TREE: Trauma Responsive Equitable Education Transfers Back to Cobscook

Last spring, Cobscook’s Board of Directors approved a proposal brought by the Rural Vitality Lab to transfer the TREE program back to the administrative oversight of Cobscook Institute. TREE was initially designed and developed to serve rural schools and communities as a four-year school-based research project. It operated as a program division of Cobscook Institute and was overseen by a tri-institutional partnership between Cobscook Institute, Colby College, and the University of Maine. Cobscook Institute's TREE staff, with the support of in-school mental health therapists, brought the TREE model to life in vibrant and impactful ways. In 2020, amid the challenges of the pandemic and leadership transitions at Cobscook, the Cobscook Institute Board authorized the transfer of TREE to the Rural Vitality Lab to complete the initial research program and disseminate the results. RVL did just that, and a culminating book published by Harvard Education Press, Trauma-Responsive Schooling: Centering Student Voice and Healing (Brown, Biddle, and Tappan), detailing the findings. Today, RVL and Cobscook are planning the next phase of TREE research and practice. Watch for our upcoming Cobscook Currents newsletter (out this October) for details. 

Cobscook TREE (Trauma Responsive Equitable Education), is a collaborative, place-based response to the educational challenges that often face rural schools, especially those in high-poverty areas. TREE aims to foster resilience and improve the well-being of young people, their families, and communities, by addressing the predictable and recurring barriers to healthy youth development and engaged learning that exist in high poverty rural schools.

This video includes content from before our 2020 name change. Learn more

Cobscook TREE works closely with administrators, teachers, staff, students, parents, and community members to address the following core claims:

1. Chronic adversity, stress, and trauma are not just individual mental health issues for which families are solely responsible. These are also systemic conditions disproportionately affecting certain populations and geographic areas.

2. Student success and community vitality in challenged regions is best restored through thoughtful, informed, and committed action on the part of all members of a rural community in partnership with students, teachers, and families.

3. A genuinely trauma-responsive culture is best achieved through engaging youth as full and active partners in school and community transformation.