The effects of trauma on a child severely compound the ability to self-regulate and sustain healthy relationships. In the classroom, the effects of trauma may manifest as attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, conduct disorder, oppositional defiance disorder, reactive attachment, disinhibited social engagement, and/or acute stress disorders. In this paper, the author contends that the classroom can be positioned as a powerful place of intervention for post-traumatic healing both in the context of special education and in mainstream classrooms that contain trauma-affected students. The current landscape of trauma-informed practice for primary and secondary classrooms has focused on teaching practices that seek to repair emotional dysregulation and fix broken attachment. In working with traumatised children in residential schools, the author has discovered that positive psychology has a role to play in contributing to trauma-informed learning. The author argues that combining trauma-informed approaches with positive psychology will empower and enable teachers to promote both healing and growth in their classrooms. This article presents scientific and practice-based evidence to support this claim. The author presents education interventions aimed to build positive emotions, character strengths, resilient mind sets, and gratitude, and show how these can be embedded in the daily routines of classroom learning to assist struggling students.
