Henry Quesenberry, Guest Contributor EMORY, Va. -- On Tuesday, Feb. 18, Joshua Stamper, in his fourth year of being vice principal at Virginia Middle School, spoke during the “Ugly Me: Childhood Trauma in Public Education” Lyceum in the Board of Visitors (BOV) lounge at Emory & Henry College. Stamper, who is also the author of “Ugly Me,” spoke to the students and teachers in attendance about the importance of showing children in the public school system the love and support they deserve because they may not get it at home. “You can’t teach a student anything until you show them you care about them”, Stamper said during the presentation. Stamper said he had planned on being “firm” and “whipping these kids into shape” when he first took the job, but quickly realized that wouldn’t be the case. The first example given by Stamper was an incident when a sixth-grade girl had gotten in trouble for a fight. He brought her into the office and asked her if she had anything to say, in which the girl responded if he was going to eat the orange on his desk. She told him that she came to school mainly to eat, which changed his perspective on punishments. Stamper continued to give examples, recalling five more instances of children acting up, followed by a realization that their home-life had some impact on the behavior of the child. Stamper listed facts from the Adverse Childhood Experience (ACE). “Seventy-one percent of children are exposed to violence, 1 in 4 girls and 1 in 6 boys are sexually assaulted, and around three million [children] are malnourished,” said Stamper. Rebecca Buchanan, a professor in the Health and Human Performance department at Emory & Henry College who earned a doctorate in education, was in charge of setting up the lyceum. She said, “[She] found out about Josh [Stamper] because [she] was attending a child-informed training, and his book was brought up as a good resource.” When Buchanan later found out that Stamper was a local assistant principal in the area, she contacted him. Buchanan said that she wants education majors to “consider what [Stamper] shared in terms of how [teachers] approach students.” For students outside of the education track, Buchanan hoped that students would start to “respect each other more and allow safe spaces for students to feel included.” Currently, Emory & Henry College offers a class on Trauma Informed Approaches in the education department, which will be available over the summer as an online class. Buchanan said the class will go “[into] much more depth in understanding the ACE study, the research behind it and looking at other states, school systems and counties.”
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