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DEISEL  NYSAIS Diversity Symposium 2023 (1)

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“Not try to save them or ask them to breathe through their oppression”: Educator perceptions and the need for a human-centered, liberatory approach to social and emotional learning

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The 180 Podcast: Zaretta Hammond: What is Culturally-Responsive Teaching? | Turnaround for Children

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Center for Whole-Child Education (Turnaround for Children)

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Zaretta Hammond: What is Culturally-Responsive Teaching?
Listen to part two here.
This may seem obvious: Students learn best where they feel a sense of safety and belonging. The science of learning and development shows environments that foster these feelings open up the brain to learning.

But what if children find themselves in spaces that teacher, educator, and author Zaretta Hammond calls "inequitable by design," that prevent instead of promote safety and belonging? What can teachers and schools do if the design of our education system is an obstacle to learning in and of itself? What does it mean to be a culturally responsive teacher - and why is that necessary, not only to stimulate intellectual curiosity, but to move beyond "cognitive redlining" and transition students to "cognitive independence"?

Zarretta Hammond is the author of "Culturally Responsive Teaching and the Brain" and founder of the " Ready 4 Rigor " blog. She is a former English teacher and, for nearly two decades, has worked at the crux of instructional design, professional development, and achieving equity. Hammond's research explores and analyzes the brain functions that inform how we learn and think. And it delves deeply into how students of color would benefit from culturally-responsive teaching and what it means - and doesn't mean - for how educators can help all students get ready to tackle the rigorous content necessary to succeed.

As you'll hear, it's such thought-provoking conversation that it called for two episodes of this podcast.

One note before we begin, an ask from me to you: If you like our 180 conversations, I'd appreciate if you'd take a moment, go to Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen, and, if you're so moved, leave a 5-star review. It makes a big difference in helping people find the podcast.

Here's part one of our conversation with Zaretta Hammond.

Complete Transcript

Chris Riback: Zaretta, thanks for joining me, I appreciate your time.

Zaretta Hammond: Absolutely, I'm excited for our conversation.

Chris Riback: I am as well. Most of the time in these conversations, I ask folks about their personal journeys at the end of a conversation. I like to get the theories and missions first, but it seems evident that with you, your personal journey is directly connected to your mission. So could we start there?

Zaretta Hammond: Yes, I am a product of grandparents who came out from the Deep South to San Francisco in 1940. So they were part of that last wave of Black migration leaving the Deep South because of Jim Crow, lack of opportunities, and that sort of thing. So being able to understand what my grandparents went through, and here's the thing, they were both illiterate. My grandmother, I think, learned to sign her name when she was in her 70s, and I remember that event. It was just like, woo! My grandfather had gone to the sixth grade, and when he came out here, he was a longshoreman for all his life because he had really strong hands, a strong back. He had that physicality that allowed him to leverage that. But in terms of education, they both were not well-served by segregated schools in the South.

And as a result, I think for my mother, who was 2 when she came out with them, it kind of radicalized her. Even though she was a teen parent, she had her first child by the time she was 17, and by 22 had three children, but she always had a hunger for education and always felt that was important. And we lived in the Pink Projects in San Francisco's Hunters Point.

And when it came time for us to go to school, she literally visited the school in our neighborhood and she just said, basically, "BS. I'm not sending my kids... Kids sharing books..." She just didn't feel any joy or livelihood. It just felt dingy and prison-like. And so she, before busing was even popular, put us on the city bus from Hunters Point over to the predominantly Asian and White community that my grandparents were fortunate enough to buy a house in. They were one of probably nine Black families in that area. And she used their address. So she basically lied to send us to that neighborhood school, which was predominantly White and Asian. And they pretty much knew that we were not from around there. And they kind of looked the other way. Don't make any trouble, we'll look the other way. This was the message we literally got.

And we had to get ourselves two hours across town, two different buses we had to transfer to, because mom had to go somewhere else. This wasn't no mom bus.

Chris Riback: She didn't even accompany you on the bus. You were navigating that on your own.

Zaretta Hammond: By ourselves, yes. By ourselves, because again, you do what you have to do.

But here's what was interesting. In her Welfare-to-Work job, she got that position as a library technician. So our after school program was to meet mom at the library, she'd put us in the children's section, she'd pile the books on the table so high. And she said, "By the time you hit the tabletop," because you've read these books or looked through them, "it's going to be time to go." So that was my after school program. That experience radicalized me. I don't care if the school's all Black and Brown.

There is nothing special sitting next to White people in terms of making sure that we get a quality education. Because that is what continues to get perpetuated. Every school, every neighborhood school should be a high-quality school, no matter what the composition. And so we still perpetuate this. This was the whole idea of Brown V. Board, that somehow we're being disadvantaged because it's all Black, or all Latino, or too many Indigenous folk. And somehow we need to be adjacent to White children to have value in our education

And that deficit mentality has followed me all the way. And I was able to see that. But I do think that this was important, because it's part of my radicalization. That when I then moved into upper elementary, it was certainly true, I became much more aware of it in middle school, because my mother made a commitment that education wasn't something that she was going to turn over to the school. Kind of like talking to kids about sex. You don't send them to school to get that talk. The parent has values, the parent has a way in which they want their child to be initiated into that conversation.
Well my mother felt as strongly about that around education. And so she made sure we learned to read. She made sure we had wide experiences. She made sure we knew Black history, and Latino history, and First Nation Indigenous history. You need to know the other folk who are having these issues. And so that, when I went to school, put me in a different category. I was in the honors classes, the gifted and talented, and I was often the only Black person there.

And it was not an intellectually safe space. Teachers did not protect me; there was no intellectual safety. And then we put gender on top of that. I went to Lowell High School, and I literally left for my own mental health. I went to my mother and I said, "Even though I've worked really hard to get to the most high-level specialized high school in the city, for my own wellbeing, I can't stay here." She was heartbroken because this was kind of the-

Chris Riback: It's a very well-known school, yes.

Zaretta Hammond: Yes. Well, and for her I did all this so that you can get here, because it is a well-known school. And I just told her, "Listen, I can either go through this and come out broken, or I can maintain my sense of self, and identity, and go somewhere else." This was a hard conversation, because imagine people, particularly African folk who have the history of enslavement, education is the pinnacle. Getting your kids to an Ivy League or specialized high school, this is what we all sacrifice for. And then to say you don't want that, and it wasn't because I didn't want it, it's because it was a hostile environment.

And I had to morph my identity way too much. And this happened in middle school. So I'd hang out with my friends, who were in the so-called quote, unquote "bonehead English" or remedial math, and then the bell would ring and I would run as fast as I could to get to my algebra class that was on the other side of campus, because we weren't hanging out in front of my algebra class. Again, I had to have these identities that I morphed back and forth between. No child should have to do that. That's just way too much. So by the time I came out, it's full-on equity for me.

Chris Riback: It sounds like you not only recognized what you were feeling, but had the internal capability to express it and act on it, and I want to ask you about that.

Zaretta Hammond: It came because I got in a fight with a gym teacher in the seventh grade. I was up for expulsion twice in a San Francisco Unified public school. It was not a pretty sight. This wasn't just me, "Ooh, I'm radicalized and I'm going to..." This was me kicking somebody's butt. And it happened to be, in one case, a teacher. And because, again, she was behaving in a way where she wanted to dominate me, she wanted to make me compliant. And I see this even today. We have a pedagogy of compliance going on. Even in schools that purport to be serving Black and Brown children, we have a lot of progressive White women who are leading schools, who are bringing in more people of color, but when you look at the pedagogy, when you look at the environment, this looks like pedagogy of compliance.

And I recognize this, because that's exactly what was happening. "Zaretta, you're too outspoken." "You're too aggressive." "You're too this." And these were labels coming at me simply because I had an opinion. And frankly, I wasn't having it. I was done. And the only thing that saved me, was I had teachers who came down to that hearing and vouched for my capacity not only as a student, but as a member of the community of learners.

And I learned a couple things. I learned there was a different way to be radical. I had to learn a different, more pro-social way of advocating, because we have too many kids right now who are just done. And not coming back to school after the pandemic. You see article after article. Where are these children? Well, they're telling you how fun school is for them.

Chris Riback: The pedagogy of compliance and your ability to push against that, and your mother's ability to push against that. She didn't just put you, and I guess your siblings, in the local schools I would think most of us just go wherever we live, and we put the kids in that school, and we just take what the system gives us. You had it in you, you went through the experiences that you went through to push back against that. Your mother went through her experiences, had it inside of herself to push back against that. Most of us don't.

Zaretta Hammond: Well, I would simply... I would push back on that statement a little bit.

Chris Riback: Please. Okay, yes.

Zaretta Hammond: Because I don't think that parents of color are going along with it. Just like an underground railroad. Africans may have been in slavery, but that didn't mean they weren't trying something else. Wasn't nobody just going along with the program. Same things with parents of color. Trust me, they are swapping information. How do you get around that, how do you get around that? There is a level of advocacy where 99% aren't just going with it. They are, in some way, trying to subvert the system that would have them simply comply, because they've been traumatized.

Listen, we talk about trauma-informed practices and trauma that children experience in life. A lot of children of color experience that trauma in school: racialized trauma perpetuated by well-meaning educators. 85 to 90% of educators in this country are White. The predominant number are White women. So this idea that the pedagogy of compliance flows from the ways in which we've redlined physically, now we cognitively redline, in the classroom.

We talk about inquiry, and speaking your mind, and having voice and choice. And when Black children do that, somebody says, "You're getting too big for your britches." "You're talking back." So not only do we have cultural mismatches in communication, but now somebody has decided how far you can go in your ability to be the leader of your own learning.

This is not a superficial, "Oh, some parents do some things." This is deep. White supremacy culture is a beast, and it is trying to maintain itself at every effort. People have put billions of dollars behind equity initiatives. And you still go into major cities, major rural areas, and Black and Brown children are still at the bottom. They are still reading the lowest performing. We know reading strengthens the brain and its ability to carry the cognitive load. Why can't we get it right? It ain't brain science. Well, it is brain science, but it's not rocket science.

Chris Riback: What are the key components of culturally responsive pedagogy?

Zaretta Hammond: I think that's a little complicated because one of the things that I think people listen for, even though we say it's practice or pedagogy or whatever, a lot of people are listening for strategies. I just want to say upfront, culturally-responsive teaching, some people call it culturally responsive and sustaining, some people are talking about culturally relevant, these are all variations of the same thing. Just like COVID variants. It's all COVID. But the reality is this is an algorithm. So it is not so much a set of strategies as I could just rattle off. But just like in math, we talk about an algorithm being a set of numbers and processes and procedures and operations coming together synergistically.

And it's actually why I created my Ready for Rigor framework. Helping people understand that all of these things have to work in tandem and they can't just cherry pick one thing out. For example, the Ready for Rigor framework has four main quadrants. Learning partnerships, that's the relational or the social emotional. Then there's community of learners, and that is an extension of the learning partnerships. So not only do teachers and students have a relationship, but student to students have a relationship.

Then we have information processing skills. We haven't even gotten to the good stuff yet, because all of those things lay the groundwork. And then information processing, coaching students into higher levels of cognition. And then the center of that is helping the student with feedback, giving them wise feedback, but also having instructional conversations. Leveraging those learning partnerships. And then the final quadrant is awareness. And this is a matter of, who do you have to be in order to activate, implement, cultivate these things. And a lot of times, again, culturally-responsive teaching just gets relegated to, oh, it's about relationships or it's about motivation or it's about awareness. So now it's interchangeable with anti-racist education.

Chris Riback: I'm really taken by your use of the word "process" because in reading what you've written, that's what I get. It is about bringing together all of the components: who that student is, what the cultural realities and the funds of knowledge that that student brings into the environment. It's about the educators and the instructors having the awareness and dexterity almost, to be able to both in advance, through planning, but then on the fly, as the opportunities arise, integrate what's real and experiential from the student's point of view to what is going on in the classroom to help the teaching, I should say, make sense to the student, to position the student to be in a position to learn.

Zaretta Hammond: Right. And I think the word that I'm picking out of that, that just resonates is dexterity. So it's an adaptability. It's not a matter of, here are just the set of strategies. So if you do these strategies, magically, something will happen. It's that human beings learn in what Vygotsky talks about as social-cultural way. It's a back and forth. So the degree to which I understand who the student is, I understand the context, I understand the content, then I can be adaptive. When the student doesn't get something, in that moment, I can leverage funds of knowledge to help them get to that aha moment and not just reduce it to, "I'm covering my content." My goal is to really help people level up their understanding.

Chris Riback: Zaretta, I do not want to turn this into a political conversation. Is there a concise-ish way that you can then help me understand, given we've just described, why is this such a political hot potato?

Zaretta Hammond: Well, I don't think it's really a political hot potato. I think what happens is, and this is where, because of the lack of developing an anti-racist or a bicultural lens, we need both of those. And we always have. All instruction is culturally responsive. The question is always, to whose cultures? And so what I see out there, kind of the political football you're talking about being tossed about is a misunderstanding of CRT as an acronym. Some people are using CRT around critical race theory. Other people are using CRT as the acronym around culturally responsive. Those two things are not interchangeable.

And this is where we all as educators have to level up our understanding because once we understand critical race theory, and a lot of people talk about it as crit theory, versus CRT, because they are two very different. And when we understand that critical race theory really just came out of the legal arena as a way to help people understand our racial caste system. So it really is a way to help people understand the social-political context that actually produces these results.

A system is designed to produce the results that you see. If you don't like those results, you're going to have to change the system. So if you can't actually name the parts that are not working and the parts that are working, then you can't change it. So this seems right now to be a really interesting tension. People want equity, it's in every school district statement, but at the same time, people are wanting to keep a moat, if you will, around our racial history. And that's all critical race theory is. It's not saying White people are bad. It's not having some fire and brimstone, you're racist. This is people imagining things. And it's because they've not been in those conversations.

And at the same time they're saying and implementing in their teacher professional learning standards, you need to be more culturally responsive. You have to have an anti-racist and a bicultural lens. Meaning, anti-racist is what we're saying no to, but you also have to know what you're saying yes to. Just saying no to something, doesn't tell you what you should be saying yes to. And that is the difference. This is a great opportunity and an inflection point around, are educators really going to educate themselves? This is the awareness quadrant. This is not just talking about your own implicit bias. That's not even it. It's the looking outward. Do you understand the system you're actually in?

Chris Riback: And that is so evident in what you write. And that's one of the challenges, I think. In fact, as an outsider, I might argue that that appears to be one of the biggest obstacles is it requires work. It requires effort on the part of professionals who have been taught a certain way, have been doing things a certain way, have lived a certain life, have challenged their own thoughts and ideas to the whatever extent, we all do it.

Zaretta Hammond: Well, and here's the reality. I totally agree with everything you just said. And that's what it means to live in a multi-racial, multi-lingual, multi-ethnic society. And it's not just on the backs and it's the burden of people of color. We all share this history. And if we are going to change it, if we truly want to change it, then these are the things that need to happen. Dr. Phil used to say, you can't change which you don't acknowledge. I can't even believe I'm quoting Dr. Phil right now.

Chris Riback: I took you as a Dr. Phil aficionado. I expected you to drop a little Dr. Phil.

Zaretta Hammond: A little nugget of wisdom in there. But here's the thing about it, I think we make it scarier than it is. And we don't have any emotional stamina to talk about things that feel like we're going to be labeled racist if we make a mistake or stumble. When I'm working with educators I say, it's just like dancing. When you learn a new dance, you've seen it out, it's on TikTok or wherever it is you see the new dances, and you're like, "Oh, that's kind of cool. I want to do that."

