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"This framework is centered on compassion and care, fierce commitment to viewing students as knowledgeable and capable, and viewing the invitation to bring life experiences into school as integral to day-to-day teaching and learning." -Dr. Elizabeth Dutro

In a recent interview, I spoke with Dr. Elizabeth Dutro and Alex Shevrin Venet concerning the need for trauma-informed teaching. Dr. Dutro is a professor and chair of the Literacy Studies program at the University of Colorado Boulder School of Education. There, she draws on past classroom experience and her extensive research to design pedagogies that make space for difficult experiences to be honored as knowledge in schools. Her publications include her book The Vulnerable Heart of Literacy: Centering Trauma as Powerful Pedagogy. Venet is a Vermont-based, industry-leading trainer, educator, and writer helping educators implement trauma-informed practices across the country. Her first book, Equity-Centered Trauma-Informed Education, was published in spring 2021.
KS: How would you define trauma-informed teaching and how did this framework emerge?
AV: In some ways, I resist defining and frameworking trauma-informed practice because a core element of trauma-informed practice is embracing complexities and nuance. That being said, definitions are important. Where I landed in writing my book was with this: "Trauma-informed education practices respond to trauma in the whole community, and also prevents future trauma. Equity and social justice are key as we disrupt the things that cause trauma."

Part of how I came to that was in reading a ton of the literature about trauma-informed practices and a lot of the teacher-focused resources really rely on this false dichotomy in which there are some students who experience trauma somewhere else and then bring that trauma into school, and then we as educators have to be responsive. Something that Elizabeth talks about a lot is that there truly is no dichotomy possible between traumatized students and then teachers as saviors or healers, because teachers are people who also experience trauma, and students are healers who can aid in the healing and support of one another and their teachers.

How I came to this definition was looking at that from a really expansive view that, in my mind, it's not just about addressing the trauma that happened somewhere else, although that's a big part, but also recognizing that trauma happens in schools. There are things in schools that cause trauma, like racism, harassment, bullying, sexism, transphobia. All those things exist inside of schools, and schools can directly cause trauma through things like curriculum violence, which is a concept that Stephanie P. Jones talks about where students are directly harmed because of the actual framing of academics that perpetuate harmful narratives or erasure. Trauma-informed education has to be accountable to addressing those conditions.

ED: I think one of the things that is so important is, like Alex said too, resisting definitions because they tend to compartmentalize what trauma is. When you go to many trauma-informed workshops that aren't run by Alex and likeminded people, it's not clear what trauma means, and so it can become this very dangerous term that becomes yet another label for children.

I think with that I'll just then say a little bit about the framework that emerged in my collaborations with teachers and students. Again, teachers and I were in classrooms thinking about what happens if we try to design some pedagogies together that provide rich invitations in a caring, compassionate context for difficult stories from life to matter in school. We came to what we called "pedagogies of testimony and critical witness" and it emphasized teachers recognizing and sharing their own vulnerability in grade-appropriate ways.

Being witnesses to one another in school needs to be reciprocal. It's often framed as teachers being witnesses to students, and that quickly falls into the very dangerous teachers-as-saviors narrative. This framework is centered on compassion and care, a fierce commitment to viewing students as knowledgeable and capable, and viewing the invitation to bring life experiences into school as integral to day-to-day teaching and learning. Children get positioned as witnesses which recognizes their humanity and their agency as learners.
KS: I would love to ‌hear a bit about strategies teachers can use as they try to attend to trauma in this moment.
AV: I'll preface again by saying that I'm allergic to the word strategies. One of the things I always say to teachers when we talk about being trauma-informed is that there's not really such a thing as a trauma-informed strategy because what you do has to be rooted in care, in relationships, in an understanding that includes equity and social justice. As we think about relevant approaches for this moment, the number one thing I would say is always coming back to our shared humanity at the center of things. You can set up all the routines you want for yourself, but at the end of the day, humans going through extraordinarily stressful times need space, and flexibility, and just to be met with care. Finally, using your voice and being an advocate for yourself and your students to attend to those things that cause trauma. If your school is reopening in a way that is going to harm students, don't be silent and go along with it. If your state is refusing to take action, contact your legislators. I think a lot of teachers struggle with thinking of themselves as activists, but if we want to be trauma-informed, we can't just say, "Oh, well I can't do anything about all of the stuff that's causing trauma." Every one of us can do something.

ED: I do think the pandemic, as well as the activism against systemic racism, provides such a unique and important opportunity for educators to think about what's shared when we think about trauma and what's very distinct when we think about trauma. It's very important to tap into both. The pandemic means every single child, family, and teacher has experienced loss of some kind. There's grief of some kind, and then there are such distinctions in the way that children, families, and teachers are experiencing this. Many based in privilege, particularly racial privilege, certainly class privilege. We can think about responding to individual families and students with knowledge of what is happening collectively and individually, and we have to realize that we can't always know all students are experiencing, but we need to assume that there are impacts that then lead to the necessity of embracing those central ideas that Alex shared.

Then on the advocacy front, I think the everyday advocacy we can do as educators is to interrupt in ourselves the larger narrative that's happening around schools. Children are not sliding, they're not slipping; they're also living through this. We have to challenge any narratives that are deficit-based around children sliding, not learning, not learners. Teachers can recognize when they encounter justice-centered approaches to trauma that emphasize shared humanity and children's knowledge. It's important to have critical justice-centered work happening in that arena. That can happen in classrooms by honoring children, and then it can happen with colleagues and in the larger community.

AV: I've been thinking a lot during the pandemic about grief and the depth of understanding that you develop when you go through hard times yourself. I'm hesitant a little bit because you never want to glorify trauma but students might be bringing to their classrooms a sense of how to navigate grief and loss that their peers and teachers could learn a lot from. What would it mean to make space for that deep knowledge of what it means to live through hard times rather than turning to this deficit narrative? Many schools are saying, "Oh, we have to bring those kids back to school because they're experiencing trauma at home" but there's all of this really coded language.

