Meeting students where they’re at: Trauma-informed education at center of what Johnsburg social worker does

There are very few things that throw Nikki Brosh for a loop.

“I have seen worse” than most situations thrown at her now, Brosh said.

She’s one of two social workers at Johnsburg Junior High School and came from a background in private and state-supported social work. She worked at Mooseheart near Batavia, The Larkin Center in Elgin and The Learning House in Wheeling, among others, before moving into Illinois public schools, first in Hebron and now at Johnsburg School District 12.

That background, often working with young people who came from impossible home situations, brings a different experience to the Johnsburg school.

“I worked really hard and they have been super open to a lot of training with staff about trauma, and trauma-informed schools,” Brosh said.

Trauma-informed education understands that students may be coming from a home life with poverty, abuse, violence and addiction. That may cause them to behave inappropriately in school.

When Brosh sees a student acting out, she sees those behaviors as the student communicating something to adults. “What are they trying to get from those behaviors?”

When she earned her master’s degree in social work in 2010, trauma-informed social work wasn’t something that was talked about, Brosh said. Then, in about 2015, she attended a continuing education class on the topic.

“There was this training about trauma and how it changes your whole life and perspective,” she said. Now, “I talk about it all the time ... why people do what they do and where they are coming from. If you can understand their lives, you can connect with them in a different way. It changes your perspective on why they are doing what they are doing.”

That also is why she loves working with middle school students: they have not yet had some behaviors hard-baked into them.

“Middle schoolers are finally starting to notice that they are different, but they are not so set in their ways that they are unwilling to hear a perspective,” Brosh said.

Sometimes all it takes is a caring adult to ask questions and listen, she said. “Validating and normalizing is 90% of my job. You are not the only person who has experienced this, and there are 700 kids who have experienced the same thing.”

When students know they are not the only person going through hard times, “you normalize it for a young person. It can change their whole perspective,” Brosh said.

She’s been that caring adult for many of their students, said Principal Jamison Pearce. “You will not find a more dedicated advocate for our students. [She] has created and maintained relationships with all of the students.”

Research shows that having a relationship with a caring adult is huge for students, to steer them away from those incorrect behaviors, Brosh said. “At the junior high school, Dr. Pearce is good about this, to make sure every kid is connected to someone in the building.”

She’s also worked to ensure all Johnsburg families can connect with the help they need. She helped create the District Family Expo “that brings in community resources and organizations to help the Johnsburg families,” Pearce said.

The expo invites local support agencies, including food pantries, after-school and mental health programs, scouting programs and “whatever a family might need to support our children. They can talk to them at their table to learn about all of the resources we have in our community and how to access them,” Brosh said.

She and the other social worker at Johnsburg Junior High also get into classrooms to talk about social-emotional learning and standards. “They get 10 minutes a week with a social worker in the classroom. It makes kids really comfortable, because they see us in their classroom and in their community,” she said.