learn, 1, 16011.