What A Trauma Informed Classroom Taught Me About Leadership

When you work in education long enough, you quickly realise that teaching is never just about lesson plans, data or displays on the wall. It’s about people. Hundreds of them. Little ones, big ones, tired parents, worried parents, brilliant colleagues, challenging colleagues, and everyone in between, all bringing their own stories through the school gates every single day, and no one ever arrives as just one thing.

Behaviour is communication (even when it's loud)

Looking back, one of the most profound lessons I carried from the classroom into leadership was the value of a trauma informed approach. It wasn't something I learned just from theory, but from the quiet truths revealed in everyday interaction, reminders that behaviour often speaks to experiences we cannot see.

When a child lashes out, refuses, shouts or shuts down, it’s rarely about what’s happening in front of us. More often, it’s about what’s already happened before they walked through the door. The same is true for adults in schools, in leadership teams, and in life.

Fear of judgment. Fear of failure. Fear of losing control, status, or stability.

Those fears don’t always show up neatly. They often arrive disguised as defensiveness, negativity, anger or avoidance. While those behaviours can be challenging (sometimes very challenging), they are also clues.

Clues that someone, somewhere, doesn’t feel safe.

Leading with kindness (especially when it’s hard)

I’ve always believed that kindness leads to kindness. Not the fluffy, “let everything slide” type but the kind rooted in consistency, respect and doing the right thing even when it would be easier not to.

As a leader, I learned quickly that culture isn’t something you write on a poster and stick on the wall. You live it. You model it. And perhaps most importantly… you hold onto it when you’re tested.

Because you will be tested.

In tense meetings. In difficult conversations. In moments where your patience is worn thin and your coffee has gone cold (again).

Those are the moments when leadership really shows. Not in the absence of challenge, but right in the middle of it.

Boundaries matter: Understanding Isn’t the same as excusing

Working with children also taught me something equally important: kindness and boundaries are not opposites.

You can understand why someone behaved in a certain way and still be very clear that it wasn’t acceptable.

You can be compassionate without being permissive.

Supportive without being inconsistent.

Warm without being wobbly.

Clear boundaries create safety for children and adults alike and holding them, calmly and consistently, is one of the kindest things you can do (in my opinion).

The Stories We Don’t See

Some of the most confident, outgoing, gregarious individuals I’ve worked with, children and adults were carrying the heaviest unseen loads.

The joker of the class.

The life and soul of the staffroom.

The one who always seems “fine”.

We rarely know what’s happening behind the scenes. What someone has been through. What they’re navigating quietly. Or what they’ve normalised simply because they had to.

Which always brings me back to this simple truth:

Just be kind.

Not because everyone deserves endless passes but because kindness costs so little and can mean so much.

Lessons I Carry With Me

I may have swapped the school gates for a different path, but these lessons have stayed with me:

• Lead with kindness, especially when it’s tested

• Model the culture you want to build

• Behaviour tells a story if you slow down enough to listen

• Boundaries create safety

• We never truly know what someone is carrying

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(Also: never underestimate the power of calm, consistency… and snacks.)

Education doesn’t just shape pupils. It shapes the people privileged enough to work within it too. I’m endlessly grateful for the lessons it taught me, not just about leadership, but about being human.

A few members of my wonderful family