Bounce Back for Classrooms is a curriculum that supports students in better understanding the normal effects of stress and trauma and helps them build skills and healthy coping strategies that promote healing and resilience. The curriculum is for 2nd – 5th grade students and can be taught in classrooms or other educational settings. Students learn about: the body’s danger response, signs of stress and trauma, connections between thoughts/feelings/behaviors, feelings in self and others, measuring intensity levels of feelings, regulating feelings, identifying helpful and unhelpful thoughts, generating helpful thoughts, social problem-solving, and identifying resources of support.
To implement Bounce Back for Classrooms, facilitators need to participate in a Bounce Back for Classrooms facilitator’s training conducted by the developers at the National Native Children’s Trauma Center. Training can be offered in person or online and requires 7 hours.
Visit the National Native Children’s Trauma Center to learn more: www.nnctc.org
The curriculum is one component of a multi–tiered trauma–informed school system as a Tier 1 or universal strategy suitable for all students. The curriculum is developmentally appropriate for students between 2nd and 5th grade.
Each of the 12 lesson plans fits within an approximate 50–minute time frame and can be facilitated by classroom teachers, school counselors, or other youth service workers—no clinical training is required.
Lesson topics include: the body’s danger response, signs of stress and trauma, connections between
thoughts/feelings/behaviors, identifying feelings in self and others, measuring intensity levels of feelings, regulating feelings, identifying helpful and unhelpful thoughts, generating helpful thoughts, social problem–solving, and identifying resources of support.
Bounce Back for Classrooms is a social emotional learning curriculum adapted from Bounce Back, a trauma treatment intervention. The adaptation process included the input from Native American mental health professionals and was developed with Native youth in mind. Characters included in the curriculum represent modern day Native youth and example scenarios were developed to be relevant for Native youth.
Bounce Back for Classrooms was adapted from an evidence-based therapeutic trauma treatment model. The adapted classroom version is currently being piloted in the classroom setting and data are being collected for program evaluation. Bounce Back for Classrooms, an adaptation of the trauma–focused group counseling intervention Bounce Back (Langley & Jaycox, 2015), is a social and emotional learning (SEL) curriculum based on cognitive behavioral therapy components.
Bounce Back for Classrooms was developed by the National Native Children’s Trauma Center (NNCTC) housed at the University of Montana. Use of the curriculum in a classroom setting supports students in understanding and mitigating the effects of stress and traumatic stress, fostering hope, and building skills that promote healing and resilience.
Bounce Back for Classrooms aligns well within school–based multi–tiered student support approaches such as Multi–
Tiered Systems of Support (MTSS) and Positive Behavioral Interventions for Support (PBIS). Because Bounce Back for Classrooms is trauma informed it fits best within a trauma–informed system. According to the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), a trauma–informed system is one that realizes the widespread impact of trauma, recognizes the signs and symptoms of trauma, responds by integrating trauma knowledge into practices, procedures, and policies, and works to resist re–traumatization among students, staff, and
families.
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