Well, we don't just go out to the wedding reception or out to the club or wherever you do your dancing and just do the dance. We go into our bedroom. We actually look in the mirror. We actually practice saying it, to actually get some muscle memory. Then we take it to a safe space. To the backyard barbecue and the music is on. Either friends are going to say, "Mmmh, look at you, or they're going to say, mmh, look at you."

You have to practice. And what I find is white educators don't use their leisure time to practice. What they end up doing is thinking it's going to come in a PD. We do not have enough time for the kind of social-emotional capacity building and stamina that we need to actually move through those challenging emotions. Leaders aren't skilled and holding space for people to have their emotions and come out on the other side, knowing that you're not going to be deemed racist. How do you make mistakes and move forward?

This is not where our leaders are getting their training, unfortunately. So if you don't have people who can create those spaces, hold that space, if you don't have people are doing their own work on their own leisure time, coming prepared to do it in a professional setting, then that's pretty much a recipe for: you spend all your money you want on so-called equity conferences and PD sessions and get the best consultants to come in, it's not going to work, because people have not done the social emotional work to actually move past that sensitivity of talking about things that are really highly charged in our society.

Chris Riback: To make progress, you've got to do the work. You've got to put in the work. I should note as well, you've identified the reason why I don't have my own TikTok channel.

Zaretta Hammond: Me, too. Nobody wants to see that.

Chris Riback: I understand. Certainly not mine. What is liberatory education?

Zaretta Hammond: It's very interesting because again, people have notions of, oh, we're talking something radical or things like that, but I'm really not. What I'm talking about is this notion that Paulo Freire, author of "Pedagogy of the Oppressed," he talks about idea that we make the road by walking it. It's in the title of the book. But he says, liberatory education is when we have created the circumstances for children to come into their full becoming. Dewey says something similar. John Dewey, progressive public educator, says our job in many ways is to give the student the opportunity to reach his full potential so that he has command of all his capacities. That's what's liberatory.

One of the things that I try to help educators understand, that the student is the center of change. We have tendency to keep looking at curriculum. We want to look at our learning targets and standards, and we have all this talk, but we forget the student. And the reality is, only the learner learns. So if we can't coach the student into doing new things, not just out of compliance, but out of intellectual curiosity, out of a sense of desire to master and to move forward or to go deeper. Those are the things that we know, and when we think about inequity by design, public schools were set up to sort along racial lines. I'm not making that up. I'm not accusing anyone. That's just what was true. That is evidenced in Jim Crow and segregation, all the landmark work we had to do around Brown v. Board. And even now we're still having those legal battles. It's really helping the child have that real capacity to learn how to learn. You can give them a library card and they can go learn anything they want. That is true to me, liberatory education.

Chris Riback: Yes. It builds, I would think, the ability to be a lifelong learner, because it's about growing those capabilities to be able to do much of that work oneself. I had a follow-up thought to the point that you were making before about the work and about the teachers. I'm wondering if there is anything slightly directive you might be able to offer? If I were a White, progressive female educator and granted not all White, progressive female educators are cut from the exact same cloth, obviously, what would you urge me to do then to become racially literate? If I wanted to do that reflection, to do that work, what would you advise to end the cognitive reading of Black and Brown children, to quote you?

Zaretta Hammond: I think the idea of building racial literacy is really important. People do a lot of inside work, meaning this is how I feel about it. This is how I was raised. These are my cultural reference points, and that's really important work. I think the next piece of work to do, even you can do it to begin with, because you have to map these two things, because they are like GPS where you currently are, you can only triangulate against these other two points. And one point being you've done internal work around your mental models and racial attitudes, but then there's the racial literacy. Do you understand how the racial caste system in America works?

It's not about having an opinion of it, just do you know how it works? Just like, how does electricity work? How do currents work? When people go to medical school, this is how the circulatory system works. There's not a judgment on it. It's just, it's working a particular way. So I typically will do, when I'm bringing a group of folks together, we do a 21-day racial literacy challenge. And this is actually what we do. So we break it into three parts. So I could offer here, like one of those parts is, do you understand the racial history of your current community or environment?

For example, a lot of people didn't know about Tulsa. A lot of people in Tulsa didn't know about Tulsa. So a challenge to people would be, okay, what's your Tulsa? What covenants were there before? Because particularly with progressive educators, one of the things that I find is they are still somehow shocked that this is happening. I'm like, I'm not sure what country you've been living in, but there should be no shock. The shock is you must've assumed it wasn't happening.

And even here in California, where I currently live, people are like, "Oh my goodness, how could that happen here?" Like, what the hell are you talking about? This is a country. We are a country born of apartheid. That's not a political position. That was one the founding fathers chose to make. Our constitution said three-fifths of a person. This is not people of color making this up. So if you don't educate yourself about that, you can't know all the things. So what I say is one of the three things is just map your local context. You don't have to go out and tell other people about it. And I'm not asking people to do that.

But if you are not aware, then you don't see how, "Oh, I understand how we came to this point because I see the historical through line. I see the antecedents to this policy." And here's the thing, last thing I'll say about this, they often look non-racialized. So this is that idea of cognitive red lining. We know what physical housing red lining is. In schools, we have cognitive red lining, which on its surface, doesn't look racialized. Nobody says we're going to put all the black people up here. We said that in America at one time. Now it's not cool to say that, so we find other ways to get it done. New York, they are gifted and talented. A lot of people now are talking about charter schools as pseudo White academies.

Chris Riback: It makes me think of an experience of yours that you wrote about, which is, the teachers said to you that in teaching online during COVID that the big challenge for them, the real challenge for them was they just couldn't get the students to keep their cameras on.

Zaretta Hammond: It's a mental model that I see a lot. So what was happening is they were not understanding, despite their real passion to be better at implementing culturally-responsive practices and being a culturally-responsive educator, what they were not aware of is their mental model around the pedagogy of compliance. This is what I term it. Meaning, the more you have a class made up of poor students, low-income students, Black and Brown students who are underperforming, the more that there is a compliance to control the students. And then what you get is points taken away or points given, or-

Chris Riback: Or go to the principal or be cut out or lose additional ... I mean, there's-

Zaretta Hammond: These are all punitive. Nobody leans in and gets excited about learning, because I'm going to lose a point. All you're doing is getting compliance. And so what we understand from the science of learning, and this is why I think the science of learning is so important for all educators who are supposed to be in the business of growing brains. So it's ironic that most don't know anything about the science of learning, but they have to, if they're going be a culturally-responsive educator, because the science of learning says, you have to know how to stimulate intellectual curiosity.

And that was our conversation. And I asked them, how are you stimulating intellectual curiosity? Because the child brain, when that is activated, those chemicals make them want to turn that camera on. What'd you tell him about? What do you have? I want to see that. The child almost cannot control it. You can see it in toddlers. You can see in young children who are just compelled. Even folks trying to lure children from their parents, like here's a puppy, come and see that. The curiosity of a child is so fantastically high, that it is ironic that we don't know how to leverage that. Go ahead.

Chris Riback: Curiosity is really the secret ingredient for you, isn't it? I take it it's almost like, that's the superpower.

Zaretta Hammond: No, I think information processing is. But when you understand that the information processing cycle starts, you prime that pump with attention and intellectual curiosity. I call it ignite. It's like lighting a match. Now it's not enough. Curiosity does not tell you how to process information. It gets you on the on-ramp. It wakes your brain up to say, "Oh, what's going on here?" And now you can move it to the working memory. But this is my point, it's an algorithm. So what we can't do is like, "Oh, I just need to make it curious." Kids are having fun. Kids are talking and moving, but that doesn't always equate to learning. So we can't reduce it to, "Oh, that's the thing." There is no thing. It is an algorithm.

Chris Riback: Is it possible there's tension for an instructor between driving curiosity and the potential for disorder or surprise or misdirection that curiosity can inspire because curiosity inspires wonder versus that institutional systematic "need" or desire for compliance? That I could almost feel a tension between those two. Is that-

Zaretta Hammond: I don't think so. I think when people are educating in the way that Dewey and Freire talked about, you actually set this up. For example, there are other systems of education out there. Maria Montessori understood it. She called this the absorbent mind. When you look in a Montessori classroom, it is called a prepared environment. And the idea that the teacher does not have to exert control and compliance is because the teacher has front-loaded learning opportunities.
So that the way that those teachers are trained is when you prepare the environment, no matter what the child bumps into, that learning cycle is going to actually start. Then it's channeled into what they call a three-point lesson. So the child has great autonomy, but it's not chaotic. It's not just go learn anything. It is now funneled through, here we're going to actually mentor you, coach you into this. So even beginning at 3 years old, children learn this, that I can be curious. I can be free. And it does not spark any sense of, oh, I've got to control this because disorder is coming.

One of the things that I talk about in the Ready for Rigor framework is, teachers have to give students room to chew, for productive struggle. Now, if he's not prepared for that, if he's not coached students into that, for now this teacher, it feels chaotic. It feels messy, but learning is always messy. If you look at Project Zero, the maker education movement, maker-centered education, this is exactly what studio habits are. Painters, artists, it's messy. There's noise. It doesn't mean anything's coming unhinged. But if the teacher doesn't understand that, and this is what we're not training teachers to do. To create the environment for students to engage in productive struggle. We only reserve that as a reward for those in honors and AP and gifted and talented. Guess who's in those classes?

Chris Riback: First of all, the phrase "productive struggle" is such a powerful phrase. I can think about and understand how that applies to so much. What have any of us done that didn't require some type of productive struggle? I mean, physically hiking to the top of the mountain that we tried to. I mean, there is productive struggle in every component. I want to follow up on some of the liberatory education points that you were making. Can you describe, with whatever tangibility you can, what does it take for students to shift from dependent to independent learning?

Zaretta Hammond: Well, here's the thing, we don't put that on the student, we put that on the teacher. We're breeding dependent learners. All students start out, kindergarten, first grade, as dependent learners, just as all humans start out. It's dependent.

Chris Riback: And end as dependent frequently, but it's in between.

Zaretta Hammond: But here's the thing, there's a developmental trajectory we're on. And equity by design has put a deliberate barrier. So there's arested cognitive development. So in essence, through a pedagogy of compliance, we are breeding dependent learners, and we see them, the kids that need us to come over there, they don't know how to move forward unless we do it. So our response is to over scaffold.
And then we're frustrated and mad at the students because we want them to do something different. We don't want to be the over scaffolders. We want to be the choice and voice and autonomous learning and all this good stuff. But what we cannot do is we can't be okay as educators with that productive struggle. So for dependent learners, they have to actually build their cognitive muscle. Be able to carry more of a cognitive load. That comes through productive struggle. Just like you were saying, hiking. So imagine the first time you take that hike. It's got a nice deep incline. You're going to the top of the mountain. There's a little huffing and puffing. There might be a little stopping and ends on these.

Chris Riback: I feel that you've seen video of me. Go ahead.

Zaretta Hammond: But we get to the top, and then we like, woo-hoo! Now, imagine we did that every other day after we have recovered, over the course of six weeks. Then what's going to happen is we're going to get to the top of that mountain or top of that hill or end of that hike with less effort. That's how cognition is. So when we say, have the kids carry more of the cognitive load, it's not just me saying here, I'm going to hand you a 50 pound weight. Now just start lifting that. And you've never been in the gym. Just like aerobic conditioning, just like muscular strength training, we start with a little, we increase over time. We release so that you can carry more of it. Someone's spotting you. You get your training wheels on. And eventually that's the path toward, you are over time able to carry more of it, of that cognitive load.
If I want students to change, then the question becomes, can I be the personal trainer of their cognitive development? What does that mean? And that ain't compliance. So now teachers have to learn a whole new set of skills. Where am I over scaffolding? You cannot reduce the scaffold until you increase their capacity. That's back to the algorithm.

So we keep looking at the student and want the student to do better when we want to move them forward faster, but acceleration means we have to be different as educators. Think of it as, you want to increase your health and wellness, you go to a personal trainer and the personal trainer does your assessments, where are you? And then out of their knowledge, they put together a program that's going to coach you and lead you. And then the assumption is you're going to do some practicing on your own. You're going to shift your lifestyle. The person doesn't just have you come in and say, hey, change this, change this, change this. You knew that when you came in. I didn't write you that big fat check for you to tell me what I needed to do. I know that.

Chris Riback: Yes. I knew I was eating badly. I knew I wasn't exercising enough. Yes.

Zaretta Hammond: Exactly. The same thing with students. Students, the older they get, they know they're behind. So now we have a social-emotional component that is about their own self-efficacy. Competence precedes confidence. And we keep wanting this to be a growth mindset kind of thing. But if you're not coaching the student to carry more of that load, where they start to see pretty quickly their competence slowly increasing, then there's no hope for you just saying, be an independent learner. It's not magic. This ain't Harry Potter's wizarding world.

Chris Riback: That was Part One of my conversation with Zaretta Hammond. Part Two will cover "learning loss," why Dopamine is the secret ingredient to learning, and what exactly an intellectually safe space should look and feel like? To learn more about how to transform 21st century education using 21st century science, go to turnaroundusa.org. I'm Chris Riback, I'll talk with you soon.

More from Turnaround on this topic:

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Center for Whole-Child Education Center for Whole-Child Education

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The 180 Podcast: Zaretta Hammond: What is Culturally-Responsive Teaching? - Center for Whole-Child Education (Turnaround for Children)

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On this episode of The 180 Podcast, we sit down with Zaretta Hammond, author of "Culturally Responsive Teaching and the Brain."

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Never Too Young | Sesame Street in Communities - Sesame Street in Communities

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Never Too Young | Sesame Street in Communities - Sesame Street in Communities

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By Traci Baxley, Ph.D.

Research shows that children form race-related ideas long before they're ready to talk about race and racism... awareness of race begins as early as infancy! ¹ No matter their age, all children collect clues from their experiences to make sense of the world, so early, honest, and age-appropriate conversations really matter. Here's an age-by-age look at how children's understanding develops-and why it's never too early to address racism.

Infants show a preference for the faces of people from their own racial group as early as six months. Studies show that babies gaze longer and show happy expressions more frequently with people who look like them. Start early by introducing children to people who don't look like them, and let children see pictures of people with a variety of skin tones and facial features.

Toddlers use social cues such as body language and facial expressions to make sense of their world. They watch the way adults respond to differences in people, and mimic our attitudes and racial biases without us even realizing it. Research shows that as young as three, toddlers associate some racial groups with negative traits, and they use these associations to develop their own understanding about the world around them. When your children are toddlers, you can be aware of your own biases and reactions to people who skin color is different from yours, and continue to share books, videos, and music that highlight and celebrate differences.

Preschoolers are becoming even more observant of differences such as skin color and hair texture, and noticing more and more how other are the same and different from them. Not only do they compare and group people by race, but research shows some children also begin to show a "pro-White" bias-they may begin to include or exclude playmates on the basis of race. Even non-White children may associate White with wealth, power, or beauty. (When my children were this age, I'd make sure to say things like, "Isn't it amazing how we're all so different!")

Kindergartners and first graders are beginning to notice that race is often a taboo topic. At this age, children may continue to include and exclude peers based on race. They are more aware of disturbing news, and they often ask questions about it, so it's a great opportunity to have meaningful conversations about race and racism. It's not uncommon for a child to say that someone who looks different from them looks "weird." (Before getting into more conversation, you can ask questions like "What makes you say that?" or "Why do you think so?" so I better understand where these thoughts came from.)

As soon as children can ask questions, support their natural curiosity by answering them, even the most difficult ones (and it's okay to say you want to think about their question for a while). Let them know that it's okay to notice skin color and to talk about race. The idea is to make differences normal... and good!