ED: Absolutely. I think it's so important to recognize that life experiences, including trauma, are sources of knowledge. And you're right, children can exhibit a certain depth of relationship and connection that many adults don't have. Teachers get nervous when they haven't had a similar experience and sometimes say to me, "you've experienced much harder things...I don't have those stories to share." Well, what we've learned is that there's no sense of stories having to be equivalent.. It just needs to be something that deeply matters, or a book with a theme that allows connection for the big experiences and losses of life. Children in a justice-centered, nurturing environment feel invited then to use the knowledge they've gained from their lives in the beautiful way you were describing, Alex.
KS: Are there insights or recommendations that you would share with school leaders who want to promote trauma-informed learning in a proactive way?
AV: One of the most important things for school leaders is to recognize that trauma-informed practice requires systems change. It's not something where you can just send your teachers to a PD and then they're going to come back and say, "Okay, we're trauma informed now." For teachers to enact trauma-informed practices, they need to experience a trauma-informed environment for themselves. For school leaders, I think it really requires a lot of reflection and analysis of whether you have policies at the school that are still very trauma insensitive or trauma inducing. Then the last thing would be to have clear expectations and systems about boundaries. In every state, teachers are mandated reporters and that carries legal obligations. I think it can be confusing for teachers who want to engage in this reciprocal witnessing because the expectations may be very unclear about who within the school does what.

ED: I would say that school leaders ought to be sure that they're informed on what it means to be trauma-informed and the range of approaches that exist, think about whether equity is at the center, and watch for the use of certain keywords in those approaches and in their workplace. If words like "damage" or "broken" are foregrounded, it's a time for leaders to push back and say, "No. That is not how we are going to view children in my school. I know there are alternative ways to think about this that are much more humane, that are anti-racist." Find those models and use them.

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Resources Recommended by Dr. Elizabeth Dutro and Alex Shevrin Venet: Books + Guides Articles Organizations + Individuals
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Facing History invites educators to use our Back-to-School Toolkit which offers a location-flexible teaching unit designed to support teaching in the opening days of any course. The unit has been constructed to develop students' social-emotional skills with the goal of helping them co-construct an open and inclusive classroom community in these unprecedented times.

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Trauma-Informed Teaching in Action: An Expert Interview

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Two experts share insights on bringing trauma-informed practices to the classroom in addition to teaching from an equity-centered lens.

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Opinion

The case for understanding the individual and systemic causes of student trauma

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 prescribe pain medication to Black patients than White patients with equivalent ailments. In education as well, science can be used against communities of color.

As teacher-educators who support teachers in addressing systemic inequality and its impact on children in schools, we are frequently asked about trauma-informed teaching. Teachers and school leaders name serious challenges: children flipping over desks, screaming at teachers, running out of the school. They tell us, "We've been hearing about trauma-informed practice. Please, just tell us what to do!"

We've responded with a desire to be of service but also with trepidation. Trauma-informed practice is a powerful but incomplete tool. Powerful because it helps teachers understand the children in their classrooms and bring individualized care and attention to build resilience. Incomplete in dangerous ways because it is rarely paired with attention to naming and addressing systemic injustice and racism. We also can't help but notice that most of these pleas are in reference to children of color.

Our solution is attending to trauma both at the individual level-as is currently happening-and also at the system level.

Research confirms the serious and long-term effects that adverse childhood experiences, or ACEs, can have on children. Trauma affects the nervous system, and children's rage, impulse control, or sensitivity can also be markers of ACEs. California's Surgeon General Nadine Burke Harris reports that when a child has experienced four or more ACEs they are 32 times more likely to have learning or behavior problems in school than a child with no ACEs. Similarly, researchers Christopher Blodgett and Jane D. Lanigan found that higher ACEs in elementary-aged students were associated with a higher likelihood of poor school attendance rates, behavioral issues, and failure to meet grade-level standards.

The damage from these adverse childhood experiences also persists into adulthood, manifesting in increased risk of heart disease, diabetes, severe obesity, substance abuse, and suicide attempts. These findings have been tremendously useful to educators, deepening their understandings of their students' behaviors.

So how can findings that help us to better serve children be dangerous? We have observed that educators' awareness of trauma often results in the framing of an entire community-often communities of color-as nothing more than the trauma they have suffered. At the same time, they often only look for individual-level solutions. Individual-level responses are important, but they should be paired with attention to the systems that cause the trauma itself.

Research shows that individually based responses, such as breathing deeply, doing yoga, or listening to music, can support children who've suffered trauma. The danger is that we focus only on the individual behaviors of children, and not on the racial bias and systemic inequality that exacerbates or even causes trauma. Painting the communities most harmed by these inequalities as no more than the traumas that they face erases the beauty and the resilience that exists there as well.

We must expand trauma-informed practice to include work supported by the scholarship on systemic inequality and racism and the ways these injustices harm children. Research on ACEs demonstrates that trauma is pervasive across all demographics, but this information has landed in an inherently racist and unequal society. Thus, when children of color experience trauma, they are often read differently than White children by teachers and educators. We know this to be true-just look at research confirming a school-prison nexus, which shows that children of color are disproportionately overdisciplined compared to their White peers for the very same offenses.

Here, then is the danger: Without a systemic lens, trauma-informed practice can draw teachers' attention to the trauma behaviors that students exhibit, potentially pathologizing children for the very behaviors that research on trauma has illuminated and then blaming their families for their trauma. Without a systemic lens, trauma-informed practice promotes solutions that are individually targeted while the trauma that children experience is rooted in systems.

Trauma-informed practice must, therefore, address the behaviors of individuals and the systems that cause trauma. To implement this broader approach to trauma-informed practice, educators should draw from the research on trauma-informed practice to observe children's behaviors and interpret them with an aim toward understanding the experiences and needs of the child and meeting those needs through teaching. We should honor and build from the ample scholarship that has confirmed the impact of school-based trauma-informed programs, as documented by Todd I. Herrenkohl and University of Michigan colleagues. But in addition, educators should look past the individual level and ask: Which systems constructed or contributed to the trauma this child is experiencing?

Most importantly, teachers and leaders should work in concert with one another to mount systemic-level responses within their school communities. We encourage educators to harness the power they have in the collective to interrupt systems that can oppress and instead build liberatory systems.

What does this look like? In addition to meeting the individual needs of students, teachers should come together to recognize and name the systems of inequality that permeate their schools and school practices. Sometimes this will mean working in partnership with other professionals, including medical practitioners, social workers, and others.

Together, these principles support educators to attend to children's trauma in just ways-by supporting individuals, but also recognizing and disrupting systems that harm children.

