The plight of many young children displaced by hurricane Katrina is being projected into many classrooms and care centers in communities across America. Although it's impossible for most of us to begin to understand what these children and their families have witnessed and experienced, we can empathize with their overwhelming losses, insecurities, and shock.

Integrating new children into an established classroom and routine is always challenging. Finding ways to bring comfort, a sense of security, and renewed hope to stressed children without adding to their overwhelming feelings of displacement will be challenging, even for experienced educators and/or caregivers.

Many of these overstressed youngsters are sensitive to their loss and portrayal as luckless strangers. They will benefit from blending into their new surroundings without having the focus placed on their past tragedy. Our pity keeps them as a victim. What they need is an opportunity to regain their dignity and integrity.

Offer these children choices—choices of how they want to be addressed, where they would prefer to sit, and when they're like to participate or not participate. Many of them will require time to simply sit and observe. Some children may need to be "invisible" as they rebuild their inner sense of security. Allow yourself to accommodate the dramatic ranges of behaviors from these new arrivals.

• Some children may be in a state of dissociation, which resembles persistent daydreaming, after witnessing many horrors.
• Some children may exhibit selective mutism and never utter a word, after being overwhelmingly shocked.
• Some children may prefer not to engage in play or recess, after being forced into unfamiliar situations.
• Some children may not be able to make eye-contact with you, after not knowing whom or what to trust anymore.
• Some children may insist on being first in line, after experiencing fear.
• Some children may insist on being in control of everything and everyone, after experiencing total chaos.
• Some children may use very loud voices, after being crammed into crowded places.
• Some children may play aggressively, after experiencing the trauma of being lost.
• Some children may not be able to sit quietly for more than a few minutes because their internal alarm system keeps bring up unwanted images of horror and terror.

Children who have faced trauma, such as the trauma from Hurricane Katrina, require the focus of guidance to be on safety. Refer to everyone's need to feel safe repeatedly as you explain class and play guidelines. As opposed to identifying certain behaviors as unacceptable, refer to them as being unsafe. This standard applies to everyone in the room and builds emotional security.

Children who have experienced loss and stress are comforted by predictability and structure. This applies to new students as well as other children in the room who have witnessed or experienced family chaos or violence. Stressed youngsters equate predictable structure, routines that follow familiar patterns of time and place, to security. All young children and students in the early grades are reassured when morning and afternoon schedules are repeated daily as a matter of routine. It is likely that the new arrivals will not be able to cope with unannounced surprises for months.

Children who have experienced trauma are unlikely to benefit from the use of time-outs for themselves or for their classmates. To stressed children, especially for those who have not been afforded an opportunity to develop adequate self-regulation, time-outs constitute rejection and introduce emotional insecurity into the room. As opposed to time-outs, create a Safe Place in the room, advises Dr. Becky Bailey(1). Designate a beanbag chair as the place where a child can go voluntarily when he or she feels out of control due to feelings of fear, stress, or anger.

Children with dys-regulation issues find containment comforting, especially when it has been explained that they have the potential to regain self-control when they feel safe, breathe deeply, and hold something soft in their hands. Dr. Bailey suggests keeping stress balls, a cuddly stuffed animal, and a small soft blanket in a canvass bag near the Safe Place.

Children in a state of dys-regulation cannot benefit from disciplinary actions, which they interpret as a threat to their safety and well-being. Any perceived threat to a child who has traumatic memories will set off their flight/fight/freeze alarm for pending danger. Because temporary neurobiological brain changes occur at times of perceived danger, these children will not be able to learn new behaviors or cognitive subjects when they feel threatened. This is why enhancing self-regulation skills is so vital to academic achievement.

As fall advances, the new arrivals from the hurricane disaster will start to relax, regain a sense of security, and begin to release the internal residue from their terrible experience. Expect outbursts from children who previously had been withdrawn. Try not to take these behavior disruptions personally. Interpret them as stress behaviors, not misbehaviors. If the Safe Place becomes an accepted part of the room, it will be a valuable tool for the restoration of the children's sense of security.

The most devastating result of traumatic memories is the child's intrinsic sense of total helplessness coupled with the fear that disasters will keep happening. For this reason, stressed children need to externalize and transform these imprinted memories of terror and distress. Rarely can a child talk about the memories that keep popping up in their minds; behavior is the primary form of expression for stressed children. Unfortunately, the hypersensitive and hypervigilant behaviors of trauma can be easily misinterpreted as ADHD.

The most productive way for children to externalize and transform these traumatic memories is through a psychomotor activity that permits the child to change the ending of a play theme, story, or puppet script to symbolically change what happens to the helpless character. This symbolic empowerment permits the child to transition from being a victim to being a survivor. Through their imagination, children can reframe an event and give it a new meaning.

Guide the classroom toward imagining a friendly, gentle wind that shakes gumdrops from trees, sweeps in a snowstorm of miniature marshmallows, or brings in a wave of beautiful butterflies.

It's quite likely that some of these dislocated children are grieving the loss of their family pets. Activities that are based on rescuing a lonely dog or a hungry kitten could be empowering. Here are some sample activities from my book, Making it Better: Activities for Children Living in a Stressful World, published by Redleaf Press, that can be helpful:

• Rescue Teams
• Mother Hens
• Magic Wands of Courage

Remember, teachers and caregivers have an important responsibility to build resiliency in the children who have experienced the trauma of Katrina. Restoring their sense of trust in the world may be far more important than teaching the math or reading skills that are normally the goal.

You have the opportunity to give these children a renewed sense of hope. It will be an experience like none other in your professional career; seek all the support you can from your mental health advisor or school counselor.

Next year, on the anniversary of this national calamity, you will be able to look back and proudly say, "I played an important part in the recovery effort."

(1) Bailey, Becky A. 2000. I Love You Rituals. New York: Harper Collins Publishers.