¹Goodman, M. E. (1952). Race awareness in young children; https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2566511/

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Never Too Young | Sesame Street in Communities

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By Traci Baxley, Ph.D. Research shows that children form race-related ideas long before they're ready to talk about race and racism... awareness of race begins as early as infancy! 1 No matter their age, all children collect clues from their experiences to make sense of the world, so early, honest, and age-appropriate conversations really matter.

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How racism and white supremacy fueled a Black-Asian divide in America - Vox

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How racism and white supremacy fueled a Black-Asian divide in America - Vox

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Against the backdrop of anti-racism protests last summer, racist violence was surging in Chinatowns and Asian American communities across the country.

In July, an 89-year-old Chinese woman was set on fire while walking on the streetafter being slapped in the face in Brooklyn, New York. The two assailants, she said, didn't say a word before attacking her. She scrambled to put out the fire, but it left a large burn mark on the back of her pink blouse - a grisly reminder of the attack.

It was not an isolated incident. Between March 19 and December 31, 2020, there were more than 2,808 "firsthand accounts of anti-Asian hate," according to a report by Stop AAPI Hate, an organization that has been tracking reports on anti-Asian violence - a 150 percent rise since 2019.From being barred from establishments to being spat or coughed on, Asian Americans have reported physical and verbal harassment throughout the pandemic, as they've been used as a xenophobic scapegoat for the spread of a virus that originated in China. According to one survey conducted last April, 32 percent of Americans have "witnessed someone blaming Asian people" for Covid-19, and 60 percent of Asian Americans have witnessed this behavior.

This year, the attacks have seemed to take a more gruesome and visible turn: A 61-year-old Filipino man was slashed in the face as he rode the subway in New York; a 64-year-old Vietnamese woman was robbed in a parking lot in San Jose ahead of Lunar New Year; and an 84-year-old Thai man was shoved to the ground in San Francisco, which resulted in his death.

These attacks may have been spurred by the coronavirus pandemic and then-President Donald Trump repeatedly using racist terms for the virus, but anti-Asian sentiment in the United States is not new - just look to the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, which banned Chinese immigrants from becoming US citizens, and President Franklin Roosevelt's executive order in 1942 that put Japanese Americans into internment camps.

"When the pandemic emerged and the president began calling the virus 'kung flu' or 'China virus,' those who were aware of how race operates knew that we were about to experience a surge of racism that we haven't seen in a while," said Pastor Raymond Chang, founder and president of the Asian American Christian Collaborative, a faith-based group advocating for Asian American communities while also leading Black and Asian solidarity. "Racism against Asian Americans has always been a part of the fabric of our society. It just depends on whether it's overt and violent, or subtle and kind of flies under the radar."

What also isn't new in times of anti-Asian sentiment is the focus on relationships between Black and Asian communities. Many of the attacks that have gained widespread attention have featured Black assailants, and have threatened to inflame tensions between Asian Americans andBlack Americans. While Vox found no evidence that Black Americans are predominantly responsible for this rise in attacks, or that they areparticularly hostile to Asian Americans relative to the rest of the population, the narrative of Black-Asian hostility is rooted in immigration and economic policies that have historically pitted these communities against one another.

In America, "what we need to realize is that there's this timeless structure, in which there's always one group on top and another at the bottom," Scott Kurashige, professor and chair of comparative race and ethnic studies at Texas Christian University, told Vox. "Though there certainly is an unchanged structure in the sense that this country has had a white supremacist ruling class structure since the beginning, it's not the same techniques of governance or the same ideology, and certainly not the same people."

Ultimately, there is a failure to remember what got America to this place of racial hierarchies and lingering Black-Asian tensions: white supremacy. White supremacy is what created segregation, policing, and scarcity of resources in low-income neighborhoods, as well as the creation of the "model minority" myth - all of which has driven a wedge between Black and Asian communities. In fact, it is white Christian nationalism, more than any other ideology, that has shaped xenophobic and racist views around Covid-19, according to a recent study. And for Black and Asian American communities to move forward, it is important to remember the root cause and fight together against it.

There is already a long history of Black-Asian solidarity against oppression and structural racism, which has been obscured by these recent fissures. In the late 1960s, for instance, Black and Asian activists led the Third World Liberation Front movement to establish race and ethnic studies in college and university curriculums in California. And today, members of both communities are showing up for each other in demonstrations for Black lives and against anti-Asian violence.

"This is a moment for us to really tell that history to share that not only have Asians and other immigrants and people of color been blamed and scapegoated, but that there's also a history of our community, mobilizing, and demanding change and action - that we've stood in solidarity together with other communities," said Cynthia Choi, co-founder of Stop AAPI Hate.

How policy created the conditions for Black-Asian tensions

The models we have for understanding and interpreting racism are often oversimplified and lead to frustration and resentment.

A simple model of racism that casts people as either perpetrators or victims of racism is divorced from the reality that individuals have dozens of identities outside of just their race. The fact is that Black Americans are native-born Americans, and, like all native-born people, they are susceptible to xenophobic and nationalistic sentiments that can place blame on an "other" - in this case, Asian Americans, who can be seen as "forever foreigners" even if they, too, are native-born.

While Black Americans (who are overwhelmingly Democratic) often have more liberal views on immigration reform, there is also existing research that indicates that Black people may feel economic competition with new immigrant communities that can manifest as broad anti-immigrant sentiment and racism.

"It's not that Asian-Black tensions or racial hierarchies don't exist today but that there is a failure to remember what got America to this place: white supremacy"

Scholars also highlight that a lot of this competition is due to a racial hierarchy that has placed Black Americans at the bottom. When newcomers enter the country, they encounter a system that reserves the best for wealthy, white Americans, engendering resentment and zero-sum thinking among everyone else for whatever is left.

The conflict between Korean Americans and Black Americans is one of the most visible examples of this phenomenon.

In 1965, the United States ended the quota-based system of immigration and began to push for high-skilled labor to enter the country. One group that was able to enter the country were Korean Americans who were hyper-selected - that is, they had much higher socioeconomic and educational attainment relative not only to their country of origin but also to the native-born US population.

Yến Lê Espiritu, a professor of ethnic studies who specializes in Asian American studies at the University of California San Diego, explained how this highly educated population came to the United States and was often unable to replicate the social status that they enjoyed in their home country due to racial discrimination and other barriers. Instead, they found employment as small-business owners, opening up shops in predominantly Black communities.

"Many of these immigrants didn't intend to be small businessmen. The structural context is that Korean immigrants couldn't regain the employment and educational status they once held," Espiritu told Vox. Their proximity to Black people was because they were only able to start businesses in "economically disadvantaged areas." This, coupled with the fact that anti-Black racism in financing meant Black people often couldn't start their own businesses, sparked bitterness on both sides.

Espiritu added that an additional barrier was that both groups had already been primed to mistrust each other. As Koreans consumed American media, they internalized the racist depictions of Black Americans as violent, uneducated, and poor - similarly, Black Americans had watched (with the rest of America) as Koreans were depicted as untrustworthy during the Korean War.

Edward T. Chang, a professor of ethnic studies at the University of California Riverside, explained the "middleman minority" theory, which helps further explain the tensions that arose at these Korean-owned businesses.

"'Middleman minority' is a term derived from the historical experiences of Jews in Europe and Chinese in Southeast Asia and Asian Indians in Africa," Chang told Vox. Middlemen minorities exist between dominant and subordinate groups in society and often hold professions heavily concentrated in the retail and service industries like grocery markets and liquor stores, he explained.

These groups often have daily contact with one another in a way that white Americans often do not due to segregated neighborhoods, shopping centers, and schools. Between the racist stereotypes both groups have internalized and the linguistic and cultural barriers separating them, it's little surprise the continual interactions could lead to conflict.

In America's collective memory, the most notable such collision occurred during the 1992 Los Angeles riots sparked by the acquittal of four white LAPD officers after they were videotaped beating Rodney King, a Black man. Over the following week, more than 50 people were killed and 1,000 were injured in the uprising that showcased not only anger at the verdict but also longstanding resentments between Black and Korean communities in the LA area. According to CNN, roughly half a billion dollars' worth of damage was borne by Korean-owned businesses.

Many believe the 1992 riots are emblematic of the relations between Black Americans and Asian Americans despite being the product of a specific time and place. After the riots, churches and community organizers worked to educate the two communities on their shared histories of oppression - many Korean business owners, for example, were unaware of the violence and discrimination Black people have faced in America.

Today, more than nine in 10 Korean Americans believe there is at least some discrimination against Black people, according to a survey by Asian Americans Advancing Justice. Meanwhile, 70 percent of Korean Americans agree that the government should do more to protect the civil rights of Black Americans.

White supremacy is at the crux of these tensions, including the model minority myth

According to scholars and activists who have experienced it firsthand, Black-Asian tensions have obscured America's root problem: white supremacy.

"Racism and white supremacy have created longstanding rifts between communities of color," Pastor Chang said. "The way the system works, the rhetoric around Black and Asian tensions will be used to discount the white supremacy that actually drives these tensions."

To be white is to sit atop America's ruling class - and since darker skin has historically been deemed undesirable and equated with being poor under Western and Eurocentric views, anyone who is not white falls at the bottom of this hierarchy. In this dominant Black-white paradigm, Asian immigrants and Asian Americans have had to find a way to fit in, rendering them at risk of invisibility. Those who could assimilate into the dominant framework often did, buying into the notions of racial hierarchies and white supremacy - including internalizing racism against their own communities.

But not all Asians are offered this opportunity: The categorization of Asian Americans encompasses roughly 40 ethnicities and a vast range of economic statuses, religions, regions, and cultures. While it's true that Asian Americans are the wealthiest minority group in the country, they also have the widest income gap of any racial group. Myanmarese Americans, for example, have a far higher poverty rate than other Asian groups, particularly Japanese Americans. A huge reason for this divide is due to the disparity between Asian immigrants who arrived in the US with skill-based visas and those who arrived as refugees.

"Our history is a story of seeking to belong but finding that our choices were often either erasure or exclusion or assimilation," Pastor Chang said. "We ultimately chose to try to fight erasure in the form of assimilation to the degree that made us give up a lot of our cultural heritage. When it benefited the broader white society, they didn't punish Asians as much, but when Asians are perceived as a threat, they either incarcerated or excluded us altogether."

This rush to assimilation is what has perpetuated the model minority myth and helped further racial tensions. The model minority myth took root around the time Japanese Americans were put in internment camps in World War II. Asianswere scared of returning or being put into camps, so they remained reticent and wereseen as hard workers who, as Choi puts it, "have been able to pull themselves up by the bootstraps or overcome barriers." This perpetuated the belief that nonwhite Americans can succeed and overcome racism in the US, without acknowledging the specific historical struggles of Black and Latino Americans and the role of skin color in creating a caste system meant to stoke interracial conflicts.

"The model minority stereotype really isn't meant to define Asian Americans. Rather, it's meant to define African Americans as deficient and inferior to white people by using Asian Americans as a proxy or a pawn to serve that purpose," Kurashige told Vox. "It was never an accurate portrayal of Asian Americans, but actually consciously meant to distort and stereotype Asian Americans."

The recent rise in anti-Asian attacks has reflected the anti-Asian sentiment that has always coursed throughAmerica

For example, there are other ethnicities that meet the surface criteria of a so-called model minority but are unlikely to be seen that way. According to researchers at Columbia University and UC Irvine, nearly two-thirds of Nigerian immigrants are college-educated - far exceeding the US mean at 28 percent. Like Koreans, Nigerians were defined by hyper-selected migration, but unlike Koreans, they were racialized as Black in the US context. Nigerians are not held up as a "model," yet more evidence that the minority myth was not about the outcomes of a specific group but a way to reemphasize the existing racial caste structure and absolve the government of removing barriers to success for Black people.

The model minority myth is to Asians what the "Black criminality" myth is to Black communities. Any image of Black people acting inherently violent toward Asian Americans or other groups of color feeds into the systemic tropes that have long painted Black people as criminals, which has been perpetuated by both American media and Asian media platforms like WeChat and Weibo. Last summer, Asian news media furthered the "Black criminality" image during the protests for racial justice, creating a fearmongering framework around incidents of looting and violence, rather than focusing on the largely peaceful protests.

In recent months, videos circulated in social media showing elderly Asians getting shoved and attacked, with a few of the attacks perpetrated by Black assailants, and the news and social media were quick to put the spotlight on historically complicated tensions between Black and Asian communities. Again, it's not that these fissures don't exist after decades of white supremacy-inflected policy - it's just that the emerging narrative has too easily attributed the violence to these tensions when there are other factors in play. For example, anti-Asian (and anti-China) sentiment is on the rise globally - from Australia to Europe to Canada, people are registering increasing hostility toward China and people who they think are Chinese. Not to mention in America, it is white Christian nationalists who are the most likely to say that it isn't racist to call Covid-19 "the Chinese virus."

Ultimately, the recent rise in anti-Asian attacks has not only reflected the anti-Asian sentiment that has always coursed throughAmerica, but also underscores how Asian Americans' perceived model minority status has kept that racism out of the public consciousness for so long.So when America needs an answer to why this violence is happening - the same way it was quick to blame Asians for the pandemic - the tendency is to scapegoat Black people, or to claim that these incidents aren't racially motivated.

Moving forward through solidarity

As author and activist Helen Zia said, Asian Americans are not "missing in action"; they are " missing in history." And because of this invisibility, Asian Americans are often unaware of their own communities' history of activism and solidarity with Black communities and other communities of color.

While the decades-long acculturation into a predominantly white society will take a lot of work to undo, the intergenerational gap between Asian immigrants who have absorbed anti-Black sentiment and younger US-bornAsians who are much more willing to speak out against injustice will play a major role in this shifting narrative. And it starts with looking at the moments of solidarity that have come before.

In his book The Shifting Grounds of Race: Black and Japanese Americans In the Making of Multiethnic Los Angeles, Kurashige examines the coexistence of Black and Japanese Americans in Los Angeles, before, during, and after World War II,going back to the creation of the model minority myth.

While Japanese Americans were incarcerated in camps, Black folks from the Jim Crow South migrated West to Los Angeles and settled in spaces that were previously occupied by Japanese Americans. After being released from internment camps, Japanese Americans found themselves having to integrate with their Black counterparts. Fearing being put back into camps, they tried to prove themselves worthy of earning back their constitutional rights by working hard. As policing and white fearmongering intensified in these communities, Japanese Americans were further invoked as a "model minority" for being able to rise up economically after their internment.

But that status didn't necessarily translate into divides between Japanese American and Black communities themselves. Kurashige cites stories of an African American elder who delivered care packages and letters to his Japanese friends when they were first put into temporary assembly centers before they were interned, and another story of a Black woman who sent high school yearbook copies to her Japanese American classmates who had been put in camps. When politicians and media stoked fears of "race riots" upon Japanese Americans being released from internment, one Black activist told the media, "I have nothing against the return of the Japanese."

"A friend who was a waitress at this cherished, now demolished, bowling alley in Crenshaw in Los Angeles said she would serve udon noodles to African American customers who were having lunch with their Japanese American friends eating grits," Kurashige said. "You can find solidarity moments like this all over the place when we shift the framework. We can still be concerned about racism and white supremacy, but we don't have to center whiteness and white ideologies all the time."

Movements of solidarity between both communities are even more widespread and out in the opentoday. Like many Americans this summer, Asian Americans ralliedaround Black Lives Matter protests and vowed to interrogate anti-Blackness within their communities. "I'm tired of the Asian community being quiet or missing in action when it's time to side with our Black brothers and sisters," one Asian American activist who joined the Black Lives Matter protests in Austin, Texas, told Vox last June. And now Black activists have joined the fight at recent rallies in New York and California, calling attention to the resurgence of anti-Asian violence. Heartwarming videos circulated on social media showing Black people chanting things like, "We are on these streets fighting for Asian lives."