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Trauma-Informed Practice Is a Powerful Tool. But It's Also Incomplete

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Opinion 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.

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As we gear up (did we ever gear down?) for fall semester to begin, it is increasingly clear that formal education will be relying more than ever on online teaching and learning, and within our online offerings, once again, it's apparent that many teachers will lean heavily on synchronous classes (a.k.a. Zoom). The intent of this essay is not to debate the benefits of synchronous and asynchronous approaches. I've spoken on that at length, and my take continues to be that synchronous teaching should be the ketchup and asynchronous the burger. Less confident, untrained, unsupported, understandably stressed and exhausted teachers tend to flip that equation. Those of us who work with online faculty development will continue to encourage folks to think intentionally about their pedagogy and to ask education leaders to give teachers at all levels the training, time, and support they need to better understand the affordances and constraints of online pedagogy.

Photo by Chris Montgomery on Unsplash
My intention here is to specifically address the question of engagement in the synchronous session, or Zoom class, because this issue continues to present itself in my travels and talks with teachers. Most teachers and faculty I work with want to know that their students are engaged in Zoom, but many aren't quite sure what that means or how to do it, and that leads to frustration for teachers, students, and admins. A knee-jerk reaction to this desire is to require students to be on-camera, as if that is a panacea that will solve all manner of engagement and attention ills. Spoiler alert: it's not.
Image source: https://liforme.com/blogs/blog/triangle-pose-trikonasana
I've written about why forcing students to turn on their cameras is a really bad idea from a trauma-awareness and equity perspective. Here, I want to really zoom in (pun intended) on what I see as the primary motivation for teachers to force the camera issue: because teachers care about their students and want their students to pay attention and be engaged, they are relying on what seems like the most obvious and best strategy to make that happen: requiring students to turn on cameras. Administrators who are even less aware of online pedagogical strategies further complicate this issue by putting policies in place that require teachers to meet synchronously with their students with all cameras on. Unfortunately, this approach can have the opposite of the intended effect.

When I was studying to be a yoga teacher, my own teacher constantly reminded us that our goal was not to get our students to make a shape in our classes. If we were to look out at our class, and see ten cookie cutter clones of some idealized, Instagramized version of triangle pose, for example, we had missed the mark as teachers. Instead, she told us, we would know that we had done our job if we saw ten different expressions of triangle: some using blocks or straps, some with the lower hand touching the floor and others with a bent elbow resting gently on the thigh, some with eyes cast toward the ceiling, others with eyes closed.

My job as a yoga teacher was never to get my students into a shape; rather, my job was to invite students to explore what a posture revealed about their body, mind, and spirit.
Here are some practical strategies specific to the Zoom platform that can help you do that:
Downward dog is one of the most typical images branded into yoga students' minds. Everyone wants to make that perfect inverted "V" shape and get their heels planted flat on the floor. I will forever remember the first time a teacher of mine cued us to bend our knees in downward dog and to forget about our damn feet; I experienced the pose in a completely different way, using gravity to create space in my spine as my hands pressed into the mat. Now, whenever I feel my persistently pinched nerve acting up, I find my bent-knee downward dog. I wouldn't have learned this medicine if I'd insisted on continuing to make a shape like what I thought downward dog should look like, rather than using it as an opportunity to deepen my relationship with my body.

Many teachers have a shape that they think attention and engagement look like, and they work very hard to get students into that shape.

I am an excellent case study. I make a great paying attention shape. I can smile and nod with the best of them. I can get called on, have no idea what you just asked me, and share an intelligent remark that masks my confusion. But when I'm truly engaged, it doesn't quite look like what you think it should. My paying attention is chaotic, messy, moving in my chair, playing with stuff on my desk, and backchannel chatting in the Zoom chat and via text.

If you focus on having your students make the shapes of what you think attention and engagement should look like, you're going to lose them, and they're going to lose valuable opportunities to express their curiosity and enjoy learning. Instead, I want to invite you into the alternative of creating spaces for your students to express their learning in a way that is meaningful for them. The best way to do that is to give students options to engage in your synchronous sessions.

Zoom has several tools for quick audience participation including the option to raise/lower your virtual hand, answer yes/no to questions, or sharing emoji reactions (clapping hands, thumbs up). Make sure you have turned on nonverbal feedback in your Zoom account first. At the start of each session, review these options with your learners and encourage them to test them out. Don't assume students know how or when to use these tools; teach them. If you aren't sure how to use them, ask a friend to invite you to a Zoom meeting so you can practice.

Use formal or informal polls. A colleague of mine loves using formal Zoom polls; I don't. I find there's just too much going on, and I get easily overwhelmed. I prefer informal polls where I ask for short responses in the chat. For example, I typically start sessions these days by inviting my learners to share one or two words to express how they're feeling in that moment.

Punctuate your session with questions. I always ask my learners (whether they're faculty, students, or admins) what they already know or feel about a topic before I give them my take on it. Ask students what they know and have them share their responses in the chat. Keep asking informal questions throughout and encourage students to use the chat to engage with you and their peers. Students will often share ideas or resources that you haven't thought of. Students know things!

Most of us teachers have been taught that sometimes we might have to endure some uncomfortable silence before students will respond to our questions. It's okay to pause in our Zoom sessions to give students time to think and answer.

Invite students to share out via audio and or audio/video in addition to answering in the chat. This should be optional and encouraged, not forced. If this doesn't fly at first, shift to encouraging responses in the chat, but don't give up on encouraging audio and video participation. Sometimes, it takes a bit of time for students to work up to this.

You have the option to do a private chat in Zoom. Sometimes, if I sense a student has something to say or I want to encourage participation, I'll send a private message to the student asking them if they want to share out. Again, I encourage them: I don't force.

Some students are hesitant to be on-camera because they are scared and nervous. No one has taught them yet how to be on-camera in a Zoom session. Maybe you can teach them how to do that. If possible within your own time and energy constraints, invite students to a one-on-one meeting to practice their on-camera skills. You could also hold a "Zoom Practice Session" for students just for the purpose of helping them get comfortable in Zoom.

Normalize the fear of being on-camera to help students overcome it. If you've experienced that fear, share that story with your students. If not, I know for a fact that someone in your life, whether they're a teacher or a student, gets nervous being on-camera in Zoom. Ask them how that feels so that you can communicate that to your students. Remind students that learning new things often brings about some anxiety. Let them know that while you won't force them to be on-camera, you want to encourage them to try so that they can build this important success skill.

