During the next school year, the school took a new approach to help kids who might be acting out because of stress and trauma in their own lives. It sparked a new understanding about the challenges some kids face in school, and task forces across the country sprung up to dig into the connections, said Marissa T. del Rosario, a trauma-sensitive schools specialist for the Trauma and Learning Policy Initiative in Massachusetts. “The biggest thing we want teachers to do for the first two weeks of school is not even think about academics yet,” she said, “but think about reconnecting, think about building relationships, think about setting the structure up again so kids are familiar with exactly what school is going to look like and how to behave.”