Tagged With "Systemic Racism"
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Resources for Addressing Racism and Hatred in the Classroom (ascd.org)
After the white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Va., this past weekend, educators on social media have started using #CharlottesvilleCurriculum to share resources on how to have conversations with students about racism, inequity, and more. For decades, ASCD authors and contributors have addressed these tough topics, and we've compiled a list of available ASCD resources to help educators effectively discuss racism and hatred in the classroom. To access the comprehensive list, visit,...
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Resources for Educators to Use in the Wake of Charlottesville
How should educators confront bigotry, racism and white supremacy? The incidents in Charlottesville, Va., this past weekend pushed that question from history to current events. http://www.npr.org/2017/08/14/543390148/resources-for-educators-to-use-the-wake-of-charlottesville
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Robin DiAngelo on Educators' "White Fragility"
When it comes to cultivating racial understanding, sociologist Robin DiAngelo believes that white people have work to do. In her best-selling book White Fragility (Beacon Press, 2018) , DiAngelo argues that no white person—no matter how well-meaning—is exempt from the forces of racism. Yet when the topic of racism comes up, they often become defensive and "weaponize" their hurt feelings. This refusal to acknowledge the reality of systemic racism blocks white educators from understanding the...
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Rural Oregon County Integrates ACEs Screening in School-Based Trauma-Informed Health Centers
For the last two years, nearly all students referred for mental health services in seven school-based health centers in Deschutes County, OR, have taken the 10-question adverse childhood experiences (ACE) survey.
It didn’t take long to realize why this was good idea.
“The average ACE score for a student being seen by a Deschutes County clinician was 5 out of 10,” says Elizabeth Fitzgerald, supervisor of school-based health centers at Deschutes County Health Services.
Calendar Event
The Regulated Classroom: Camp for Educators
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Trauma Informed Instruction: The Regulated Classroom
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To prevent trauma in our youth, we must discuss structural inequalities [Generocity.org]
Thanks to the ever-present media and and rise in social media use, people across the economic spectrum are seeing dramatic examples of racism in our society in clear video. We’re talking about Black men shot for no reason, youth sentenced to disproportionate sentences and customers being arrested for sitting in a coffee shop, to name a few. Similarly, we are beginning to hear and understand the dramatic stories of our most vulnerable young people, young people who have been victimized,...
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Training course: Building Resilience and Challenging Systemic Racism
The Summer Peacebuilding Institute (SPI) is here to help you gain the skills necessary to change your community and the world. We will be offering a three-day training course June 10 - 12, 2019, taught by Dr. Ram Bhagat , related to challenging the status quo in the education system that allows systemic racism to flourish . Course details are: The framework for Building Resilience for Challenging Systemic Racism is grounded in Restorative Justice theory, values, and praxis. This three day...
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Trauma education and mindfulness help youth living amid gun violence
Armon Hurst, 2nd from left, first row, Teens on Target, courtesy of YouthAlive! Eighteen-year-old Armon Hurst serves as vice president of the student body at Castlemont High School in Oakland, Calif. He has a 4.0 grade point average, is an avid baseball player, and is slated to go to college next year. But until a few years ago, Hurst would find himself waking from nightmares in the middle of the night. It was difficult to concentrate at school, and he wasn’t eating well. Armon Hurst “There...
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Trauma-Informed Instruction: The Regulated Classroom
When educators learn about the devastating impact of ACES and toxic stress on a child's developing body, brain, and behavior, they often remark, "well, now what?" In this interactive workshop, participants learn to create a classroom that generates psychological safety and invites emotional and behavioral regulation via the nervous system. Co-presented with a seasoned educator, participants take a deep dive into a regulated learning environment; and they learn by doing. Participants will...
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Trauma-Informed Practice Is a Powerful Tool. But It's Also Incomplete [edweek.org]
By Simona Goldin & Debi Khasnabis, Education Week, February 19, 2020 Science has a pernicious history of doing violence to communities of color. Examples abound: Consider the infamous Tuskegee study in which the U.S. Public Health Service spent decades withholding treatment from hundreds of African-American men suffering from syphilis. Or consider more recent research that shows that doctors, informed by discredited theories of racial difference, are significantly less likely to...
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Trauma-Informed Social Justice: Q&A with Dr. Bukuloa Ogunkua
Cissy's Note: I work with people who challenge systems and policies, who reform or start non-profits, and who see hope and promise where others see despair or destruction. While some folks shake their heads or shrug indifferently in the face of injustice and suffering, others organize, mobilize, and channel their time and energy towards making a change. Maybe a physician hosts an annual conference bringing trauma-informed approaches to medical practice. Perhaps a woman shares ACEs 101...
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U.S. Department of Education begins investigation into discrimination against Native students in Montana’s Wolf Point School District (newsmaven.io)
After years of documented instances of anti-Native racism — including the use of racial slurs and harmful stereotypes by white administrators, faculty, and staff — in a school where 94 percent of Native students are below proficiency in reading, compared to 49 percent of white students, the U.S. Department of Education is starting an investigation into discrimination against Native students in Montana’s Wolf Point School District. Investigators with the U.S. Department of Education’s Office...
