Review of "Trauma-Informed Teaching" by Dr. Annise Mabry

​Score: 93/100 (9.3 out of 10)

Trauma-Informed Teaching: From Reaction to Restoration is a short, practical guide in which Dr. Annise Mabry uses her experience running the Tiers Free homeschool cooperative to show how homeschool co-ops and microschools can become true healing spaces for trauma-impacted kids, not just smaller versions of the systems that hurt them. She argues that our job is to move from “What is wrong with you?” to “What happened to you?” and to build learning communities where safety, regulation, and restoration come before rigor and punishment.
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Dr. Mabry tells the story of her homeschool cooperative and nonprofit losing more than $100,000 in grant funding in weeks, and how that crisis exposed not just a funding gap but a sustainability and burnout problem. She reframes the book as her “pivot” and a real-time guide for people who are needed more than they are resourced.

She widens the audience beyond homeschool co-ops to include K-12 teachers, juvenile justice educators, reentry programs, afterschool mentors, and parents or caregivers of neurodivergent or emotionally impacted learners. The shared mission is to restore dignity, trust, and purpose to students who have been pushed out, passed over, or harmed by systems.

There's no question that the American education system is in need of serious reform. We read a bit about it in White Chalk Crime by Karen Horwitz.

We also live it every day. Every educator, every student, or anyone who is related to one is impacted by this system. A lot of us are concerned--anxious and worried that what is being taught to our children these days doesn't align with our beliefs, values, and priorities. We're also concerned about the quality of the education that our children are receiving. Also, are they gaining more than ABCs and 123s? Are they learning to be productive and—perhaps even more importantly—happy members of society? Or are they being made more and more miserable, more and more self-loathing, more and more sucked into the all-of-nothing vortex of success and failure?

Interestingly, we just read Life and How to Live It by Chaz Holesworth, and it demonstrated how a heartless, soulless education—one that disregarded the mental health of students—led poor Chaz down a path of perpetual self-loathing (including self h*rm), shame, guilt, anxiety, and fear. In other words, his education absolutely scarred him for the rest of his life, leading him down a dark path. So, the consequences are real.

You can even look at South Korea, Japan, China, and India, where the su*cide rates by students are through the roof due to the weight and expectations. This is a serious problem, and it's impacting American students as well. No Child Left Behind had the unfortunate consequence of getting music, physical education, and other elective programs cancelled in favor of math, reading, writing, and sciences. Grades and scores are prioritized over all else including student participation in clubs, sports, and their communities. We're producing citizens who may be able to read, write, and count, but who can't tie their shoes, drive, or do their taxes.

Dr. Mabry seems to advocate for a different kind of education, one that prioritizes the mental health of students, first and foremost. This makes sense because how can you expect a child to master algebra or essay writing when their nervous system is stuck in fight, flight, freeze, or fawn? Safety has to be the first curriculum. Regulation has to come before rigor.

Check it out on Amazon!