This conceptual article reframes trauma in education as a cognitive interface shift rather than a disorder to treat. Drawing on Eco-Centered Psychological Facilitation (ECPF) and a REHI (Rhythmical, Emergent, Hybrid, Irreversible/Innovative) lens, it critiques deficit-based approaches in trauma-informed education and argues that stagnation can prepare new learning interfaces. Trauma-Responsive pedagogy becomes facilitation of transition through redesigning tasks from deficit to surplus, attending to teachers' secondary exposure, and using AI-assisted reflection. Six micro-practices and research bridges are proposed.
Two potent metaphors emerged within discourses produced by seven teachers in a professional learning community (PLC) focused on negotiating trauma-informed practices within a low-income urban middle school. Teachers themselves come to school with past traumas and in turn experience secondary trauma, which participants talked about as "triggers," or ghosts, and contagions. This study considers the possibility of reflection in teacher PLCs to rewrite metaphors of harm to produce generative agency among teachers.