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Understanding and Initiating Trauma-Informed Change - Workshop Offering
Cultivate Change Leadership Skills for a “Trauma-Informed” Approach January 16-17th, 2020 9:00 AM – 4:00 PM EDT Please join us for this two-day deep-dive workshop. Most people working in schools and social services are saying things just got harder. Mental health issues, disruptive behaviors, and addiction are adding stressful new challenges for families and institutions already feeling overwhelmed. We try to address these issues one-by-one - by “referring out” - hoping a doctor or mental...
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‘When They See Us’ in Schools (teachingtolerance.org)
As a white educator who teaches about mass incarceration, I will not be using ‘When They See Us’ in my classroom. Here’s why—and what I’ll teach instead. For the past several years, I have taught a mass incarceration project in my high school classroom. We examine injustices in our criminal justice system and how they contribute to our nation’s rising incarceration rates. I firmly believe that teaching about mass incarceration is critical because it is part of the ongoing narrative of racial...
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White House convenes federal, state, and local leaders to address trauma-informed approaches in schools
With just four months remaining in the Obama presidency, the White House assembled leaders from 14 states and the District of Columbia and key administration officials for a day-long conference, “ Trauma Informed Approaches in Schools: Supporting Girls of Color and Rethinking Discipline.” Last summer’s White House meeting, titled “Rethink School Discipline,” covered issues related to the CDC-Kaiser Permanente ACE Study and trauma, but transforming schools through trauma-informed approaches...
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Why Critical Hope May Be the Resource Kids Need Most From Their Teachers (kqed.org)
Tupac Shakur has been dead for over 20 years, and yet his music and lyrics are still popular with young people today. Dr. Jeff Duncan-Andrade thinks Tupac remains influential all over the world because he writes about some of the essential truths young people still experience. Duncan-Andrade even named the elementary school he helped start Roses in Concrete after the Tupac poem “The Rose That Grew From Concrete.” The rapper’s metaphor for young people in tough neighborhoods trying to grow...
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Why I believe Gregory Williams, and his book, Shattered By The Darkness, will help save lives and revolutionize healthcare.
When you first hear about it, it sounds unlikely, fact that something that happened to someone in utero, at the age of two months, or four years, or any time in childhood, is what is killing them as an adult, or making them want to die, or making them want to hurt themselves or others. Yet the connection between childhood trauma and adult disease, mental illness, addiction, suicide, violence – most all of society’s ills – is as irrefutable as the myriad truths revealed about it in the...
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Why it's so hard to talk about racism that happens in school [pri.org]
In an era of “us” and “them,” be an “other” -- someone trying to understand how we all live together. Journalism about the multicultural nation America will become -- with Otherhood, a PRI podcast created and hosted by Rupa Shenoy. [To listen to this podcast by Rupa Shenoy, go to https://www.pri.org/programs/otherhood/why-its-so-hard-talk-about-racism-happens-school ]
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Why Schools Fail To Teach Slavery's 'Hard History' (npr.org)
"In the ways that we teach and learn about the history of American slavery," write the authors of a new report from the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), "the nation needs an intervention." This new report, titled Teaching Hard History: American Slavery, is meant to be that intervention: a resource for teachers who are eager to help their students better understand slavery — not as some "peculiar institution" but as the blood-soaked bedrock on which the United States was built. The report,...
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Why the Myth of Meritocracy Hurts Kids of Color (theatlantic.com)
Brighton Park is a predominantly Latino community on the southwest side of Chicago. It's a neighborhood threatened by poverty, gang violence , ICE raids , and isolation in a city where income, race, and zip code can determine access to jobs, schools, healthy food, and essential services. It is against this backdrop that the Chicago teacher Xian Franzinger Barrett arrived at the neighborhood's elementary school in 2014. Recognizing the vast economic and racial inequalities his students faced,...
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Why We Can't Afford Whitewashed Social-Emotional Learning (ascd.org)
Social-emotional learning (SEL) skills can help us build communities that foster courageous conversations across difference so that our students can confront injustice, hate, and inequity. SEL refers to the life skills that support people in experiencing, managing, and expressing emotions, making sound decisions, and fostering interpersonal relationships. The Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning (CASEL) defines five core SEL competencies , including self-awareness,...
Ask the Community
National Education Association Resolution on Trauma Informed Education
At the last NEA convention the resolutions committee created a new resolution recognizing the need for trauma informed education!! here is the exact language that was passed New C. Complex Trauma 2 The National Education Association believes that complex trauma impacts the brain development of children. 3 Complex trauma causes systemic and individualized educational barriers that interfere with children’s emotional 4 and physical health and impedes access to education. 5 The Association...
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Re: The Regulated Classroom: Camp for Educators
Hi, Emily. Would this event be appropriate for college teachers? Thank you!
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Re: The Regulated Classroom: Camp for Educators
Hi Andrew, Yes, absolutely! This training is suitable for any educator - as it's about combating compassion fatigue and bolstering self-regulation and nervous system resilience. I hope this helps... Emily
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Re: Trauma-Informed Instruction: The Regulated Classroom
Emily, I LOVE what you are offering! Do you only schedule training and workshops in Hancock NH? Would love to see this offered here in Maryland -- we have many public school systems who are working toward trauma-informed schools.