If you need an example of overcoming fear, share this video of Keala Settle from The Greatest Showman performing "This is Me." It gets me every time.

Tell a story of a time when you were scared to try something, but you did, and now it's old hat. Students (and their brains) love stories.

Ask for student input about your sessions. You can do this within a session, in an asynchronous discussion, via email, or in an anonymous survey.

If you're a confident Zoom user, try using breakout rooms. You can split students into multiple Zoom rooms to work on a collaborative project (perhaps via Google docs) or to discuss a topic as a smaller group. I am not a heavy breakout room user, because just like with polls, I get a bit overwhelmed. That said, they are a great option to switch up the energy of a session and can be useful for creating a less intimidating space for introverted students to share out.

Set the tone for engagement from moment one. I can't tell you how many Zooms I've attended that start with ten minutes of introductions from the presenter or presenters. When we start our sessions that way, we clearly communicate who is the center of that session (the teacher). Instead, begin your sessions by welcoming your learners and encouraging them to get active in the chat. Let students know that you are there to learn along with them, and that their peers can learn from them too. Make the chat the heart of your session.

By using these practical strategies, you'll notice all sorts of attention and engagement happening in your synchronous sessions. Students will make all kinds of shapes when we create space for them to do so.

One more yoga story: once, during my yoga teaching practicum, I came to the end of class and cued my students to enter savasana. A young woman in the front row did not lie on her back and close her eyes like the others. Instead, she sat in the front row, eyes wide open, fidgeting and staring at me. I was incredibly uncomfortable. All sorts of thoughts and judgments began racing through my mind. What was wrong with her? What had I done wrong? The other students experienced the world's shortest ever savasana because I couldn't stand my own discomfort. I hurried them along and ended the class.

Weeks later, as I got to know this student a bit more and gained her trust, she disclosed to me that she was a trauma survivor, and that savasana wasn't in the cards for her. For her, to have come to a yoga class and stayed through the end was a victory. Lesson learned for me, the teacher, taught to me by my student. Savasana, like any other posture, is not about me getting my students to all make the same shape.

Build your synchronous teaching toolbox and use the practical tools at your disposal. Teach and model being an online learner and participant for your students. Encourage their attention and engagement. Offer varied ways for students to express themselves. Accept that what looks like engagement might not be. Celebrate that the student who you assume is disengaged might just be expressing their engagement in a different way than you're used to. Be human and know that your students are too.

How will you know if you've succeeded? Some students will have cameras on and will volunteer to share out. Others will never turn their camera on at all, but they'll respond in the chat and make ample use of the thumbs up emoji. Another student you won't be sure of, so you'll follow up with an email to see how the session went for them. They'll respond that they're still getting used to this whole Zoom thing, and that they really appreciate you checking on them. In the next session, you'll be thrilled to see their camera turned on, though they'll stay quiet for the entire class.

In short, students will make lots of different shapes in your Zoom classes, and you will continue to create the space for them to do so.

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As we gear up (did we ever gear down?) for fall semester to begin, it is increasingly clear that formal education will be relying more than ever on online teaching and learning, and within our online offerings, once again, it's apparent that many teachers will lean heavily on synchronous classes (a.

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Schools across the country are adopting social-emotional learning (SEL) standards as an approach to creating school communities that are safe and positive climates for learning, as well as a foundation to set students up for success in school and in life. In theory, this is a step in the right direction - we want schooling spaces where students, families, educators, school staff, and all those who come into contact with the school building feel safe, affirmed, and supported. We want schools that foster emotional support between students, staff, and communities, where there's a trust-building approach rather than school hardening, and we want restorative justice, rather than the policing, punishment, and criminalization of Black and Brown students.

However, these SEL conversations, practices, and curricula are too often based on white, cisgender, patriarchal norms and values which further enact emotional and psychological violence onto Black, Brown, and LGBTQ+ youth of color, in particular. The current narrative around SEL is that students must manage and regulate themselves and their emotions, conform and constrict their identities, and not express their fullest, most authentic selves. As school districts begin to devise plans for back-to-school, we must re-examine how we talk about and teach SEL.

While visiting classrooms in a middle school this year, I perused how every classroom had the same print-out displayed on the wall. The poster detailed the five core competencies of SEL, as defined by CASEL - self awareness, self management, social awareness, relationship skills, and responsible decision-making. As an example of social awareness, the signs read, "Keep your hands to yourself and don't take other people's property." While social awareness should be about unpacking bias, having critical dialogue about social issues, and collectively crafting justice-oriented solutions, this white-washed version, as Dr. Dena Simmons reminds us, made me wonder: whose social norms are we abiding by and adhering to?

In Dr. Monique Morris's newest book, Sing a Rhythm, Dance A Blues: Education for the Liberation of Black and Brown Girls, Morris tells the story of Esperanza, who as part of the EMERGE program in Oakland, California, was scheduled to speak at a national conference on Chicana/Latina girls in the...

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When SEL is Used as Another Form of Policing

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Schools across the country are adopting social-emotional learning (SEL) standards as an approach to creating school communities that are safe and positive climates for learning, as well as a...

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As a teacher and teacher-educator for more than a decade, I have had the privilege of working with thousands of educators. Now, in my current capacity as the director of education at the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence, part of my job is supporting educators from all over the nation in learning, living, and teaching social and emotional learning (SEL), a set of life skills that support people in experiencing, managing, and expressing their emotions effectively and in fostering rewarding interpersonal relationships. Throughout all of these years working with educators in various capacities, I have been continually inspired by their dedication to supporting their students' academic, social, and emotional growth.

At the same time, I have been noticing an unfortunate trend among some of the educators-and other practitioners and scholars in the SEL field: When they describe how students of color behaved before they participated in an SEL program, they tend to use words like "rowdy," "misguided," "disengaged," and "violent," as if to highlight the urgent need for SEL programs for "these kids."

In other words, they frame SEL as a sort of savior-one that transforms students of color from being unmotivated, loud, lazy, and uninterested students into motivated individuals suddenly enthusiastic about school and quiet enough to learn.