Healing is happening at the community level, too. Last May, Pastor Chang led an effort to bring Black and Asian communities together by hosting a three-part panel series titled " Interconnected," in which they discussed racial biases and the deep-rooted history of Black and Asian American conflicts. And in the aftermath of the police killing of George Floyd, Ray brought together two churches a mile apart from each other - an African American church and an Asian American church - to lead a historic solidarity march for Black lives in Chicago.

"If you take a holistic look at our history, I truly believe that Asian Americans have more in common with the African American community than with the white community in America," Pastor Chang said. "The fact that many people don't know that shows how historically malnourished we are and how fragmented our understanding of history is."

In addition to understanding this history, Alicia Garza, co-founder of Black Lives Matter and principal of Black Futures Lab, said it's important to continue fostering these interracial relationships. Without these interracial relations and solidarity movements, she said, white nationalist groups will end up benefiting if Black and Asian communities are seen at conflict with each other instead of addressing the overall problem of systemic racism and white supremacy head on.

"We need to make sure that we're not falling into the wedges and the traps that get set for us," Garza said. "There is a long history of solidarity in Black communities and Asian communities - and those relationships are needed more than ever."

In this moment of racial reckoning, Garza, Pastor Chang, Choi, and others say it's imperative to have difficult and uncomfortable yet meaningful conversations across all racial groups to understand one another's collective struggles.

"We have to enter into the stories of other people and understand how their communities have been shaped and formed, and why they are the way they are," Pastor Chang said. "That comes through learning, unlearning and relearning, because there's a lot of misconception and misunderstanding around how we actually got to where we are today."

Ultimately, the pandemic has exposed the cracks in America's society, bringing forth the layers of systemic racism and legacies of injustice that many Americans have chosen not to pay attention to until now. And it's not only up to Black and Asian American communities to do the work of building solidarity - it's the responsibility of all Americans to understand the role that white supremacy has played in creating these rifts that are exploited again and again.

"The crisis for me is not that there's this intractable clash of cultures between Black and Asian Americans," Kurashige said. "The crisis is systemic: It is Covid-19, the persistence of white nationalism, police brutality, and these really anti-human discourses and practices that are at the center of so much of what's wrong in our country's history."

"We need dramatic change," he added. "Radical solutions never come from the top down. They start off with groups at the grassroots level breaking through the status quo."

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The history of tensions - and solidarity - between Black and Asian American communities, explained

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After a recent surge in anti-Asian attacks, the narrative quickly turned to hostilities between Black and Asian American communities. But that's too convenient of a scapegoat.

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Is Class Participation Too Arbitrary to Grade Fairly? | Edutopia

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Is Class Participation Too Arbitrary to Grade Fairly? | Edutopia

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When participation is graded, Lang says it can become "subject to every kind of bias imaginable." This might include unconscious bias based on identity, or "looking more favorably on a student whose comments or demeanor remind me a little of myself-or unfavorably on a student who reminds me of someone I dislike." And even when teachers are "fair-minded graders of class participation," he notes, there are still difficult questions to consider such as: "Are all comments equal? What counts as a comment worthy of a good grade? How am I tracking the quality of the comments, as opposed to the sheer quantity?"

There's deep value when students participate in classroom discussions, including opportunities to develop and articulate thinking, deliver and receive feedback, and hone speaking and listening skills. And while many K-12 schools and districts require participation grading, and some educators argue that it's a motivator that keeps kids focused and engaged, Lang says he quit grading student participation in order to "help students find their lost voices, empower those who feel deprived of agency in other parts of their lives, and prevent discussion from being dominated by students who talk over their peers and crowd out other voices."

Creating incentives for students to participate once grades have been removed from the equation requires some reframing. To encourage contributions, Lang nurtures an important feedback loop in his classroom, noting for example that "invitations [to students to participate] are premised on the fact that their comments matter. We can all learn from what they have to offer to the discussion." He reinforces this mindset by "expressing my gratitude for participation on a regular basis, both in class and outside of it."

Here are a few strategies from Lang and from our Edutopia archives designed to encourage more inclusive, low-stakes (or no stakes) class participation.

Setting up Low-Stakes, Relaxed Discussions

At the beginning of the school year, Lang sets the parameters for participation, explaining that though it's not graded, participation is not "some optional extra." Participating, he impresses on students, "is as essential to the course as writing the assigned papers and taking the final exam. You can't be a full member of our community without participating in class."

And while he does plan for classwide discussions, Lang also intentionally sets up a variety of other opportunities for students to speak in low-stakes, relaxed situations. "Students in my courses will be speaking with one another in pairs or small groups as they complete some assigned task," he writes. "In a literature course, I might ask them to annotate a certain poem in groups; in a writing class, I might ask pairs of students to identify the three most effective qualities of a piece of writing."

Throughout the semester, students receive multiple opportunities to speak, express their opinions, and work through differences in thinking with classmates-but in informal setups where even the most reticent speaker may participate. "We all know-or have been-students who are made anxious at the thought of class participation, or who have learning challenges or disabilities that prevent them from engaging in a whole-class discussion as actively as do their peers," Lang writes. "Should they be punished for their character traits or anxieties?"

Use Digital Tools For Asynchronous Participation

Broaden your notion of class participation-it doesn't always need to be vocal, or during class time. Starting classroom discussions on a shared Google Doc allows teachers to "see a student's level of understanding-through both their questions and answers-without waiting for them to speak in class," writes Katy Farber, a professional development coordinator and former sixth-grade teacher. It can also provide an equitable entry point into discussions for all students, including introverted ones. "Students can use the digital discussions as a basis for approaching, exploring, processing, or reflecting on content," says Sam Nelson, a teacher who shared the practice with Farber. "While we can review the discussion trackers [in the Google doc] out loud, we can also use small groups or independent review protocols to get students following the digital discussions."

During brainstorming sessions, consider supplementing classroom conversations with a Padlet where students can post ideas and everyone's contributions are visible to the group. For reflection exercises, try giving students some choice in how they share their thoughts-they might doodle their reflection in Google Draw, or record their voices on VoiceThread or Flipgrid, Farber suggests. "Yes, we need to encourage them to use their voices, but students need to take small steps and be encouraged along the way."

Prepare Students Before Cold-Calling

Lang likes to kick off whole-class discussions with small-group activities, or individual writing exercises where students write a short response to a question, allowing each student time to prepare and gain confidence in their thinking before opening up the classroom discussion. Following this warm-up step, "even the most introverted or anxious students can usually muster the energy to report a group's conclusion or summarize a writing exercise," Lang notes.

When he asks questions during whole class discussions, Lang gives students the choice to decline answering. "I make it clear in the way I frame the invitations: 'Kiara, you've been quiet for a while, but you look thoughtful. Do you have something you want to add, or do you want to just keep thinking?'" he might ask. "I always try to frame invitations to imply: I bet you have something important to add here; any chance you want to join the conversation?"

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Is Class Participation Too Arbitrary to Grade Fairly?

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When participation is graded, Lang says it can become "subject to every kind of bias imaginable." This might include unconscious bias based on identity, or "looking more favorably on a student whose comments or demeanor remind me a little of myself-or unfavorably on a student who reminds me of someone I dislike."

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Every day, thousands of students bring their traumatic experiences with them to school.

The past year, especially, has been traumatic for students and adults. The shift to distance learning in 2020 disrupted typical home, school, and work routines. Existing equity gaps widened, and students have reported increased feelings of depression and anxiety .

As districts prepare to return to in-person learning, social-emotional learning (SEL) has rightfully taken a front seat in reopening plans . SEL can create a positive environment for students to learn. It can also help students develop skills for handling big transitions, like returning to the classroom.

But your typical approach to SEL might not be enough heading into 2021-22. The intensive needs of students suggest that all of our social-emotional learning efforts must be trauma-informed this year. SEL with a trauma-informed lens will help students heal, cope, and build resilience in the face of challenging circumstances.

In this article, we'll unpack the definition of trauma-informed SEL and dive into the following three recommendations for prioritizing a trauma-sensitive approach to reopening schools:

1. Build capacity among trauma-informed educators.

2. Create predictable routines to help students feel safe at school.

3. Ensure every student feels seen, heard, and recognized for their strengths.

Key Terms[Source:
National Equity Project]

Trauma - an experience of one or more overwhelmingly stressful adverse events where an individual's ability to cope is dramatically undermined

Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) - events or extreme adversities experienced or witnessed in early childhood that are potentially traumatic, including experiences of abuse, neglect, or violence. ACEs also include aspects of a child's environment that negatively impact their stability or sense of safety

Toxic stress - excessive exposure to severe and prolonged stressors, often without the support of a caring adult or other protective factors

Protective factors - characteristics or attributes that buffer the adverse effects of trauma. Self-esteem, self-efficacy, and coping skills are all examples of protective factors

Trauma-Informed SEL - an approach to social-emotional learning in schools that is particularly inclusive to needs of children who have experienced trauma. Trauma-informed SEL practices help connect students to the SEL skills needed to deal with toxic stress and overcome difficult life circumstances

According to research on childhood trauma from the National Child Traumatic Stress Network, more than two-thirds of children report experiencing at least 1 traumatic event by age 16. Furthermore, the CDC reports that 64% of children have been exposed to one or more ACE and 38% of children have been exposed to 2 or more ACEs. Learn more about the importance for schools to adopt a trauma-informed approach.

What Is Trauma-Informed SEL?

Trauma-informed SEL is an approach to social-emotional learning in schools that is particularly inclusive to children who have experienced trauma. Trauma-informed SEL practices-such as creating predictable routines and building supportive relationships-can help students build the skills they need to deal with toxic stress and overcome difficult life circumstances.

Source: Transforming Education

How does trauma-informed SEL differ from social-emotional learning in general? Many of the basic principles overlap, such as the importance of developing healthy relationships and learning how to manage emotions. However, trauma-informed SEL differs in the intensity of the support required.

For example, students with trauma may display behaviors such as shutting down or struggling with relational boundaries. These behaviors may replace ordinary SEL skills; if a student is operating in a state of fear because of a traumatic experience, they may be unable to learn or to function socially and emotionally.

What this means for you: Co nsider that all social-emotional learning could be taking place in an overwhelming emotional context.

Trauma-informed SEL practices anticipate that students will need intensive support. For example, deficit-based language can trigger strong emotional reactions, such as defiance, for students experiencing trauma. A trauma-informed approach to SEL focuses on students' strengths and intentionally uses asset-based language to build students' confidence.

The goal is for students to feel supported and cared for, empowered to exercise their agency, and emboldened to explore their strengths and identities.

"A trauma-informed, SEL, cultural awareness model of supports allows educators to create a safe environment to address trauma and SEL skill building, while also tapping into the strengths and opportunities of students' cultures."
-Dr. Gregory Leskin, National Child Traumatic Stress Center

3 Recommendations for Prioritizing Trauma-Informed SEL During Reopening
A trauma-informed approach to SEL is going to be critical for building resilience this year. Here are three ways to make sure that all SEL is trauma-informed in the return to school.

1. Build capacity among trauma-informed educators. [ Tweet This]

Children can and do recover from traumatic events. Adults can play an instrumental role in this process.

Trauma-informed SEL efforts must focus on the adults in the building, not just the students. A caring adult's ability to model SEL skills (emotion regulation, perspective-taking, active listening) is especially important when supporting students who have experienced trauma. Similarly, approaching students with empathy and patience can help build stronger teacher-student relationships.

Are educators aware of common signs of trauma? Can they recognize when a student isn't feeling safe in the classroom? Do they have the listening and perspective-taking skills to validate feelings?

Professional development on trauma-informed practices can help teachers and support staff build meaningful relationships with students and model healthy coping strategies that are especially helpful for learners with ACEs.

By building educator capacity for social-emotional learning, we can help to foster safe, supportive, and equitable environments that allow children to feel supported, cope, and thrive.

2. Create predictable routines to help students feel safe at school. [ Tweet This]

Children who have suffered traumatic experiences can benefit from predictable routines that offset fear and create a sense of safety.

Trauma-responsive routines don't have to be complicated to be effective. Can administrators and teachers greet students with positive and affirming language every day? Are you carving out a few minutes for relationship building using strategies such as 2x10 relationship building ? Do students have opportunities to reflect on their reactions to current events?

Well-being check-ins with students are another simple way to create reliable routines. Daily or weekly temperature checks ("How are you feeling today?") can help students feel heard, build teacher-student relationships, and increase belonging.

Keep in mind that routines may be thrown off by schedule changes and unknowns at the beginning of the school year. When this happens, be transparent with students (and caregivers) about the new plan. Use the change as an opportunity to model self-regulation skills.

Download our toolkit of SEL resources for supporting student and adult well-being during reopening [includes trauma-informed activities].

3. Ensure every student feels seen, heard, and recognized for their strengths. [ Tweet This]

Traumatic events can leave a child feeling powerless. Acknowledging students' resilience and strengths can improve their self-efficacy and help them develop a positive purpose.

Building on students' strengths is so important because traumatized youth often experience low levels of confidence and a negative self-concept . To help offset this, consider ways to intentionally celebrate and appreciate students for what they bring to the school community-from displaying student work in classrooms to recognizing students with awards.

Another great way to improve students' self-efficacy is to help them set goals and collaborate with peers to achieve those goals. Consider implementing Rose, Bud, Thorn Journaling , a reflective exercise that prompts students to identify positive moments and reflect on areas where they need support. Or, give students opportunities to show their strengths while contributing to the community-such as participating in a community garden or a service learning project.

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As we prepare for what a supportive return to school will look like in 2021 and beyond, this is the moment to reimagine how we support our students; a chance to ensure that we do not ignore the trauma of the pandemic; an opportunity for all SEL to be trauma-informed.

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Why All SEL Must Be Trauma-Informed As We Reopen Schools

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Every day, thousands of students bring their traumatic experiences with them to school. The past year, especially, has been traumatic for students and adults. The shift to distance learning in 2020 disrupted typical home, school, and work routines. Existing equity gaps widened, and students have reported increased feelings of depression and anxiety .

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Black Children Pay the Price for White Educators Who Are Not Prepared to Teach Them

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Black Children Pay the Price for White Educators Who Are Not Prepared to Teach Them

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Effective teachers can change and save lives, but being a great teacher is hard.

The challenge is especially acute in our high-poverty, under-resourced public schools where teacher tenure is lowest. Black and Brown students are twice as likely to attend one of these schools than their white peers. As nearly 80 percent of teachers are white, our newest educators often find themselves in a very different cultural context for the first time.

The result is often a gross underestimation of Black and Brown students' academic abilities, misunderstanding and an inability to cope with what teachers perceive as "problem behavior." This "culture shock" and racial bias drives many teachers out of schools educating Black and Brown children as they escape to lower-poverty, whiter schools.

Many white teachers are clearly not adequately prepared to teach Black and Brown students. Our students are paying the price for the failures of our teacher-preparation programs. Changes to these programs that result in better education for Black and brown students are long overdue.

The solution is threefold. Our teacher preparation programs must engender cultural fluency; equip teachers with the skills to actually teach Black and brown students; and commit to diversifying courses, professors, and student bodies.

1. Engender cultural fluency and understanding. Teacher preparation programs and their faculties have proven time and time again to be something short of truly culturally responsive to Black and brown communities. The heights of tenured teachers college posts are too far removed from the lived experiences of Black and brown students.

The result is a pipeline of new teachers inadequately prepared to serve Black and Brown students. In a recent survey, fully 72 percent of newly graduated aspiring teachers say they feel unprepared to work in an urban classroom and 62 percent say they feel unprepared to teach culturally diverse students.