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Re: Trauma-Informed Instruction: The Regulated Classroom
Hi Brenda! Thank you so much for your comment! I travel and offer trainings anywhere in the country. Let's talk more. I can be reached at Emily@herethisnow.org or 603-525-4443. I would absolutely consider offering a training in your neck of the woods if you thought there was sufficient interest. Cheers, Emily
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Re: Trauma Informed Instruction: The Regulated Classroom
Will this workshop be video recorded as it would be great to be able to view it here in Oklahoma?
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Re: The Absence of Punishment in Our Schools
We do similar work - and our experience is that it is easier to move away from punishments than to move away from rewards...and both cause some harm. What is your experience in helping folks move away from rewards?
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Re: The Absence of Punishment in Our Schools
Hi Rebecca, tell me if students have any codes of conduct and discipline policies to follow in the schools?.
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Re: The Absence of Punishment in Our Schools
Sajjad, Our schools have expectations and classrooms have student generated guidelines (which look very similar to adult generated guidelines). The difference is that when someone doesn't follow the guidelines the response is: regulate, relate, reason and then repair the mistake. Of course, safety always comes first which can require removal from the situation (or sometimes even the school) - but the repair is what re-establishes connection and helps reconstruct the community. This is what...
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Re: The Absence of Punishment in Our Schools
Jody thanks for the prompt response to my question. We used rewards as for both tangible and intangible since last couple of years. Its particularly challenging for problem kids, but its an incentive to get them to do their work, get along better, and make the right choices. I personally feel that sometimes starting with something the student likes to do, rather than giving them something may be a better reward for them. We have to workout as how to help folks move away from rewards.
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Re: The Absence of Punishment in Our Schools
Sajjad, The frame shift that I think needs to happen is the recognition that these students are not "making choices" when their behavior is inappropriate. As Mona Delahooke explains, it is bottom up behavior. We aren't teaching anything with rewards. When students are self regulated they can choose. When they aren't they cannot. It ends up being demoralizing for kids to tell them to make "good choices" and they do when they can - and when they can't and mess up and later get back into their...
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Re: The Absence of Punishment in Our Schools
Jody, I really appreciate the way you have explained as how to help folks move away from rewards. I will share the ideas within the local community and see if it works.
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Re: The Absence of Punishment in Our Schools
Thanks Sajjad, I invited a colleague who has a lovely one-pager on rewards to share it. I suspect she'll post it some time today.
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Re: The Absence of Punishment in Our Schools
Rebecca, I love your Golden words (we’re all on this journey together and that no matter where our efforts lie, we have an opportunity to be a part of this mission.)
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Re: The Absence of Punishment in Our Schools
Jody, Thank you very much for sharing the one-page handout on rewards. I will share in the local community schools very soon.
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Re: Gathering in Topeka, Kansas for the Educators’ Art of Facilitation continued
I live in NZ. I am Maori. My husband is Maori. So we are burdened with intergenerational racism and all that comes with being Maori - the high statistics of mental health issues, poverty, underachievement in education, high domestic violence rates, high suicide rates etc. Our family went through domestic violence. I I was diagnosed with PTSD not just due to domestic violence but due to a whole raft of trauma BEFORE I faced domestic violence. My husband carries unresolved trauma from his...
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Re: Subtle factors combine to fuel school-to-prison pipeline [NonDoc.com]
This makes me so sad, and is a painful reminder that it's going to be difficult to help kids with trauma in school, when schools can often be the source of traumatization. Schools will have to reckon with those two pie charts above in order to benefit from their trauma informed practices, or we will continue to see these disparities. Some students will be viewed from a trauma-informed lens, while others will still be seen as incorrigible. If I've learned anything in life, it's that racism is...
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Re: ConVal High School's Story: Becoming Trauma-Informed for Substance Abuse Prevention
It is so encouraging to hear so many schools are using the knowledge gained from the ACEs study and asking students to look at the trauma they have already experienced. If students aren't safe at their home they begin to think there are no safe places. Then they enter their teens and find, by experimenting with drugs and alcohol, that temporarily they can feel safe or numb. They step out of the "just experimenting or having fun stage" and into a mechanism for coping. We are getting our...
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Re: ConVal High School's Story: Becoming Trauma-Informed for Substance Abuse Prevention
Can you share more information on the 12 week "Core Regulation" group? Is there a curriculum? I've been looking to update my curriculum for a group of adjudicated youth and their parents. This may be a good tool. Thanks.
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Re: How Teachers Learn to Discuss Racism (theatlantic.com)
In Pedagogies of Kindness and Respect , editors PL Thomas, B Porfilio, P Carr, and J Gorlewski curated a beautiful volume for teachers. It explores topics of social justice in education with empathy and compassion. And Chris Emdin's For White Folks Who Teach in the Hood..And The Rest of Y'all Too is another amazing tool that addresses the same concerns. Emdin also writes about the role of Hip Hop music in education as a pathway for mitigating racism and discrimination. Pulling it all...