To be sure, one might wonder what's wrong with a teacher describing the power and potential of SEL programming in that way, especially if it seems to be working-and especially if the teacher means well. In fact, we know from a 2011 meta-analysis of 213 school-based programs that SEL instruction helps improve students' social and emotional skills, attitudes, and behaviors as well as their academic performance.

Here's the problem: While stories about the impact of SEL may feel hopeful and uplifting to educators, parents, and others, they can also convey subtle messages that harm students inside and outside of the classroom.

Quite often, these stories perpetuate what University of Alabama professor Latrise Johnson calls a " failure narrative," one suggesting that youth of color need SEL skills more than other children and that they would be better off if they would just learn to relate to people better, manage themselves more effectively, have more self-control, and be more calm. The result is that students of color-and their teachers-internalize the idea that such students are inherently deficient and in need of a teacher or some intervention to save them from themselves.

The consequences can be dire. Numerous studies have already suggested that teachers hold unconscious biases and stereotypes about children of color, leading them to discipline students of color more harshly than white students for the same behavior. Students of color begin to believe these messages about themselves in ways that influence their social and academic functioning at school, as demonstrated by research on teacher expectations and " stereotype threat," which has found that when students of color think their performance on a test could be seen as confirming a negative stereotype about their ability, they feel added stress-which leads to the poor performance they were worried about confirming in the first place. And, research has also linked these same types of biases to the litany of tragic police shootings of black, Latino, and first-nation people: Evidence suggests that unconscious biases against non-white faces cause officers to assume the worst and pull the trigger more quickly.

So, how we tell stories about our students matters, particularly students of color, who do not need to look too far to see negative images of themselves littered throughout mass media. As a black educator who grew up poor in the Bronx, I know how dehumanizing it can be to hear that youth of color need saving and taming. I am still tackling my own internal challenges around impostor syndrome, and as a result, I'm particularly sensitive to the far-reaching effects that these stories can have.

Yet, from my experiences training thousands of educators around the country, I know firsthand that most teachers are very well-intentioned; they want to do right by their students.

I wholeheartedly believe we are capable of keeping our biases in check and changing the stories we tell about students of color. It is a process that takes time and commitment-and if you are an educator ready to commit to this work, here are four ways to begin.

1. Observe how you tell stories

When sharing stories about your students, or listening to a colleague talk about his or her students, consider whether the story represents the fullness of a person or a people, or whether it disempowers them or perpetuates problematic stereotypes.

That is, is the story spreading a single narrative of children of color being fearful, unmanageable, and uninterested in learning? Is the story implicitly taking away your students' agency in improving their own circumstances-are you solely their savior? Does the story discuss the societal and community contexts that may add stressors to your students' lives, impacting their learning and behavior?

For example, during a class discussion in one of my teacher education classes, one of my teacher-students shared that his students, who were all students of color, were not successful at school because (unlike his former high school classmates and himself) his students did not want to learn. He spoke with such certainty, and as evidence cited the fact that his students did not listen to him. The other 30 teachers in the room digested what he said as the truth-that his students of color were essentially unteachable-except for one, the only teacher of color in the room.

Instead of creating this reductive narrative about his students, which likely caused him to have low expectations for them, he could have approached his teaching dilemma as an opportunity to seek feedback on his classroom practice from his fellow teachers, and to reflect on ways that his instruction-and storytelling-could do more to respect and acknowledge his students' assets, life experiences, and context.

That is, in addition to asking the reflective questions above, consider how you might tell more balanced narratives about students of color. Focus not only on discussing their shortcomings and challenges but also on highlighting their strengths-what makes them beautiful, resilient, kind, and interesting. In general, this kind of " strengths-based approach " leads to better outcomes for students.

Also, be aware of whether you describe students of color as "these kids" or as "our kids." Saying "these kids" suggests a distance, a separation between your students and you-and this subtle shift in language can represent a major shift in your thinking and behavior towards them.

In sum, the goal is to refrain-and to help your colleagues refrain-from equating problematic behavior with problematic people and to emphasize students' strengths, not their deficits.

2. Cultivate mindfulness to reduce unconscious bias

It can be hard to notice when our words are perpetuating harmful stereotypes about our students, especially since those stereotypes can be deeply ingrained in our consciousness.

Fortunately, research has identified an effective strategy for keeping our unconscious biases in check: mindfulness, the moment-by-moment awareness of our thoughts, feelings, and sensations.

Studies have found that mindfulness meditation practices not only cultivate positive emotional states toward others but also reduce our knee-jerk biases against certain social groups. In particular, studies on loving-kindness meditation, which includes discussing and cultivating love and compassion toward oneself and others, have found that it increases social connectedness and reduces bias. This may be because mindfulness subjects our unconscious biases and impulses to the scrutiny of our conscious awareness.

Engaging in a short daily practice of loving-kindness meditation can potentially help us reduce bias and connect more deeply with our students and their communities. Sure enough, a recent experiment found that when teachers received mindfulness training, they felt less stressed and were less quick to punish students.

3. Cultivate greater awareness of your power and privilege

"Power is the ability not just to tell the story of another person, but to make it the definitive story of that person," according to novelist Chimimanda Adichie. When telling stories, it is helpful to get into the habit of asking the following: Should I be the one telling this story?

While sharing people's stories can sometimes give them a stronger platform from which to spread their work or ideas more widely or acknowledge their accomplishments, we also risk silencing other people when we tell their stories for them. For one, when teachers share stories about their students, they might implicitly take credit for the successes of their students. When we do that, we put ourselves at the center of the story and strip the student of the opportunity to highlight and fully own his or her successes.

Storytelling requires self-awareness, which involves reflecting on how our identity markers-gender, sexual orientation, religion, race, size, and so on-position us in the world and give us access to power and privileges, or not. Building this type of self-awareness is a lifelong practice that requires honesty, self-compassion, and deep reflection.

Author and educator Peggy McIntosh, a scholar on white privilege, outlines some reflective questions and practices that support becoming more aware of the privileges some of us are afforded that others are not.

When we are aware of our power and privilege, we are less likely to abuse them and more likely to be open to other people's lived experiences, allowing us to move forward with more empathy in our storytelling and ultimately in our lives.