Those who prepare our future teachers must be more assertive in addressing their own shortcomings and acknowledge when they don't have a particular sphere of understanding, knowledge and skills. Vitally, they must then be willing to do the work to acquire them.

2. Equip teachers with the skills and knowledge to help Black and brown students actually learn, not just "speak woke." It is not enough to be able to speak of liberation and equity; our teachers must be able to provide students with the tools to actually secure it. Performative wokeness should not be an exercise perfected in teacher colleges, but it seems to be the primary occupation of many who enjoy tenure in them. When the teachers of teachers are more enamored with virtue signaling than embracing meaningful accountability for their students and their grand-students' success, we are lost.

Whether by ignorance or arrogance, those in the ivory tower seem to have forgotten that it was Maya Angelou who once observed that the "elimination of illiteracy is as serious an issue to our history as the abolition of slavery." Indeed, many in academia are uninterested in either acknowledging or learning about how their class content and pedagogy reinforce inequity rather than meet the needs of schools serving Black and Brown children.

3. Commit to diversifying faculty, student bodies, and syllabi. Teacher colleges need to commit to diversifying their courses, professors, and students. Some graduates and organizations like NCTQ and TNTP (I serve on the board) are working to engage teachers college alums to advocate for a more diverse teacher preparation program at their alma mater. We need much more than this, however.

Teacher prep syllabi should be informed by the aspirations and goals of the Black and brown communities, not just by what they wrote their latest book about. Teacher preparation programs should embrace accountability for the impact, or lack thereof, of the students who graduate from their programs. The point of preparing teachers, after all, is for them to teach well.

We should also look to the programs that are effectively preparing more of our Black and Brown teachers. We need new investments in HBCUs generally and their schools of education in particular. Given the transformative role that teachers of color can play in the lives of all students, such an investment would redound to the benefit of our entire education system.

Instead of bashing alternative certification programs, traditional programs should draw lessons from their experience and effectiveness. These programs essentially level the playing field with aspiring teachers from traditional four-year programs and graduate more Black and Brown aspiring teachers than all non-HBCUs, combined.

Some predominantly white institutions are waking up to this need. The Center for Black Educator Development, which I founded and lead, is partnering organizations and a group of teachers colleges to improve the cultural competency of their faculty and academic offerings. This is hard but vital work for these institutions, they should be applauded.

States can use their accreditation authority to drive productive reforms. This past summer, the Pennsylvania State Board of Education passed new regulations to require teacher prep programs to implement " Culturally Relevant and Sustaining Education ", including trauma informed approaches to instruction, cultural awareness, and the ability to address "any factors that inhibit equitable access for all Pennsylvania's students."

The Biden administration is also well-positioned to lead on this issue. They can start by bringing a much-needed dose of public transparency to teacher prep. As it stands, we know too little of how well programs and institutions are r ecruiting and preparing Black and Brown teachers.

At the last, there is little standing in our way and much to be gained in creating better-prepared and more culturally competent new teachers. Teacher retention and efficacy will improve. Student achievement will rise. More people, especially from diverse backgrounds, are likely to be interested in teaching and the profession as a whole will be elevated.

More than anything, though, this work can improve the lives of our students and the broader well-being of our public school communities.

These should be the baseline goals of any institution claiming to be woke or committed to the equitable education of our students.

A version of this blog was originally published on Education Week.

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Black Children Pay the Price for White Educators Who Are Not Prepared to Teach Them

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Effective teachers can change and save lives, but being a great teacher is hard. The challenge is especially acute in our high-poverty, under-resourced public schools where teacher tenure is lowest. Black and Brown students are twice as likely to attend one of these schools than their white peers.

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Why SEL Alone Isn't Enough - Educational Leadership

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Why SEL Alone Isn't Enough - Educational Leadership

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March 2021 | Volume 78 | Number 6
Equity in Action Pages 30-34

Dena Simmons

Since Alicia's last name begins with an H, the instructor called her name before mine.

"Alicia Hernández," the instructor read, anglicizing the pronunciation of my friend's name.

Busy rustling through her bookbag for a notebook and pen, Alicia did not hear her name, leaving our instructor to scan the room looking for an Alicia Hernández. When the instructor's gaze landed in our direction, she looked at both of us, and without skipping a beat, said, "One of you two."

With a roomful of white classmates, she assumed that one of us had to be the obvious owner of the Central American surname.

Our instructor called the next name after Alicia's and proceeded as if she had not just insulted us, as if she had not just reduced us to a blob of one-of-you-two.

I could not concentrate for the rest of the period. My heart raced. My body grew tense. My mind filled with questions: How come she didn't make an effort to learn our names after four weeks of taking attendance? Why did she think it was acceptable to diminish our individuality? When will these public assaults, these public erasures, stop?

With her actions, our instructor communicated to us and our classmates that, like her, they did not need to learn our names. They did not need to get to know us. They did not need to regard us as more than one of the two girls of color in a sea of whiteness.

Opposing SEL Mindsets

While my instructor taught us the importance of social-emotional learning (SEL) in child development, she was not culturally competent. She illustrated how an educator could be well-versed in textbook SEL practices and still inflict harm on students. Simply put, to be effective equity-centered educators, we cannot be emotionally intelligent without being culturally responsive (Simmons, 2019a).

That college experience, along with many others from my schooling and work life, exemplifies why SEL faces the risk of becoming white supremacy with a hug if we do not apply an anti-oppressive, antiracist lens (Madda, 2019; Simmons, 2019b).

Through my work with school districts nationally, I have learned that some educators share distinct reasons for implementing SEL depending on who their students are. In mostly Black, indigenous, and people of color (BIPOC) school districts, SEL is often about compliance and control. SEL then becomes another way to penalize and police BIPOC youth for their non-whiteness and to justify their supposed inferiority for lacking "these necessary skills" (Kaler-Jones, 2020; Simmons, 2019c). What is even more perverse is the implicit belief that SEL skills are exactly what BIPOC students need to function in underresourced classrooms and to smile through the pain of racism. On the other hand, for white, privileged students, SEL is about supporting college and career readiness. These opposing mindsets lead to different practices and outcomes, which ultimately perpetuate a racial hierarchy that positions white students on top.

As we confront our country's sin of racism, we must acknowledge that our nation's schooling has always been an education in whiteness (Brooks & Theoharis, 2018), which manifests as textbooks lauding white heroes, excuses about too few "qualified" BIPOC teacher candidates, dress codes that criminalize Black hair, productivity over people, and well-meaning educators who correct Black diction but claim color-blindness. In this context, any curriculum, policy, or practice in our nation's schools that is not deliberately and actively combating racism, bias, and oppression can easily be used as a weapon to put BIPOC students in their place.

Relatedly, the overwhelming number of articles that cite SEL as critical to employability (Committee for Children, 2016) also puts white hegemony on display. It seems we cannot talk about SEL without talking about what we deem, in a narrow sense, as employable and professional. For me, that has always meant talking white, dressing white, and acting white-unspoken rules I have learned on my educational and professional journeys. If we laud SEL for how it supports youth with career, business, and economic success, we must also reckon with our blind obsession with capitalism and its relationship with the white supremacy upon which it was built. We can still prepare students for future success without diminishing their identities, without sending them the message that there is only one way to be successful. We have to begin to open our minds to the possibility of genius outside of whiteness.

SEL that fails to address our sociopolitical reality and combat racial and social injustice will not prepare our young people for the world they will inherit-one fraught with hate, misunderstanding, and bigotry. SEL alone will not keep politicians from making laws that disenfranchise BIPOC communities. SEL alone will not keep educators from suspending BIPOC children at disproportionate rates. SEL alone will not keep teachers from having low expectations for BIPOC students. SEL alone will not prevent cops from killing BIPOC people. If SEL alone were the magic bullet, perhaps George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and Walter Wallace Jr. would still be alive today. We need more for our collective healing.

Is SEL, alone, enough to provide this? Absolutely not.

In Need of Collective Healing

Over the past year, there has been much talk about the importance of SEL in schools as a necessary response to our pandemic reality. There has been an influx of stand-alone courses about managing stress and anxiety, pushes for educators to focus on self-care, and free student resources offering mindfulness strategies for the uncertainty. As a long-time proponent of SEL, I could not be happier.

However, as we embrace this new urgency, we must address not only the trauma of COVID-19 but also that of racism. Pushing for "neutral" SEL only aims to protect white comfort. That is, courses that teach educators how to manage stress and anxiety without speaking to the stress and anxiety stemming from racism disregard the experiences of BIPOC people and contribute to the trauma of erasure. Likewise, pushing for teacher self-care without also advocating for school systems to value teacher health and well-being puts the onus on educators, making collective care nearly impossible. And asking students to practice deep-breathing in response to systemic oppression is simply offensive.

Collective healing starts with committing to eradicating our country's wound of racism and not looking away, sanitizing history, or advocating for neutrality. It means taking a stand against the injustices we witness in our districts, schools, and classrooms, whether that happens through community organizing, peaceful protest, or speaking up in-the-moment. It means creating space for processing the collective traumas of the pandemic, racism, and other forms of oppression in our school communities. It means abolishing white supremacy culture from our schools to prevent the constant spirit-murdering of BIPOC students, educators, and families. It means implementing culturally and contextually responsive practices. It means prioritizing care through partnering with community therapeutic providers and building healing-centered practices into the fabric of schooling. It means ensuring equity, justice, and humanity in our teaching and learning. And it means loving and honoring BIPOC members in our school communities, not just saying we do.

An Antiracist Approach to SEL

Last June, while in quarantine, I became the victim of a hate crime. Shattered, I had no choice but to focus on my healing. I reflected on what was important to me, what inspired me, and what made my spirit feel most whole. In the process, I rediscovered my voice, the one that had been tone-policed, silenced, and punished for the past six years because it was, as I was told, "too strong" and "too powerful."

As part of my healing journey, I left my job, in the middle of a pandemic. I needed my voice to ring louder than other people's doubts, slights, and limitations. I left so that I could save myself, so that I could dream. And I left so that I could invest my time into changing the very system that failed me and is failing so many others.

For me, that has led to the development of LiberatED, a new program that takes an anti-racist approach to SEL and healing. Instead of assuming what people need, the LiberatED team and I are connecting with school communities through a listening tour to collect stories, needs, and ideas about healing, SEL, racial justice, and abolitionism. From what we learn from educators, families, and students during the listening tour, we will create resources, curricula, and training. In this way, LiberatED will become a community-generated, student-centered approach to SEL, racial justice, and healing. In our preliminary conversations with school leaders, we have learned that educators have great interest in implementing SEL and diversity, equity, and belonging (DEB) practices in their districts. However, many do not know where to begin or how, especially as it relates to racial justice. Above all, schools want to do well by their students, but I remain steadfast in my belief that good intentions are not enough. While the interest in SEL and DEB work is heartening, interest does not always result in action. We need to start our racial justice journeys now.

To this end, I invite educators to start a practice of reflecting on their identity, positionality, power, and privilege. Had my college instructor understood the damaging effects of her white-centered perspective, perhaps she would have called Alicia's name again and waited for a response. Perhaps she would have admitted to the class that she was still learning names. Perhaps she would not have left Alicia and me scarred with her nonchalant erasure. Bound to white supremacy's need for urgency and productivity (Western States Center, 2003), my instructor breezed through attendance in her desire to be efficient. However, there is a tension between equity and efficiency. Equity takes more time. Efficiency saves time, but at what cost?

Additionally, schools could collect data and devise action plans from their own listening tours about what belonging means for their school communities, especially since many of us are physically apart this school year. In the process of transforming how we teach for our new virtual and hybrid settings to build connectedness and engage students, we could check in with our students through surveys and one-on-one conversations to ensure we are meeting their needs.

Though we are already exhausted and overwhelmed with so many pressures related to the pandemic, we still must find the time to take inventory of our curricula, pedagogy, and policies to ensure they prioritize student safety and belonging. That is, affirming our BIPOC educators, students, and families must be a part of every pandemic-safety plan. This moment calls for developing partnerships with community organizations to support children and adults with healing, SEL, mental health resources, food security, and basic needs.

Freedom-Dreaming for an Antiracist Future

So much time has passed since that college experience. Yet I still shudder at the memory of my instructor's reduction of my individuality. Too many others have a collection of similar reductions, similar scars, from well-meaning educators, whose unchecked privilege and a lack of cultural competence harmed them. The field of SEL cannot similarly fall victim to this pattern. We cannot rely solely on good intentions, on how we teach empathy, without being self and socially aware enough to interrogate how such a kind field could perpetuate white supremacy culture.

Ultimately, my hope is that, through projects like LiberatED and through schools committing to racial justice and collective healing, we can begin to dismantle structural, institutional, and individual practices that harm young people, that inhibit their optimal social, emotional, and academic development. Educators and students deserve to express themselves freely without fear, to be treated with respect and valued, to feel safe, and to go to schools that challenge bias, discrimination, and oppression.

As I've written before, the pandemic is our equity check, our opportunity to do and be better. LiberatED is one part of my effort to be and do better, part of my freedom-dream for a future where we are liberated from the burden of hate and oppression, where we are all free to live and learn in the comfort of our own skin.

References

Brooks, J. S., & Theoharis, G. (Eds.). (2018). Whiteucation: Privilege, power, and prejudice in school and society. New York: Routledge.

Committee for Children. (2016). Why social and emotional learning and employability skills should be prioritized in education. Seattle, WA.

Kaler-Jones, C. (2020, May 7). When SEL is used as another form of policing. Communities for Just Schools Fund.

Madda, M. J. (2019, May 15). Dena Simmons: Without context, social-emotional learning can backfire. EdSurge.

Simmons, D. (2019a). You can't be emotionally intelligent without being culturally responsive: Why family and consumer sciences must employ both to meet the needs of our nation. Journal of Family & Consumer Sciences, 11(2).

Simmons, D. (2019b). Why we can't afford whitewashed social-emotional learning. Education Update, 61(4).

Simmons, D. (2019c, October 4). A call to action for SEL's next 25 years [Conference presentation]. 2019 SEL Exchange, Chicago, IL.

Western States Center. (2003). Dismantling racism: A resource book for social change groups. Portland, OR.

Dena Simmons is the founder of LiberatED. She is a lifelong learner, educator, and activist who supports schools throughout the nation in implementing social-emotional learning and culturally responsive, antiracist, and equitable practices. She is the author of the forthcoming book, White Rules for Black People (St. Martin's Press, 2022). Follow her on Twitter @DenaSimmons and @LiberatED_SEL.

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March 2021 | Volume 78 | Number 6 Equity in Action Pages 30-34 Dena Simmons Since Alicia's last name begins with an H, the instructor called her name before mine. "Alicia Hernández," the instructor read, anglicizing the pronunciation of my friend's name.

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Justice Leads: DEISEL
slide deck

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Justice Leads_ DEI as the Basis for Strong and Effective Social Emotional Learning- Winchester

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Culturally Responsive Curriculum Scorecard

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Why Trauma-Informed Approaches Help Advance Racial Equity - Committee for Children

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Why Trauma-Informed Approaches Help Advance Racial Equity - Committee for Children

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The murders of George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, and Breonna Taylor, among many others, have dramatically underscored the racial injustices within our country's systems. Throughout history, racial equity has been an issue intertwined with our education system in a multitude of ways. On our journey to becoming better and more active allies, we understand that we at Committee for Children have a role to play in helping dismantle interpersonal and institutional racism. As we boldly stated: Words are not enough anymore. We must take action.

We're committed to improving specific issues related to our priority areas- social-emotional learning (SEL), child protection, and bullying prevention-that disproportionately impact the Black community and communities of color. Each month, our policy experts will answer questions relating to these priority areas and racial equity. Our series has covered exclusionary discipline reform and will now discuss trauma-informed approaches to education.

