As the title above suggests “TIGERS” is an acronym and stands for Trauma Informed Guide for Educators and Recovering Survivors. We are kicking off the publication of TIGERS Tool, and introducing it as quintessential professional development for school staff, teachers and teacher trainers.
We built it as a study guide that accompanies our Digital Dramas produced under the IYLM label. These are works are the true stories of children as they navigate major disasters, and interpersonal challenges and survival.
We designed TIGERS Tool to supplement the narrative format and to engage learners in the vocabulary and theories of child development, psychology and neuroscience that are important knowledge areas for facilitating understanding, learning and growth around children with a past of traumatic experiences. Importantly, TIGERS Tool was designed for learners who themselves are educators. The tool makes space for psychological safety and a growth mindset, paving the way for metacognition, which is thinking about one’s own thinking. Watch this introduction to learn more about this unique format and how to interact with this guide.
TIGERS Tool can be used in the traditional training setting where learners and trainers meet face to face in a classroom. However, TIGERS Tool works just as well in the virtual classroom, or for asynchronous, and self-guided learners. This is because self-guided study with both a Digital Drama and the TIGERS tool offers multiple points of engagement and thus can offer the same robust learning outcomes for motivated learners.
So who are the educators who will benefit from TIGERS Tool? We believe that all staff in the school’s community can and will benefit. All adults in the community have a role to play as educators, from the morning greeters to the classroom teachers and aids, from the school administrators to school nurses.
In the Acronym TIGERS, the S is for the “survivors”. Here we are referring too all adults and children in learning communities who have faced and have been touched by the repercussions and experience of adverse childhood events.
Adverse childhood events, also referred to as ACEs
For the 2023-2024 academic year, TIGERS Tool accompanies DISPLACED to center the non-fiction story of a childhood interrupted by conflict and the loss of home. The story is set in the early 1970s. While the digital drama is a narrative work, the TIGERS Tool is a study guide that summarizes each chapter from the digital drama, but does so by building the trauma informed teaching perspective, one concept at a time, while expanding knowledge and use of related terms from the fields of psychology, neuroscience, and child development.
Who are the authors and peer reviewers who make TIGERS Tool possible? The THENCE team is a diverse group of educators with teaching backgrounds in psychology, neurobiology (brain science), social science, cognitive science, human development, indigenous studies, and the field of education. Many may be surprised that Indigenous studies play a key role in the development of TIGERS Tools. In fact the story Displaced follows the life of an indigenous youth as he navigates his scholastic career. Indeed indigenous scholars have and continue to make key contributions to the field of understanding trauma, historical trauma, survivorship, recovery, decolonizing processes, wellbeing, and healing.
Displaced and the accompanying TIGERS Tool are both available on our platform to institutional subscribers. Special in-person dramatized performances of Displaced can be arranged on our platform. Displaced centers the true story of a young indigenous boy as the main protagonist. We learn about his journey once through the digital drama, and a second time through the lens of the TIGERS Tool which allows for a deeper dive into understanding adverse childhood events, and the different types of stressors as well as protective factors children face once they have been displaced. The tool helps educators broaden their knowledge by introducing key psychological terms and concepts, but it also provokes, and then boosts analytical and metacognitive strengths by asking learners to apply their understanding and proficiency of key terminology.
The “R” and the “S” in the acronym stand for “Recovering Survivors”. This refers to children who have experienced adverse childhood events, or on going stressors like loosing family members, the familiarity of one’s home community, and physical home. Occasionally we are asked if the Digital Dramas can be shared with a classroom of children. In fact this subsciption onluy licences the drama dn the TIGERS Tool for the use of professional development among staff and faculty.
If school wish to explore how the DIGITAL DRAMA may be shared beyond employees, we ask that school leaders meet with us to best describe the intentions and potential learning outcomes of such a showing.
We warn that sharing the digital drama might be triggering for children who have been through an experience of displacement. Second, teachers would need to be highly prepared for adverse reactions from their students. We would also recommend that any sharing with the classroom be conducted in a legal mannor with one of our licences, and through our Digital Drama classroom module additional notes, which are specifically levelled for middle and high school students. It is not allowed or recommended that teachers’ access to professional development be shared directly with the students, even if the teacher feels their students “can handle it”. This use would constitute a breech of contract.