4. Create opportunities for people to tell their own stories

While it is important for everyone, regardless of background, to be empowered to author his or her own narrative, this is especially true for people of color and other marginalized groups because, historically, we have had fewer opportunities to have our stories heard. For instance, in Hollywood and in academia, the dearth of people of color had led to incomplete or even nonexistent narratives about ourselves.

To change this pattern, teachers can devise activities for students to share their diverse experiences; these could include spoken word performances, written pieces, podcasts, videos, other multimedia and art projects, or even simply one-on-one lunch conversations with classmates or educators. Additionally, in all spheres, increasing the diversity of people in the room will help ensure that more diverse voices are heard. When people become the authors of their own stories, they pave the way for social transformation.

Through engaging in these four practices, we can push through the discomfort of confronting our unconscious biases and create opportunities for people to tell their own stories. Importantly, although research has documented impressive benefits of SEL programming, we must be careful about viewing or describing it as a corrective to character flaws in some groups of children, and not others. Despite good intentions, these types of narratives about our young people of color do more harm than good.
Dena Simmons is the director of education at the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence. Her views are her own.
Greater Good wants to know: Do you think this article will influence your opinions or behavior?

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How to Change the Story about Students of Color

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As a teacher and teacher-educator for more than a decade, I have had the privilege of working with thousands of educators.

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Strategies to Improve Emotional Intelligence Components copy

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Components of Emotional Intelligence - updated copy

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Shawn Ginwright Ph.D.
From time to time, researchers, policy makers, philanthropy and practitioners all join together in a coordinated response to address the most pressing issues facing America's youth. I've been involved with this process for long enough to have participated in each of these roles. I recall during the early 1990s experts promoted the term "resiliency," which is the capacity to adapt, navigate and bounce back from adverse and challenging life experiences. Researchers and practitioners alike clamored over strategies to build more resilient youth.

In the early 2000's the term "youth development" gained currency and had a significant influence on youth development programs, and probably more importantly how we viewed young people. Youth development offered an important shift in focus from viewing youth as problems to be solved to community assets who simply required supports and opportunities for healthy development. Since that time, a range of approaches have influenced how we think about young people, and consequently our programmatic strategies. I have, for the most part, attempted to nudge and cajole each of these approaches to consider the unique ways in which race, identity and social marginalization influence the development of youth of color.

More recently, practitioners and policy stakeholders have recognized the impact of trauma on learning, and healthy development. In efforts to support young people who experience trauma, the term "trauma-informed care" has gained traction among schools, juvenile justice departments, mental health programs and youth development agencies around the country. Trauma informed care broadly refers to a set of principles that guide and direct how we view the impact of severe harm on young people's mental, physical, and emotional health. Trauma informed care encourages support and treatment to the whole person, rather than focusing on only treating individual symptoms or specific behaviors.

Trauma-informed care has become an important approach in schools and agencies that serve young people who have been exposed to trauma, and here's why. Some school leaders believe that the best way to address disruptive classroom behavior is through harsh discipline. These schools believe that discipline alone is sufficient to modify undesired classroom behavior, but research shows that school suspensions may further harm students who have been exposed to a traumatic event or experience (Bottiani et al., 2017). Rather than using discipline, a school that uses a trauma informed approach might offer therapy, or counseling to support the restoration of that student's well-being. The assumption is that the disruptive behavior is the symptom of a deeper harm, rather than willful defiance, or disrespect.

While trauma-informed care offers an important lens to support young people who have been harmed and emotionally injured, it also has its limitations. I first became aware of the limitations of the term "trauma-informed care" during a healing circle I was leading with a group of African American young men. All of them had experienced some form of trauma ranging from sexual abuse, violence, homelessness, abandonment or all of the above. During one of our sessions, I explained the impact of stress and trauma on brain development and how trauma can influence emotional health. As I was explaining, one of the young men in the group named Marcus abruptly stopped me and said, "I am more than what happened to me, I'm not just my trauma". I was puzzled at first, but it didn't take me long to really contemplate what he was saying.

The term "trauma informed care" didn't encompass the totality of his experience and focused only on his harm, injury and trauma. For Marcus, the term "trauma informed care" was akin to saying, you are the worst thing that ever happened to you. For me, I realized the term slipped into the murky water of deficit based, rather than asset driven strategies to support young people who have been harmed. Without careful consideration of the terms we use, we can create blind spots in our efforts to support young people.

While the term trauma informed care is important, it is incomplete. First, trauma informed care correctly highlights the specific needs for individual young people who have exposure to trauma. However, current formulations of trauma informed care presumes that the trauma is an individual experience, rather than a collective one. To illustrate this point, researchers have shown that children in high violence neighborhoods all display behavioral and psychological elements of trauma (Sinha & Rosenberg 2013). Similarly, populations that disproportionately suffer from disasters like Hurricane Katrina share a common experience that if viewed individually simply fails to capture how collective harm requires a different approach than an individual one.

Second, trauma-informed care requires that we treat trauma in people but provides very little insight into how we might address the root causes of trauma in neighborhoods, families, and schools. If trauma is collectively experienced, this means that we also have to consider the environmental context that caused the harm in the first place. By only treating the individual we only address part of the equation leaving the toxic systems, policies and practices neatly intact.

Third, the term trauma-informed care runs the risk of focusing on the treatment of pathology (trauma), rather than fostering the possibility (well-being). This is not an indictment on well-meaning therapists and social workers many of whom may have been trained in theories and techniques designed to simply reduce negative emotions and behavior (Seligman 2011). However, just like the absence of disease doesn't constitute health, nor the absence of violence constitute peace, the reduction pathology (anxiety, anger, fear, sadness, distrust, triggers) doesn't constitute well-being (hope, happiness, imagination, aspirations, trust). Everyone wants to be happy, not just have less misery. The emerging field of positive psychology offers insight into the limits of only "treating" symptoms and focuses on enhancing the conditions that contribute to well-being. Without more careful consideration, trauma informed approaches sometimes slip into rigid medical models of care that are steeped in treating the symptoms, rather than strengthening the roots of well-being.

What is needed is an approach that allows practitioners to approach trauma with a fresh lens that promotes a holistic view of healing from traumatic experiences and environments. One approach is called healing-centered, as opposed to trauma-informed. A healing centered approach is holistic involving culture, spirituality, civic action and collective healing. A healing-centered approach views trauma not simply as an individual isolated experience, but rather highlights the ways in which trauma and healing are experienced collectively. The term healing-centered engagement expands how we think about responses to trauma and offers more holistic approach to fostering well-being.

