Melissa Williamson: Speaking from the Heart

What’s at the heart of helping children who’ve been through trauma and show challenging behavior? “The number one tool for early childhood teachers is the ability to build connections,” Melissa Williamson points out. “It takes just one person to support a child who is going through some tough times. The way you respond to a child’s emotions could be life-changing for them, and the early childhood classroom is the perfect place to help children manage the feelings that hold them back from success,” Melissa says, “and for educators to help children understand their feelings, educators have to understand their own.”

Educators can gain both self-knowledge and professional skills by taking the courses that are available from At the Heart of Teaching, Learning, & Leadership, where Melissa serves as CEO. At the Heart offers a wide range of opportunities for professional learning, including the CDA®; a leadership series and trauma-informed training, an area for which Melissa has a special passion. “A lot of data shows us that educators need better insights into the roots of challenging behavior among the children they serve, whether it’s screaming, grabbing things or constant crying,” Melissa says. “Reacting the right way to these behaviors requires educators to understand what’s triggering the children to act out. In addition, educators need to understand how their responses reflect the life experiences and past traumas they bring to the early childhood classroom.”

Melissa’s own experiences have inspired her interest in the roots of childhood trauma, as she explains. “While I was a young woman, I had several miscarriages and lost my first child to a congenital heart defect before having two children who are now young adults,” she recalls. “I was pretty stressed out during those later pregnancies, and my two children were born when I was in a heightened state of alert. They reflected that by crying for hours and being hard to soothe, but I didn’t understand the root of my children’s behavior at the time, and I thought something was wrong with them,” Melissa says. Instead, part of the problem stemmed from Melissa’ own emotions while she was an expecting mom, an issue that became widespread among children in the aftermath of the COVID pandemic.

“One of the things we needed to think about following the pandemic is where pre-K and kindergarten children were during COVID,” Melissa says. “They were in the womb where they received all the stress hormones their mothers were producing during the public health crisis. When those babies were born, they came into the world in a heightened state of alert. Then the babies continued receiving hormones when their moms nursed them and the effects continued when they entered preschool. The post-COVID kiddos were hard to soothe and wanted to be held all the time. They appeared spoiled, but they were really showing the signs of trauma,” Melissa says. And it’s one of the insights she’s gained during nearly 30 years serving educators and children.

“I entered the early learning career because my husband was in the military and I thought being an educator was a job I could do as we traveled around the world,” Melissa recalls. “When we got married, I had just graduated from high school, and I walked into my first child care center thinking it wouldn’t be hard work. But I came to see that early childhood education is a profession that requires skills.”

Melissa began to acquire the expertise and education to serve young children as she went from the early childhood classroom to leadership roles in her field. “I began teaching in a two-year-old classroom. Then I worked with every other age group before becoming a center director at Head Start, where I did CDA observations as a PD Specialist for the Council,” she recalls. “Along the way, I pursued my education, and when I left Head Start, I began earning my doctorate in organizational leadership at Abilene Chistian University in Texas. That degree equipped me to work at an early childhood publishing group, where I learned more about classroom curriculums, and as an adjunct instructor at the University of Texas San Antonio, where I still work with pre-service teachers and pass on the lessons I’ve learned.”

Melissa also used all her experience and education to found At the Heart of Teaching, Learning, & Leadership in 2015. Her organization strives to support educators at every stage of their careers, based on four core values: inspire excellence in teaching and leadership, foster collaboration among educators, promote equity and advocate for children. Inspired by these values, Melissa works to serve educators by giving them knowledge and tools, rather than simply selling them a training product.

“I didn’t go into starting a company with the goal of making a million dollars a year,” Melissa says. “I wanted to build a company that would give people the opportunity to learn, to lead and inspire others to do the same things. Our mission is to empower educators, and we offer them many opportunities to excel by providing training in different domains.”

At the Heart conducts online CDA training in English and Spanish to educators from every state and guides about 170 educators each year in earning their credential. “We have a high success rate because we work one-on-one with our candidates to help them surmount any roadblocks they might face,” Melissa says. “For example, many candidates worry about taking the CDA® exam, so we give them personal attention to make sure they’re prepared. This requires us to know how to work with adult learners and make their education concrete and engaging,” Melissa explains. And that’s a skill that Melissa also brings to the trauma-informed sessions she gives.

“I start every session,” she explains, “with an introductory slide in which I tell educators about myself. Then I show the educators a picture of a beautiful cupcake that has a lot of sprinkles on top. I tell the educators that they might think the best part of the cupcake is the sprinkles, but it’s really the baking powder that makes the cake rise, and that’s what they are,” she says. “The educators are the ones, as I tell them, who are going to make the session work with their feedback, comments and participation.”

Interaction is the key, as Melissa points out, “so I provide a lot of hands-on activities to get educators to talk together and reveal their feelings about the personal baggage they might bring into the classroom. Many times, when I’m talking about trauma, I have attendees come up to me in tears and say they didn’t realize how the challenges they’ve faced affect the children they serve at school, along with the children they’re raising at home,” Melissa says.

One of the most important things Melissa wants people to take away from her sessions is the importance of resilience and how children can bounce back after hardships with support from one loving person. It’s an issue that she knows firsthand as the child of a young, emotionally unavailable mom. “She was single when I was born 57 years ago and wasn’t prepared to bring up a child, so my grandmother raised me and gave me the nurturing I needed until I was three. By that age, 80 to 85 percent of a child’s brain is wired, so I had already acquired the resilience to succeed though my mom has remained emotionally unavailable to this day.”

One of the ways Melissa has overcome the challenges she faced as a child and as a mom who lost a young child is by being successful in her work with early childhood teachers. “Many of the teachers have also faced adversity,” Melissa says, “and I want them to understand that they can turn their pain into power by helping children who’ve faced adversity too. So, a big part of the training I provide is about self-awareness. I want educators to understand the root of what they might see as challenging behaviors and reflect on the hardships they’ve been through so they can serve children better. We all need to feel safe and loved, and there’s no quick fix when the home environment doesn’t meet those needs,” Melissa says.

That leads to challenging behaviors in the classroom, and early educators can help children self-regulate by recognizing the signs of trauma in themselves and in the children, as Melissa explains. “A big part of my training is about awareness. I want to help educators to self-reflect and consider whether they’re bringing personal issues into the classroom. I want to provide them with ways to heal from the hard experiences they’ve faced, so they can help traumatized children to heal. Educators can be the co-regulators who help children self-regulate,” Melissa explains. And she speaks from the heart when she says, “That begins by building connections.”