What is trauma?
Trauma occurs when someone experiences or witnesses something that can be frightening, threatening, or harmful and often elicits a strong response. Such events might include abuse, neglect, community violence, loss, war, serious accidents, illness, or incidents of racism, to name a few. Trauma in youth is often studied by examining Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs), which are traumatic events that happen before a young person is 18 years old and are linked to challenges in adulthood. ACEs can be mitigated by teaching young people life skills, such as SEL.

What is a trauma-informed approach to education?
Trauma-informed approaches to education involve awareness and responsiveness to trauma and cultivate safe and supportive learning environments. The aim in implementing these approaches is to limit exposure to triggers or risks, and to promote protective factors and supports that foster resilience and help young people deal more effectively with stressful events.

Why do trauma-informed approaches to education matter for racial equity?
Like other forms of trauma, racial trauma and historical trauma can impact young people of color. Racial trauma is the stressful impact or emotional pain of experiencing racial discrimination and prejudice, and historical trauma is a type of trauma a community might experience based on trauma that has been passed down through generations. Both can impact children's well-being and have systemic implications on other measures like test scores and graduation rates.

How do trauma-informed approaches relate to SEL?
SEL overlaps significantly with and thereby contributes strongly to trauma-informed approaches. Both trauma-informed approaches and SEL work on cultivating safe and supportive environments. As Committee for Children Director of Policy and Advocacy, Jordan Posamentier, often says in his advocacy, "An emotionally regulated young person is a young person ready to learn." SEL also plays a role in promoting behaviors-such as skills for building supportive relationships and self-efficacy-that can protect against negative effects resulting from trauma. Trauma-informed approaches must be culturally responsive, especially when dealing with trauma that stems from racial trauma and historical trauma. (We'll discuss culturally responsive practices in more detail in subsequent posts.) A trauma-informed approach that ignores culturally responsive practices could fail or, worse, re-traumatize young people.

How does legislation address trauma-informed approaches?
Federal and state governments are advancing trauma-informed approaches in policy. These efforts have recently increased, likely because of the pandemic combined with an increased focus on racial injustices. In the past year alone Committee for Children has tracked and advocated more than 100 bills related to trauma-informed practices, such as:

The federal RISE from Trauma Act that would support a trauma-informed workforce

A bill in Indiana's 2020 legislative session that requires treatment of trauma in teacher prep

A bill passed in Pennsylvania in 2019 that incentivizes implementation of trauma-informed approaches to curriculum and professional development

How do I get involved?
Here are some ways you can take action:

Urge your local education leaders to prioritize COVID-19-relief dollars for developing and integrating trauma-informed approaches, such as SEL, by using this preformatted letter.

Sign up to receive action alerts at key times specific to your state from our Policy and Advocacy Team.

Reyes, J. A., Elias, M. J., Parker, S. J., & Rosenblatt, J. L. (2012). Promoting educational equity in disadvantaged youth: The role of resilience and social-emotional learning. In S. Goldstein & R. B. Brooks (Eds.), Handbook of resilience in children (2 nd ed., pp. 349-370). Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-3661-4_20

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Why Trauma-Informed Approaches Help Advance Racial Equity | Committee for Children

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We're committed to improving specific issues related to our priority areas-social-emotional learning (SEL), child protection, and bullying prevention-that disproportionately impact the Black community and communities of color. Each month, our policy experts will answer questions relating to these priority areas and racial equity.

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How Trauma-Informed Are We, Really? - Educational Leadership

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How Trauma-Informed Are We, Really? - Educational Leadership

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October 2020 | Volume 78 | Number 2
Trauma-Sensitive Schools Pages 14-19

Paul Gorski

A major challenge at this school, as in many schools, was the leadership team's habit of embracing shiny new program after shiny new program rather than addressing deep institutional problems. Their latest shiny new program was trauma-informed education. That August, teachers attended two days of trauma-informed training. Counselors learned to identify students who carry the impact of trauma to school. It was a core focus for the school year.

"I'm a queer Black woman. Transgender," Shari said. As far as she knew, she was the only out transgender student at her school.

Several weeks prior, Shari explained, her counselor administered a survey to her. "He asked personal questions about my life, what I've experienced at home. It was intrusive," she said.

After the survey, Shari had asked more about it. "He called it ACEs," she shared, "for adverse childhood experiences."

"Here's what I want you to know," she told me now. "By a huge margin, the most adverse experiences in my life have happened here. My biggest source of trauma is how I'm treated at this school. That's what I told my counselor."

"How did he respond?"

"He said there was nothing on the ACEs questionnaire about that."

Shari described unrelenting transphobic and racist bullying, teachers refusing to use her preferred pronouns or her name, her absolute invisibility in health and other curricula, and other conditions that made school the bane of her well-being.

Is this what a trauma-informed school looks like?

All in on Trauma-Informed Education

When I share Shari's story, some educators assume I'm a critic of trauma-informed education. It's true, I am concerned about schools taking what I call the shiny new thing equity detour (Gorski, 2019)-embracing a program to solve institutional problems that a program, however popular, can't possibly solve.

But I'm also a champion of trauma-informed education, something I came by through experience. As an elementary-aged child, I was sexually abused repeatedly by an older boy who lived in my neighborhood. I know something of trauma.

I carried that trauma everywhere: soccer practice, the dinner table, school. And I behaved in perfectly reasonable ways for a sexually abused child to behave (Everstine & Everstine, 2015). I was restless. I passionately resisted being in confined spaces with adults.

Teachers called this "acting up." They punished me for little behaviors that I now know were proportionate to my trauma (as, really, any behavior is for a sexually abused child). Then, because I received poor behavior assessments, I was punished at home. I can't recall anyone being curious about why I behaved the way I did. There was no root cause behavior analysis, just reactive rule-flinging.

So, I'm all in on trauma-informed education-by which I mean I'm all in on what it can be if we commit to applying it mindfully and equitably.

Three Transformative Commitments

A few years ago, I shared my story with an elementary principal who was rolling out trauma-informed education in his school. He asked, "How would your teachers know what you were experiencing if you didn't tell them?" I thought, Is that the sort of question his trauma-informed training prepared him to ask? Does he really believe it was my responsibility to report something I didn't understand to adults I didn't trust?

I thought about Shari and other students drowning in traumas within trauma-informed schools. This principal's ideological blockage caused him to retraumatize me during a conversation about my trauma. No combination of trauma-informed practices would make him trauma-informed if he didn't work through that blockage.

The trouble surfaces when we apply trauma-informed education in ways that risk reproducing trauma or that ignore significant sources of trauma. It is in response to that trouble that I share three transformative commitments for trauma-informed education. My hope is that, by embracing these commitments, we might maximize the transformative potential of trauma-informed education rather than just layering it onto our program pile.

Commitment 1
Attend to the practices, policies, and aspects of institutional culture that traumatize children at school
My biggest source of trauma is how I'm treated here. In every school, the first trauma-informed step should be mapping out all the ways students, families, and even we, as educators, experience trauma at school. When we skip this step, we render the entire trauma-informed effort a hypocrisy.

It's important to understand that these traumas are not always-perhaps not even usually-associated with big, obvious traumatic events, although of course such events do happen, for example when a white referee requires a Black student-athlete to cut off his dreadlocks (Carey, 2019) or when school leaders refuse to take seriously the claims of sexual assault survivors (Green, 2019).

These causes of trauma aren't as rare as they ought to be, but they may be rarer than what Nadal (2018) calls microaggressive trauma: the accumulative impact of insidious, grinding traumatic experiences. Generally, individual experiences that accumulate into microaggressive trauma aren't recognized as traumatic by those of us who don't experience them; we tend to see them as isolated events, not building blocks of traumatic stress. One incident of ableist bullying or one instance of LGBTQI+ invisibility in sex education would not be classified as trauma by most technical definitions (Nadal, 2018). That's a problem.

But more to the point, these incidents rarely happen in isolation. They usually are parts of traumatizing patterns. It's the constant stream of transphobic bullying, plus our failure to address it as an institutional responsibility rather than a matter of individual behavior, plus curricular erasure, plus, plus, plus.

So, as we map potential causes of trauma within our schools, it's important to dig beneath incidents. How do we account for the damaging belief systems behind LGBTQI+ people's erasure from sex education curricula? What other policies and practices were informed by those belief systems? According to GLSEN (2017), 42 percent of transgender and gender-nonconforming students have been prevented from using their correct name or pronoun at school; 46 percent have been forced to use the incorrect bathroom at school. What is it about the institutional culture of a school that allows this to happen? What other traumas do we perpetuate by allowing heterosexist, transphobic cultures to persist? The same question applies to other belief systems liable to produce traumatizing patterns in schools, such as racism and ableism. If we don't address that underlying stuff, we're more trauma-avoidant than trauma-informed.

Commitment 2
We must infuse trauma-informed education with a robust understanding of, and responsiveness to, the traumas of systemic oppression
Shari associated her trauma with racism and transphobia at school. Her story is a critical lesson on why we should shake free from the deficit-oriented view that traumas are mostly the result of students' home lives. This view obscures the traumatizing impacts of systemic oppression. If we're not responsive to these impacts, we're enacting a privilege-laden version of trauma-informed education.

For decades, researchers have shown how racial and other oppressions can be traumatizing. They link traumatic stress and related symptoms like depression, anxiety, and even internalized oppression to racism (Carter, Kirkinis, & Johnson, 2020), heterosexism (Straub, McConnell, & Messman-Moore, 2018), Islamophobia (Samari, Alcalá, & Sharif, 2018), and other forms of systemic injustice. Consider that reality next to findings from a recent study in which researchers (English et al., 2020) followed 101 Black adolescents to identify how often they experienced racism. Turns out they experienced discernible racist acts more than five times per day. That's just discernible racist acts. They did not record insidious systemic racism. How are we accounting for that in trauma-informed schools?

Goldin and Khasnabis (2020) warn that, when we fail to incorporate systemic oppression into trauma-informed education, we risk "draw[ing] teachers' attention to the trauma behaviors students exhibit, potentially pathologizing children ... and then blaming their families for their trauma" (p. 10). This is deficit ideology. It can retraumatize students.

With a deeper trauma-informed vision, we recognize that many students of color experience the ravages of racism; that students experiencing poverty contend with brutal economic injustice. The issues to be addressed are the racism and the injustice. The best trauma-informed practices are rooted in anti-racism, and anti-oppression more broadly, not just in helping students cope with the impact of isolated traumatic events, and not just in assuming that a student whose family is experiencing poverty must be experiencing some sort of abuse at home. If I am not actively anti-racist, I am not trauma-informed.

As described in Commitment 1, the first step is refusing to recreate oppressive conditions in schools. The second step is collaborating with community organizations that fight conditions-police brutality, the scarcity of living wage work, environmental injustice-that threaten the well-being of students, families, and us. If you hire somebody to lead trauma-informed training, ask what the latest research shows about the relationship between racism or ableism and traumatic stress. If they don't have an answer, they are not trauma-informed and can't prepare you to be trauma-informed.

Commitment 3
Dislodge hyper-punitive cultures and ideologies
Bad ideologies are harder to break than bad practices. This might be why, in my experience, the hardest transition for most schools adopting trauma-informed education involves dislodging hyper-punitive educator ideologies and school cultures. Perhaps philosophically we recognize that avoiding reactive rule-flinging and responding to the root causes of student behavior is a trauma-informed practice. But to what extent do we apply this in practice? Hyper-punitive ideologies remain an education epidemic, even in supposedly trauma-informed schools.

I'm reminded of Carter, a high school student whose story illustrates the incompatibility of trauma-informed education and the mindless application of rules. After I delivered a brief presentation to his class, Carter pulled me aside, whispering, "I'm in a predicament."

Carter was gay but not out. He feared his parents would kick him out of the house if they discovered the truth. Still, classmates often presumed he was gay, calling him names or worse. Things were especially dire between fourth and fifth period, when a group of boys repeatedly assaulted him in an unsupervised stretch of hallway.

Carter worried for his physical safety. He also worried about the three tardies he had accrued during that grading period. He had found a nook where he sometimes hid until his tormenters passed, but that meant being 10 seconds late to class. The fourth tardy would mean a call home. That terrified him.

He had considered confiding in his fifth period teacher, but recently she shamed him in front of the class: Everyone seems capable of getting here on time, so what's your issue?

Curious after my conversation with Carter, I reviewed his school's student conduct handbook, which included big sections extolling the virtues of social-emotional learning and trauma-informed education. About halfway through the handbook I found a series of charts preassigning punishments for nearly every imaginable behavior. The biggest distinction was among various levels of major and minor infractions. And there it was under minor infractions: three tardies means a warning. Four, a call home. A few more, and Carter risked in-school suspension. He was on track to miss an entire day of instruction for missing less than two minutes of fifth period.

Most educators, I believe, would eventually ask Carter what the heck was going on. But Carter had reasons to be reluctant to respond even if asked.

From a trauma-informed perspective, I wondered about two things. First, if the school intended to shift ideologies and institutional cultures to avoid reactive rule-flinging and to respond, instead, to behaviors' underlying causes (which may be linked to trauma), why predetermine punishments? Second, why use presumptuous language like "infractions" at all? Is Carter the infract or or the infract ee in this scenario?

Nothing is simple, I know. It's hard to expect a school to address a specific string of incidents no adult knows is happening. But we should know if we work in schools that heterosexism, racism, and other oppressions are happening all the time. If we're sitting around waiting for students to report it, we're missing most of it. That's trauma-passive.

Being trauma-informed means consciously cultivating space in our mental models so that, even if we know nothing about a particular set of circumstances, we avoid the temptation to mindlessly apply rules. Carter was about to be punished harshly due to the school's failure to protect him from heterosexism. Again, perhaps no adult knew he was being targeted, although in a way that's hard to believe; generally, we know who's being targeted even if it's not happening in front of us. But if we're trauma-aware, we realize that the burden can't be on people-on children -experiencing trauma to educate those who created the institutional culture in which the trauma is happening. That expectation is, itself, potentially traumatizing.

If a child accrues a bunch of tardies, we must withhold judgment and show concern. If a child comes to school high, we must withhold judgement and show concern. Whatever a child does, the trauma-informed response is first to make sure everybody is safe, then withhold judgment and show concern.

When I make this point to groups of educators, inevitably a few argue accountability. "We have to hold students accountable or how will they learn responsibility?" This illustrates, for me, an ideological trap that is incompatible with trauma-informed education.

How does irresponsibly holding Carter or 7-year-old me accountable for the failures of adults and institutions in our lives teach us responsibility? In any case, when we abolish the hyper-punitive culture, we're not saying nobody should be held accountable for their behavior. Instead, we're acknowledging that no child should be held accountable for the ways we fail them. We're saying, hey, there are more humane, trauma-informed, and effective ways to engage with young people. We're acknowledging that trauma-informed education cannot live where hyper-punitive ideologies and institutional cultures are allowed to live.

Triumph and Transformation

As a final commitment, let's take trauma-informed care of ourselves, the community of educators. We are not immune to the effects of trauma. In a study about educator burnout, for example, Cher Chen and I (2015) found that educators of color who speak up about racial justice in their schools often face harsh and traumatizing repercussions, sometimes from their own colleagues.

I want to emphasize, again, the importance of trauma-informed education. The trick is striving for what it can be if we embrace it-not as a set of practices we apply selectively, but rather as a reimagining of how we relate with students and one another. When we apply it with its full robustness, it has the power to transform classrooms and schools. When we don't, it has the power to reproduce the harm it was designed to redress. Let's choose the former.