A shift from trauma informed care to healing centered engagement (HCE) is more than a semantic play with words, but rather a tectonic shift in how we view trauma, its causes and its intervention. HCE is strength based, advances a collective view of healing, and re-centers culture as a central feature in well-being. Researchers have pointed out the ways in which patients have redefined the terms used to describe their illnesses in ways that affirmed, humanized and dignified their condition. For example, in the early 1990s AIDS activists challenged the term "gay-related immune deficiency" because the term stigmatized gay men and failed to adequately capture the medical accuracy of the condition. In a similar way, the young men I worked with offered me a way to reframe trauma with language that humanized them, and holistically captured their life experiences.

A healing centered approach to addressing trauma requires a different question that moves beyond "what happened to you" to "what's right with you" and views those exposed to trauma as agents in the creation of their own well-being rather than victims of traumatic events. Healing centered engagement is akin to the South African term "Ubuntu" meaning that humanness is found through our interdependence, collective engagement and service to others. Additionally, healing centered engagement offers an asset driven approach aimed at the holistic restoration of young peoples' well-being. The healing centered approach comes from the idea that people are not harmed in a vacuum, and well-being comes from participating in transforming the root causes of the harm within institutions. Healing centered engagement also advances the move to "strengths-based' care and away from the deficit based mental health models that drives therapeutic interventions. There are four key elements of healing centered engagement that may at times overlap with current trauma informed practices but offers several key distinctions.

Communities, and individuals who experience trauma are agents in restoring their own well-being. This subtle shift suggests that healing from trauma is found in an awareness and actions that address the conditions that created the trauma in the first place. Researchers have found that well-being is a function of the control and power young people have in their schools and communities (Morsillo & Prilleltensky 2007; Prilleltensky & Prilleltensky 2006). These studies focus on concepts such as such as liberation, emancipation, oppression, and social justice among activist groups and suggests that building an awareness of justice and inequality, combined with social action such as protests, community organizing, and/or school walk-outs contribute to overall wellbeing, hopefulness, and optimism (Potts 2003; Prilleltensky 2003, 2008). This means that healing centered engagement views trauma and well-being as function of the environments where people live, work and play. When people advocate for policies and opportunities that address causes of trauma, such as lack of access to mental health, these activities contribute to a sense of purpose, power and control over life situations. All of these are ingredients necessary to restore well-being and healing.

The pathway to restoring well-being among young people who experience trauma can be found in culture and identity. Healing centered engagement uses culture as a way to ground young people in a solid sense of meaning, self-perception, and purpose. This process highlights the intersectional nature of identity and highlights the ways in which culture offers a shared experience, community and sense of belonging. Healing is experienced collectively, and is shaped by shared identity such as race, gender, or sexual orientation. Healing centered engagement is the result of building a healthy identity, and a sense of belonging. For youth of color, these forms of healing can be rooted in culture and serves as an anchor to connect young people to a shared racial and ethnic identity that is both historical grounded and contemporarily relevant. Healing centered engagement embraces a holistic view of well-being that includes spiritual domains of health. This goes beyond viewing healing only from the lens of mental health, and incorporates culturally grounded rituals, and activities to restore well-being (Martinez 2001). Some examples of healing centered engagement can be found in healing circles rooted in indigenous culture where young people share their stories about healing and learn about their connection to their ancestors and traditions, or drumming circles rooted in African cultural principles.

Healing centered engagement offers an important departure from solely viewing young people through the lens of harm and focuses on asset driven strategies that highlight possibilities for well-being. An asset driven strategy acknowledges that young people are much more than the worst thing that happened to them, and builds upon their experiences, knowledge, skills and curiosity as positive traits to be enhanced. While it is important to acknowledge trauma and its influence on young people's mental health, healing centered strategies move one step beyond by focusing on what we want to achieve, rather than merely treating emotional and behavioral symptoms of trauma. This is a salutogenic approach focusing on how to foster and sustain well-being. Based in positive psychology, healing centered engagement is based in collective strengths and possibility which offers a departure from conventional psychopathology which focuses on clinical treatment of illness.

Adult providers need healing too! Healing centered engagement requires that we consider how to support adult providers in sustaining their own healing and well-being. We cannot presume that adulthood is a final, "trauma-free" destination. Much of our training and practice is directed at young peoples' healing but rarely focuses on the healing that is required of adults to be an effective youth practitioner. Healing is an ongoing process that we all need, not just young people who experience trauma. The well-being of the adult youth worker is also a critical factor in supporting young peoples' well-being. While we are learning more about the causes and effects of secondary on adults, we know very little about the systems of support required to restore and sustain well-being for adults. Healing centered engagement has an explicit focus on restoring, and sustaining the adults who attempt to heal youth- a healing the healers approach. Policy stakeholders should consider how to build a systems that support adult youth worker's well-being. I have supported organizations in creating structures like sabbaticals for employees or creating incentives like continuing education units for deeper learning about well-being and healing.

Marcus's comments during our healing circle "I am more than what happened to me" led me to question our approach to trauma. What blind spots do we have in our approaches to supporting young people who experience trauma? How might the concepts which are enshrined in our language limit rather than create opportunities for healing? What approaches might offer "disruptive" techniques that saturate young people with opportunities for healing and well-being?

The fields of positive psychology and community psychology offers important insight into how policy makers, and youth development stakeholders can consider a range of healing centered options for young people. Shifting from trauma informed care or treatment to healing centered engagement requires youth development stakeholders to expand from a treatment-based model, which views trauma and harm as an isolated experience, to an engagement model which supports collective well-being. Here are a few notes to consider in building healing centered engagement.

Healing centered engagement begins by building empathy with young people who experience trauma. This process takes time, is an ongoing process and sometimes may feel like taking two steps forward, and three steps back. However, building empathy is critical to healing centered engagement. To create this empathy, I encourage adult staff to share their story first, and take an emotional risk by being more vulnerable, honest, and open to young people. This process creates an empathy exchange between the adult, and the young people which is the foundation for healing centered engagement (Payne 2013). This process also strengthens emotional literacy which allows youth to discuss the complexity of their feelings. Fostering empathy allows for young people to feel safe sharing their experiences and emotions. The process ultimately restores their sense of well-being because they have the power name and respond to their emotional states.

