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FEATURE
TEACHING & LEARNING
Traumatic Brain Injury – a hidden disability in our classrooms Jo Mitchinson takes a closer look at the effects head injuries can have on children at school.
ach year approximately 1 million people in the UK attend accident and emergency following a head injury. The vast majority of these are minor, with concussive symptoms passing relatively quickly (data from Headway). But what about those who sustain a more significant injury, which leaves them with long lasting or permanent changes to their brain? Inevitably, many of the young people who suffer with an Acquired Brain Injury (Traumatic Brain Injury or Non-Traumatic Brain Injury) will, in time, be sat once again in our classrooms. Their learning style, the speed of processing, their behaviour, concentration, or speech may have been altered in an instant. So, what specific difficulties mig ght these young people e face and how can we support them in a school environment? My interestt in the brain dates back to my degree. I found myself drawn towards choosing modules that focused on psychology, both in sport and in education. The psychology of learning was one of the mo ost powerful and insightful modules I completed. Little did I know that my future career would see me e use these skills, initially with the Penn
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BIO JO M I T C H I NS ON Jo qualified as a PE teacher from Loughborough University in 2001 and has been teaching for 21 years. She is currently the head of PSHCE at a secondary school in Hertfordshire and has a particular interest in the psychology of education.
Resilience Programme, where I trained to be a course facilitator, and later alongside Bounce Forward to develop their highly successful resilience lessons. In June 2021, my daughter was involved in a cycling accident whilst racing a closed loop circuit. Her Garmin (speed sensor) shows that she was travelling at 30 mph immediately prior to the point of impact with the ground. Although there were no eyewitnesses, she remembers racing and having no time to react to a rider falling in front of her. She then remembers spinning on her back. The fall, flight and landing are all missing. However, with the help of the damaged helmet and the expertise of the neurosurgeons she’s managed to identify the key area of the brain which was damaged and they are confident in their assessment. My daughter landed on the back of her head; the damage to her helmet is all there. All her lasting difficulties though are to the frontal lobe; the area of her brain at the front. They therefore believe that her brain hit the back of her skull on impact before bouncing off it to hit the front of her skull. This secondary contact has caused the damage.
I am not a clinical psychologist, nor a neurosurgeon. I am a teacher, with 21 years of experience and the personal experience of watching my own daughter sustain a TBI and return to school in Year 10 for her GCSE years.
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