References

Carey, R. L. (2019). Imagining the comprehensive mattering of Black boys and young men in society and schools: Toward a new approach. Harvard Educational Review, 89(3), 370-396.

Carter, R. T., Kirkinis, K., & Johnson, V. E. (2020). Relationships between trauma symptoms and race-based traumatic stress. Traumatology, 26(1), 11-18.

English, D., Lambert, S. F., Tynes, B. M., Bowleg, L., Zea, M. C., & Howard, L. C. (2020). Daily multidimensional racial discrimination among Black U.S. American adolescents. Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology, 66, 1-12.

Everstine, D. S., & Everstine, L. (2015). Sexual trauma in children and adolescents: Dynamics & treatment. New York: Routledge.

GLSEN. (2017). The 2017 national school climate survey. New York: Author.

Goldin, S., & Khasnabis, D. (2020, February 19). Trauma-informed practice is a powerful tool. But it is also incomplete. Education Week.

Gorski, P. (2019). Avoiding racial equity detours. Educational Leadership, 76(7), 56-61.

Gorski, P., & Chen, C. (2015). 'Frayed all over': The causes and consequences of activist burnout among social justice education activists. Educational Studies, 51(5), 385-405.

Green, E. (2019, May 11). 'It's like the wild west': Sexual assault victims struggle in K-12 schools. The New York Times.

Nadal, K. (2018). Microaggressions and traumatic stress: Theory, research, and clinical treatment. Washington, D.C.: American Psychological Association.

Samari, G., Alcalá, H. E., & Sharif, M. Z. (2018). Islamophobia, health, and public health: A systematic literature review. American Journal of Public Health, 108(6), e1-e9.

Straub, K. T., McConnell, A. A., & Messman-Moore, T. L. (2018). Internalized heterosexism and posttraumatic stress disorder symptoms: The mediating role of shame proneness among trauma-exposed sexual minority women. Psychology of Sexual Orientation and Gender Diversity, 5(1), 99-108.

Paul Gorski is the founder of the Equity Literacy Institute, a longtime teacher educator, and the author of several books, including Reaching and Teaching Students in Poverty: Strategies for Erasing the Opportunity Gap (Teachers College Press, 2013). Follow him on Twitter.

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October 2020 | Volume 78 | Number 2 Trauma-Sensitive Schools Pages 14-19 Paul Gorski A major challenge at this school, as in many schools, was the leadership team's habit of embracing shiny new program after shiny new program rather than addressing deep institutional problems. Their latest shiny new program was trauma-informed education.

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The murders of George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, and Breonna Taylor, among many others, have dramatically underscored the racial injustices within our country's systems. Throughout history, racial equity has been an issue intertwined with our education system in a multitude of ways. On our journey to becoming better and more active allies, we understand that we at Committee for Children have a role to play in helping dismantle interpersonal and institutional racism. As we boldly stated: Words are not enough anymore. We must take action.

We're committed to improving specific issues related to our priority areas- social-emotional learning (SEL), child protection, and bullying prevention-that disproportionately impact the Black community and communities of color. Each month, our policy experts will answer questions relating to these priority areas and racial equity. Our series has covered exclusionary discipline reform and will now discuss trauma-informed approaches to education.

What is trauma?
Trauma occurs when someone experiences or witnesses something that can be frightening, threatening, or harmful and often elicits a strong response. Such events might include abuse, neglect, community violence, loss, war, serious accidents, illness, or incidents of racism, to name a few. Trauma in youth is often studied by examining Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs), which are traumatic events that happen before a young person is 18 years old and are linked to challenges in adulthood. ACEs can be mitigated by teaching young people life skills, such as SEL.

What is a trauma-informed approach to education?
Trauma-informed approaches to education involve awareness and responsiveness to trauma and cultivate safe and supportive learning environments. The aim in implementing these approaches is to limit exposure to triggers or risks, and to promote protective factors and supports that foster resilience and help young people deal more effectively with stressful events.

Why do trauma-informed approaches to education matter for racial equity?
Like other forms of trauma, racial trauma and historical trauma can impact young people of color. Racial trauma is the stressful impact or emotional pain of experiencing racial discrimination and prejudice, and historical trauma is a type of trauma a community might experience based on trauma that has been passed down through generations. Both can impact children's well-being and have systemic implications on other measures like test scores and graduation rates.

How do trauma-informed approaches relate to SEL?
SEL overlaps significantly with and thereby contributes strongly to trauma-informed approaches. Both trauma-informed approaches and SEL work on cultivating safe and supportive environments. As Committee for Children Director of Policy and Advocacy, Jordan Posamentier, often says in his advocacy, "An emotionally regulated young person is a young person ready to learn." SEL also plays a role in promoting behaviors-such as skills for building supportive relationships and self-efficacy-that can protect against negative effects resulting from trauma. Trauma-informed approaches must be culturally responsive, especially when dealing with trauma that stems from racial trauma and historical trauma. (We'll discuss culturally responsive practices in more detail in subsequent posts.) A trauma-informed approach that ignores culturally responsive practices could fail or, worse, re-traumatize young people.

How does legislation address trauma-informed approaches?
Federal and state governments are advancing trauma-informed approaches in policy. These efforts have recently increased, likely because of the pandemic combined with an increased focus on racial injustices. In the past year alone Committee for Children has tracked and advocated more than 100 bills related to trauma-informed practices, such as:

The federal RISE from Trauma Act that would support a trauma-informed workforce

A bill in Indiana's 2020 legislative session that requires treatment of trauma in teacher prep

A bill passed in Pennsylvania in 2019 that incentivizes implementation of trauma-informed approaches to curriculum and professional development

How do I get involved?
Here are some ways you can take action:

Urge your local education leaders to prioritize COVID-19-relief dollars for developing and integrating trauma-informed approaches, such as SEL, by using this preformatted letter.

Sign up to receive action alerts at key times specific to your state from our Policy and Advocacy Team.

Reyes, J. A., Elias, M. J., Parker, S. J., & Rosenblatt, J. L. (2012). Promoting educational equity in disadvantaged youth: The role of resilience and social-emotional learning. In S. Goldstein & R. B. Brooks (Eds.), Handbook of resilience in children (2 nd ed., pp. 349-370). Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-3661-4_20

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Why Trauma-Informed Approaches Help Advance Racial Equity | Committee for Children

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We're committed to improving specific issues related to our priority areas-social-emotional learning (SEL), child protection, and bullying prevention-that disproportionately impact the Black community and communities of color. Each month, our policy experts will answer questions relating to these priority areas and racial equity.

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Responding to Trauma in Your Classroom

Bad Behavior or Reacting to Trauma?

Think of a student who challenges you. Have you observed any of these behaviors in that student?

Excessive anger

Unusual startle reactions

Loss of appetite

Extreme fatigue

Physical or verbal aggression

Regular tardiness or absence from class

Perfectionistic, controlling or anxious behavior

Difficulty concentrating

Frequent headaches or stomachaches

Low self-confidence

Irritability

Clinginess

Trouble making friends

Self-harm or suicidal ideation

Hoarding

Risky behaviors (including drug or alcohol abuse or sexual acting out)

Panic attacks

Extreme self-reliance

Running away

Defiance

Alienation from peers

If you've observed even some of these behaviors (or other troubling symptoms), you may have a student who is directly or indirectly experiencing trauma. Trauma can be defined as the reaction to a shocking or painful event or series of negative events. Some traumas require immediate intervention and court-mandated reporting; others go by unmarked. Regardless of whether or not you are aware of the details, there are things you can do to mitigate the effects of trauma for individual students and for all students in your classroom.
Source: Mental Health Connection of Tarrant County
What Causes Trauma?

Trauma affects the ways individuals feel, think and behave. It influences self-perception as well as beliefs about other people and the world.

Though this list is not exhaustive, traumatic experiences can include:

Medical crises

Accidents or injuries (like a house fire or car collision that threatens the student's safety)

Bullying or harassment

Family separation (due to incarceration, deployment, divorce, foster placement or death)

Natural disaster

Abuse (emotional, physical or sexual)

Neglect

Observation of domestic, community or school violence

Substance abuse

Mental illness

Terrorism and war

Instability due to being unhoused

Poverty

Overt discrimination or constant microaggressions

Refugee or undocumented status

More students may suffer trauma-or suffer more trauma-than you can see or know. Trauma is difficult to assess and identify; it's also specific to the individual. An event that may traumatize one person may not traumatize another person. Moreover, the same event may lead to different trauma symptoms in different people.
Source: The National Child Traumatic Stress Network
Responding to Trauma

Proactively applying trauma-informed classroom strategies benefits all students. Students respond positively when educators get to know their individual circumstances, affirm their identities and cultivate empathy in the classroom. Here are some ideas to consider incorporating in your teaching practice:

Establish social and emotional safety in your classroom.

Social and emotional safety is the cornerstone of positive classroom outcomes. Research shows that students need to feel both physically and emotionally safe to learn. Students experiencing trauma, including bias, bullying and social isolation, are more likely to feel unsafe.
Strategies

Classroom contracts

Explicit anti-bullying or community-building curricula

Timely interventions in conflicts and hurtful exchanges

Teaching and modeling of empathy and active listening skills

Create a behavior-management plan that focuses on positive reinforcement.

Discipline and behavior management are central to classroom culture and often present unique challenges for students responding to traumatic events or experiences. Foster compassion for and among your students. Focus on praising students for appropriate classroom behavior, not on punishment.
Strategies

Implement student-generated agreements and contracts

Adopt "zero indifference" (NOT zero-tolerance) policies

Seek out training in restorative justice techniques

Explore stress-management strategies to diffuse tense situations and help students process feelings in the moment

Give students opportunities to demonstrate their strengths

Increase your self-awareness and trauma competency.

Increase your knowledge about trauma and how it may manifest for your students. Remember, students respond to trauma in different ways, and their responses may be influenced by cultural traditions, religious beliefs or familial relationships. Connect with students and their families to identify resources and services that can inform how best to support students who experience trauma.
Strategies

Seek professional development on working with specific identity groups

Share support resources with other educators

Connect with community organizations

Engage in ongoing self-assessment and reflection on your trauma responsiveness

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Trauma can have significant and lasting effects on students. This PD Café will help you learn how to recognize the signs of trauma, better understand the causes of trauma, and take steps to establish social and emotional safety in your classroom.

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October 2020 | Volume 78 | Number 2
Trauma-Sensitive Schools Pages 14-19

Paul Gorski

A major challenge at this school, as in many schools, was the leadership team's habit of embracing shiny new program after shiny new program rather than addressing deep institutional problems. Their latest shiny new program was trauma-informed education. That August, teachers attended two days of trauma-informed training. Counselors learned to identify students who carry the impact of trauma to school. It was a core focus for the school year.

"I'm a queer Black woman. Transgender," Shari said. As far as she knew, she was the only out transgender student at her school.

Several weeks prior, Shari explained, her counselor administered a survey to her. "He asked personal questions about my life, what I've experienced at home. It was intrusive," she said.

After the survey, Shari had asked more about it. "He called it ACEs," she shared, "for adverse childhood experiences."

"Here's what I want you to know," she told me now. "By a huge margin, the most adverse experiences in my life have happened here. My biggest source of trauma is how I'm treated at this school. That's what I told my counselor."

"How did he respond?"

"He said there was nothing on the ACEs questionnaire about that."

Shari described unrelenting transphobic and racist bullying, teachers refusing to use her preferred pronouns or her name, her absolute invisibility in health and other curricula, and other conditions that made school the bane of her well-being.

Is this what a trauma-informed school looks like?

All in on Trauma-Informed Education

When I share Shari's story, some educators assume I'm a critic of trauma-informed education. It's true, I am concerned about schools taking what I call the shiny new thing equity detour (Gorski, 2019)-embracing a program to solve institutional problems that a program, however popular, can't possibly solve.

But I'm also a champion of trauma-informed education, something I came by through experience. As an elementary-aged child, I was sexually abused repeatedly by an older boy who lived in my neighborhood. I know something of trauma.

I carried that trauma everywhere: soccer practice, the dinner table, school. And I behaved in perfectly reasonable ways for a sexually abused child to behave (Everstine & Everstine, 2015). I was restless. I passionately resisted being in confined spaces with adults.

Teachers called this "acting up." They punished me for little behaviors that I now know were proportionate to my trauma (as, really, any behavior is for a sexually abused child). Then, because I received poor behavior assessments, I was punished at home. I can't recall anyone being curious about why I behaved the way I did. There was no root cause behavior analysis, just reactive rule-flinging.

So, I'm all in on trauma-informed education-by which I mean I'm all in on what it can be if we commit to applying it mindfully and equitably.

Three Transformative Commitments

A few years ago, I shared my story with an elementary principal who was rolling out trauma-informed education in his school. He asked, "How would your teachers know what you were experiencing if you didn't tell them?" I thought, Is that the sort of question his trauma-informed training prepared him to ask? Does he really believe it was my responsibility to report something I didn't understand to adults I didn't trust?

I thought about Shari and other students drowning in traumas within trauma-informed schools. This principal's ideological blockage caused him to retraumatize me during a conversation about my trauma. No combination of trauma-informed practices would make him trauma-informed if he didn't work through that blockage.

The trouble surfaces when we apply trauma-informed education in ways that risk reproducing trauma or that ignore significant sources of trauma. It is in response to that trouble that I share three transformative commitments for trauma-informed education. My hope is that, by embracing these commitments, we might maximize the transformative potential of trauma-informed education rather than just layering it onto our program pile.

Commitment 1
Attend to the practices, policies, and aspects of institutional culture that traumatize children at school
My biggest source of trauma is how I'm treated here. In every school, the first trauma-informed step should be mapping out all the ways students, families, and even we, as educators, experience trauma at school. When we skip this step, we render the entire trauma-informed effort a hypocrisy.

It's important to understand that these traumas are not always-perhaps not even usually-associated with big, obvious traumatic events, although of course such events do happen, for example when a white referee requires a Black student-athlete to cut off his dreadlocks (Carey, 2019) or when school leaders refuse to take seriously the claims of sexual assault survivors (Green, 2019).

These causes of trauma aren't as rare as they ought to be, but they may be rarer than what Nadal (2018) calls microaggressive trauma: the accumulative impact of insidious, grinding traumatic experiences. Generally, individual experiences that accumulate into microaggressive trauma aren't recognized as traumatic by those of us who don't experience them; we tend to see them as isolated events, not building blocks of traumatic stress. One incident of ableist bullying or one instance of LGBTQI+ invisibility in sex education would not be classified as trauma by most technical definitions (Nadal, 2018). That's a problem.

But more to the point, these incidents rarely happen in isolation. They usually are parts of traumatizing patterns. It's the constant stream of transphobic bullying, plus our failure to address it as an institutional responsibility rather than a matter of individual behavior, plus curricular erasure, plus, plus, plus.

So, as we map potential causes of trauma within our schools, it's important to dig beneath incidents. How do we account for the damaging belief systems behind LGBTQI+ people's erasure from sex education curricula? What other policies and practices were informed by those belief systems? According to GLSEN (2017), 42 percent of transgender and gender-nonconforming students have been prevented from using their correct name or pronoun at school; 46 percent have been forced to use the incorrect bathroom at school. What is it about the institutional culture of a school that allows this to happen? What other traumas do we perpetuate by allowing heterosexist, transphobic cultures to persist? The same question applies to other belief systems liable to produce traumatizing patterns in schools, such as racism and ableism. If we don't address that underlying stuff, we're more trauma-avoidant than trauma-informed.

Commitment 2
We must infuse trauma-informed education with a robust understanding of, and responsiveness to, the traumas of systemic oppression
Shari associated her trauma with racism and transphobia at school. Her story is a critical lesson on why we should shake free from the deficit-oriented view that traumas are mostly the result of students' home lives. This view obscures the traumatizing impacts of systemic oppression. If we're not responsive to these impacts, we're enacting a privilege-laden version of trauma-informed education.