An important ingredient in healing centered engagement is the ability to acknowledge the harm and injury, but not be defined by it. Perhaps one of the greatest tools available to us is the ability to see beyond the condition, event or situation that caused the trauma in the first place. Research shows that the ability to dream and imagine is an important factor in fostering hopefulness, and optimism which both of which contributes to overall well-being (Snyder et al. 2003). Daily survival and ongoing crisis management in young people's lives can make it difficult for them to see beyond the present.

The greatest casualty of trauma is not only depression and emotional scares, but also the loss of the ability to dream and imagine another way of living. Howard Thurman pointed this out in his eloquent persistence that dreams matter. He commented, "As long as a man [woman] has a dream, he [she] cannot lose the significance of living" (p. 304). By creating activities and opportunities for young people to play, reimagine, design and envision their lives this process strengthens their future goal orientation (Snyder et al. 2003). These are practices of possibility that encourage young people to envision what they want to become, and who they want to be.

Healing and well-being are fundamentally political not clinical. This means that we have to consider the ways in which the policies and practice and political decisions harm young people. Healing in this context also means that young people develop an analysis of these practices and policies that facilitated the trauma in the first place. Without an analysis of these issues, young people often internalize, and blame themselves for lack of confidence. Critical reflection provides a lens by which to filter, examine, and consider analytical and spiritual responses to trauma. By spiritual, I mean the ability to draw upon the power of culture, rituals and faith in order to consistently act from a place of humility, and love. These are not cognitive processes, but rather ethical, moral and emotional aspects of healing centered engagement.

The other key component, is taking loving action, by collectively responding to political decisions and practices that can exacerbate trauma. By taking action, (e.g. school walkouts, organizing peace march, or promoting access to healthy foods) it builds a sense of power and control over their lives. Research has demonstrated that building this sense of power and control among traumatized groups is perhaps one of the most significant features in restoring holistic well-being.

I ran into Marcus at a street fair in Oakland not long ago. He was excited to see me and wanted to share with me that he was in a new relationship so he introduced me to his girlfriend. "This is my friend Michelle"! He introduced her with a sense of pride, and accomplishment. He also shared with me that he had enrolled in a program that was training him to become a medic. As we chatted for a while in the warm sun, dodging children, and fast walking parents, he leaned toward me and whispered, "yeah Dr. G, I'm not entirely healed, but I'm hopeful". I smiled, gave him a "brotha hug" and we departed ways.

I suppose, that if we had more time to chat he would have explained that healing is a process that we navigate for a lifetime. He might have shared with me that the future of his healing journey had just begun. Seeing him again, holding hands, sipping a soda with his new girlfriend was a powerful reminder, that he was so much more than the trauma he had experienced. As practitioners, researchers and policy stakeholders we need to listen and learn from young people who have insights that can advance how we think about trauma and healing. Shifting to healing centered engagement offered new questions, and strategies about how to support young people who experience trauma. Healing centered engagement is just a step toward a more holistic, and humanistic framework to support young people who have been harmed. Such an approach encourages us to think and act more boldly about how to restore young people and create places where they can truly flourish.

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The Future of Healing: Shifting From Trauma Informed Care to Healing Centered Engagement

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From time to time, researchers, policy makers, philanthropy and practitioners all join together in a coordinated response to address the most pressing issues facing America's youth. I've been...

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"Is the pandemic a teachable moment?" asks Alex Shevrin Venet, an education professor who focuses on trauma-informed practices, in a post on her site Unconditional Learning. It's a vexing question that doesn't have a simple, straightforward answer, but Venet shares a framework for thinking through how to find a balance between ignoring trauma entirely and focusing on it in a harmful way.

"Ignoring hard topics and pretending they do not belong in the classroom is to ignore our students' (and our) life experiences," she writes. Venet offers four guiding questions teachers can use to navigate the decision making process.

1. "Is this lesson/activity/unit appropriate if one of my students, students' family members, or colleagues dies from Covid-19?" When considering this question, Venet says, remember that the pandemic is not yet over. Acknowledge students' justified fears by rejecting activities that do not recognize "the emotional gravity of the situation." She cites the example of a journaling project entitled "I survived the pandemic" as one that would be traumatizing for a student who has lost a family member to the coronavirus. When planning lessons, assess how students who have experienced loss might respond.

2. "Am I asking students to opt out or opt in?" Venet says well-intentioned educators may decide to offer pandemic-related academic content with the caveat that any student who feels uncomfortable can opt out, but that puts the burden on the student. Some students may feel too shy, vulnerable, or intimidated to ask for an alternative option. Instead, Venet suggests providing a choice between two appealing options. She quotes literacy education professor Elizabeth Dutro's advice that "making intentional space for stories of trauma is always posed as invitation, never as requirement." Posing opportunities to engage with the pandemic as invitations rather than demands empowers students who have experienced trauma.

3. "What's the balance?" Processing the grief and trauma caused by the pandemic will take time, Venet says, but that doesn't mean teachers should ignore what students are presently experiencing. Opportunities for sharing such as a rose and thorn activity or a community circle help students feel less isolated in their challenges as they gather support from their school community. And "make room for joy, fun, and silliness" during class, she says-they can provide a much-needed escape from the difficulties of daily life in the pandemic. "The key here is balance," she adds.

4. "What do my students say they need?" It's not possible to "avoid every single potential trauma trigger in the classroom," Venet says, but don't get thrown off-course if you make a mistake. Allow decisions to be guided by the information you have-primarily information provided by students and their families. Ask for feedback through individual conferences, simple surveys, or emails, Venet suggests. "Ask about how things are going, what feels good about class, what feels challenging, what students and their families need from you," she says. "Adjust your practice based on what you learn." While there are no simple solutions to the complexities of teaching in these circumstances, let students' needs guide the instruction.

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A Trauma-Informed Approach to Using the Pandemic in Class

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"Is the pandemic a teachable moment?" asks Alex Shevrin Venet, an education professor who focuses on trauma-informed practices, in a post on her site Unconditional Learning. It's a vexing question that doesn't have a simple, straightforward answer, but Venet shares a framework for thinking through how to find a balance between ignoring trauma entirely and focusing on it in a harmful way.