For decades, researchers have shown how racial and other oppressions can be traumatizing. They link traumatic stress and related symptoms like depression, anxiety, and even internalized oppression to racism (Carter, Kirkinis, & Johnson, 2020), heterosexism (Straub, McConnell, & Messman-Moore, 2018), Islamophobia (Samari, Alcalá, & Sharif, 2018), and other forms of systemic injustice. Consider that reality next to findings from a recent study in which researchers (English et al., 2020) followed 101 Black adolescents to identify how often they experienced racism. Turns out they experienced discernible racist acts more than five times per day. That's just discernible racist acts. They did not record insidious systemic racism. How are we accounting for that in trauma-informed schools?

Goldin and Khasnabis (2020) warn that, when we fail to incorporate systemic oppression into trauma-informed education, we risk "draw[ing] teachers' attention to the trauma behaviors students exhibit, potentially pathologizing children ... and then blaming their families for their trauma" (p. 10). This is deficit ideology. It can retraumatize students.

With a deeper trauma-informed vision, we recognize that many students of color experience the ravages of racism; that students experiencing poverty contend with brutal economic injustice. The issues to be addressed are the racism and the injustice. The best trauma-informed practices are rooted in anti-racism, and anti-oppression more broadly, not just in helping students cope with the impact of isolated traumatic events, and not just in assuming that a student whose family is experiencing poverty must be experiencing some sort of abuse at home. If I am not actively anti-racist, I am not trauma-informed.

As described in Commitment 1, the first step is refusing to recreate oppressive conditions in schools. The second step is collaborating with community organizations that fight conditions-police brutality, the scarcity of living wage work, environmental injustice-that threaten the well-being of students, families, and us. If you hire somebody to lead trauma-informed training, ask what the latest research shows about the relationship between racism or ableism and traumatic stress. If they don't have an answer, they are not trauma-informed and can't prepare you to be trauma-informed.

Commitment 3
Dislodge hyper-punitive cultures and ideologies
Bad ideologies are harder to break than bad practices. This might be why, in my experience, the hardest transition for most schools adopting trauma-informed education involves dislodging hyper-punitive educator ideologies and school cultures. Perhaps philosophically we recognize that avoiding reactive rule-flinging and responding to the root causes of student behavior is a trauma-informed practice. But to what extent do we apply this in practice? Hyper-punitive ideologies remain an education epidemic, even in supposedly trauma-informed schools.

I'm reminded of Carter, a high school student whose story illustrates the incompatibility of trauma-informed education and the mindless application of rules. After I delivered a brief presentation to his class, Carter pulled me aside, whispering, "I'm in a predicament."

Carter was gay but not out. He feared his parents would kick him out of the house if they discovered the truth. Still, classmates often presumed he was gay, calling him names or worse. Things were especially dire between fourth and fifth period, when a group of boys repeatedly assaulted him in an unsupervised stretch of hallway.

Carter worried for his physical safety. He also worried about the three tardies he had accrued during that grading period. He had found a nook where he sometimes hid until his tormenters passed, but that meant being 10 seconds late to class. The fourth tardy would mean a call home. That terrified him.

He had considered confiding in his fifth period teacher, but recently she shamed him in front of the class: Everyone seems capable of getting here on time, so what's your issue?

Curious after my conversation with Carter, I reviewed his school's student conduct handbook, which included big sections extolling the virtues of social-emotional learning and trauma-informed education. About halfway through the handbook I found a series of charts preassigning punishments for nearly every imaginable behavior. The biggest distinction was among various levels of major and minor infractions. And there it was under minor infractions: three tardies means a warning. Four, a call home. A few more, and Carter risked in-school suspension. He was on track to miss an entire day of instruction for missing less than two minutes of fifth period.

Most educators, I believe, would eventually ask Carter what the heck was going on. But Carter had reasons to be reluctant to respond even if asked.

From a trauma-informed perspective, I wondered about two things. First, if the school intended to shift ideologies and institutional cultures to avoid reactive rule-flinging and to respond, instead, to behaviors' underlying causes (which may be linked to trauma), why predetermine punishments? Second, why use presumptuous language like "infractions" at all? Is Carter the infract or or the infract ee in this scenario?

Nothing is simple, I know. It's hard to expect a school to address a specific string of incidents no adult knows is happening. But we should know if we work in schools that heterosexism, racism, and other oppressions are happening all the time. If we're sitting around waiting for students to report it, we're missing most of it. That's trauma-passive.

Being trauma-informed means consciously cultivating space in our mental models so that, even if we know nothing about a particular set of circumstances, we avoid the temptation to mindlessly apply rules. Carter was about to be punished harshly due to the school's failure to protect him from heterosexism. Again, perhaps no adult knew he was being targeted, although in a way that's hard to believe; generally, we know who's being targeted even if it's not happening in front of us. But if we're trauma-aware, we realize that the burden can't be on people-on children -experiencing trauma to educate those who created the institutional culture in which the trauma is happening. That expectation is, itself, potentially traumatizing.

If a child accrues a bunch of tardies, we must withhold judgment and show concern. If a child comes to school high, we must withhold judgement and show concern. Whatever a child does, the trauma-informed response is first to make sure everybody is safe, then withhold judgment and show concern.

When I make this point to groups of educators, inevitably a few argue accountability. "We have to hold students accountable or how will they learn responsibility?" This illustrates, for me, an ideological trap that is incompatible with trauma-informed education.

How does irresponsibly holding Carter or 7-year-old me accountable for the failures of adults and institutions in our lives teach us responsibility? In any case, when we abolish the hyper-punitive culture, we're not saying nobody should be held accountable for their behavior. Instead, we're acknowledging that no child should be held accountable for the ways we fail them. We're saying, hey, there are more humane, trauma-informed, and effective ways to engage with young people. We're acknowledging that trauma-informed education cannot live where hyper-punitive ideologies and institutional cultures are allowed to live.

Triumph and Transformation

As a final commitment, let's take trauma-informed care of ourselves, the community of educators. We are not immune to the effects of trauma. In a study about educator burnout, for example, Cher Chen and I (2015) found that educators of color who speak up about racial justice in their schools often face harsh and traumatizing repercussions, sometimes from their own colleagues.

I want to emphasize, again, the importance of trauma-informed education. The trick is striving for what it can be if we embrace it-not as a set of practices we apply selectively, but rather as a reimagining of how we relate with students and one another. When we apply it with its full robustness, it has the power to transform classrooms and schools. When we don't, it has the power to reproduce the harm it was designed to redress. Let's choose the former.

References

Carey, R. L. (2019). Imagining the comprehensive mattering of Black boys and young men in society and schools: Toward a new approach. Harvard Educational Review, 89(3), 370-396.

Carter, R. T., Kirkinis, K., & Johnson, V. E. (2020). Relationships between trauma symptoms and race-based traumatic stress. Traumatology, 26(1), 11-18.

English, D., Lambert, S. F., Tynes, B. M., Bowleg, L., Zea, M. C., & Howard, L. C. (2020). Daily multidimensional racial discrimination among Black U.S. American adolescents. Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology, 66, 1-12.

Everstine, D. S., & Everstine, L. (2015). Sexual trauma in children and adolescents: Dynamics & treatment. New York: Routledge.

GLSEN. (2017). The 2017 national school climate survey. New York: Author.

Goldin, S., & Khasnabis, D. (2020, February 19). Trauma-informed practice is a powerful tool. But it is also incomplete. Education Week.

Gorski, P. (2019). Avoiding racial equity detours. Educational Leadership, 76(7), 56-61.

Gorski, P., & Chen, C. (2015). 'Frayed all over': The causes and consequences of activist burnout among social justice education activists. Educational Studies, 51(5), 385-405.

Green, E. (2019, May 11). 'It's like the wild west': Sexual assault victims struggle in K-12 schools. The New York Times.

Nadal, K. (2018). Microaggressions and traumatic stress: Theory, research, and clinical treatment. Washington, D.C.: American Psychological Association.

Samari, G., Alcalá, H. E., & Sharif, M. Z. (2018). Islamophobia, health, and public health: A systematic literature review. American Journal of Public Health, 108(6), e1-e9.

Straub, K. T., McConnell, A. A., & Messman-Moore, T. L. (2018). Internalized heterosexism and posttraumatic stress disorder symptoms: The mediating role of shame proneness among trauma-exposed sexual minority women. Psychology of Sexual Orientation and Gender Diversity, 5(1), 99-108.

Paul Gorski is the founder of the Equity Literacy Institute, a longtime teacher educator, and the author of several books, including Reaching and Teaching Students in Poverty: Strategies for Erasing the Opportunity Gap (Teachers College Press, 2013). Follow him on Twitter.

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October 2020 | Volume 78 | Number 2 Trauma-Sensitive Schools Pages 14-19 Paul Gorski A major challenge at this school, as in many schools, was the leadership team's habit of embracing shiny new program after shiny new program rather than addressing deep institutional problems. Their latest shiny new program was trauma-informed education.

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Confessions of a Recovering Praise Manipulator

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Confessions of a Recovering Praise Manipulator

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Britt Hawthorne

I'm standing in front of a group of 4th, 5th, and 6th graders who are late for lunch, again. Learners are hastily stowing away assignments, a few girls run to the bathroom, and a small clique of boys are trying to solve a Rubik's Cube. Half of the students are lined up, quietly waiting for the rest of the class. I'm on my third plea for order when I instinctively start saying, "I really like how quietly Tiara lined up. Thank you, Tiara."

Early in my teaching career, I learned how to manipulate my learners through praise. I would single out one child who was doing what I wanted, announce what I liked, and then slyly watch the rest of the class follow suit. Praise became another way of conditioning my students' observable behavior, and along with it came a whole host of undesirable effects (see "The Perils of Praise" for more).

Now, I work to create a healthy, intentional balance that doesn't rely on praise to achieve results. Praise isn't always bad, but it can become manipulative when it has an ulterior motive to influence student behavior versus expressing genuine heartfelt feelings. Manipulative praise can hinder a learner's ability to reach their fullest potential. I became familiar with a praise-free approach while working in a Montessori school, where we would guide learners to develop soft skills such as independence, teamwork, time management, and critical thinking. We helped students and staff develop and practice those skills through organic success and failure.

Some teacher education programs spend an entire semester on classroom management, studying how to control learner's bodies through tips and tricks; Montessori teachers, however, spend a few hours on this type of preparation. For them, classroom management means managing the physical environment of the classroom. If a child is stabbing an eraser with a pencil to create a hole, I simply take away the eraser and say, "This eraser is not helping you erase today. I will restore the eraser and you can try again tomorrow if you need to erase something." This was quite a paradigm shift for me-from a controlled environment to one that cultivates independence and appropriate risk taking.

The Montessori methods of teaching value learner agency over teacher control and student compliance. Before I trained in these methods, my instruction was driven by a need for recognition, power, and control, and praise manipulation was just another tool in my classroom management toolbox. I may have prided myself on quiet straight lines and obedient students-seen as hallmarks of a good classroom-but my focus on compliance was ultimately harmful to my students' development. My methods may have been expected, and even commended by my peers, but I did not become an educator to get students to walk in straight lines. What I truly want is to create opportunities for learners to explore and discuss ideas and then make their own choices based on the new knowledge they construct. Although I've managed to (mostly) eliminate praise manipulation from my teacher lexicon, the road to recovery isn't easy.

So how can we set expectations but avoid conditioning students through praise? How do I signal to the class that I want them to line up for lunch, without singling out (and creating a codependent relationship with) Tiara? You can shake the praise habit by empowering learner voice, reminding your learners of shared goals, and most important, noticing without evaluating (see "Alternatives to Praise" for more).

Just because praise can be problematic doesn't mean you have to throw out all praise with last week's lasagna. Even in Montessori classrooms, where we strive for a praise-free environment, you will occasionally hear compliments like, "You all surprised me with how quiet you were during the fire drill. Thank you." It's when we depend on praise to get something from our students-and they, in turn, to get approval from us-that it becomes manipulative. So, before you praise, ask yourself: What's the intention behind this appreciation? Is it because I want something in return? If so, be upfront and transparent, just as you would wish of your learners. Transparent talk builds trust and mutual respect in the classroom.

Finally, shallow praise is not a replacement for familial love. I often hear, "But they don't get enough praise at home." Praise is not a fundamental need; love is. Love and praise are not the same. Telling a child you are proud of her or that she did a great job running fast in P.E. will not heal or save her from a lack of love. If you find yourself in this situation, try using intentional, meaningful words of affirmation like "You belong here, too," or "You are inspiring." Then work to give the child the tools to love themselves through self-affirmations: "I belong here." "I am inspiring."

If you're unsure whether you're addicted to manipulative praise or how to change, take some time to reflect on your classroom practices.

Reflection Questions

What would happen if the learner didn't receive my praise? What would happen if I stopped the praise today? What would happen if I didn't stop the praise?

Who is being affirmed by my praise? Am I praising the same learners? Why?

Why am I praising the learner? How do I feel after I have praised the learner? How do they feel after I have praised them?

What am I hoping to gain/change/effect by praising?

Who is being silenced by my praise?

With reflection and practice, we can shift the classroom culture from one where students depend on praise to one where they depend on themselves.

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Confessions of a Recovering Praise Manipulator

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Britt Hawthorne I'm standing in front of a group of 4th, 5th, and 6th graders who are late for lunch, again. Learners are hastily stowing away assignments, a few girls run to the bathroom, and a small clique of boys are trying to solve a Rubik's Cube.

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ATN Guide to Racial and Restorative Justice in.pdf

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ATN Guide to Racial and Restorative Justice in.pdf

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The following is a curated list of resources selected by CASEL staff that focuses on a systemic approach to social and emotional learning.

Articles

Brackett, M. A., Bailey, C. S., Hoffman, J. D., & Simmons, D. N. (2019). RULER: A theory-driven, systemic approach to social, emotional, and academic learning. Educational Psychologist, 54, 144-161. https://doi.org/10.1080/00461520.2019.1614447
Purchase the article

Mahoney, J. L., Weissberg, R. P., Greenberg, M. T., Dusenbury, L., Jagers, R. J., Niemi, K., Schlinger, M., Schund, J., Shriver, T., VanAusdal, K., & Yoder, N. (accepted for publication). Systemic social and emotional learning: Promoting educational success for all preschool to high school students. American Psychologist.
View the article

Meyers, D. C., Domitrovich, C. E., Dissi, R., Trejo, J., & Greenberg, M. T. (2018). Supporting systemic social and emotional learning with a schoolwide implementation model. Evaluation and Program Planning, 73, 53-61.
Download the article

Soutter, M. (2019). Unintended lessons of SEL programs. Phi Delta Kappan. Retrieved from: https://www.kappanonline.org/unintended-lessons-sel-social-emotional-learning-soutter/
View the article

Oberle, E., Domitrovich, C. E., Meyers, D. C., & Weissberg, R. P. (2016). Establishing systemic social and emotional learning approaches in schools: A framework for schoolwide implementation. Cambridge Journal of Education, 46, 277-297.
View the article

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The following is a curated list of resources selected by CASEL staff that focuses on a systemic approach to social and emotional learning. Brackett, M. A., Bailey, C. S., Hoffman, J. D., & Simmons, D. N. (2019). RULER: A theory-driven, systemic approach to social, emotional, and academic learning. Educational Psychologist, 54, 144-161.

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Unintended lessons of SEL programs  - kappanonline.org

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Unintended lessons of SEL programs  - kappanonline.org

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Although social and emotional learning may be intended to empower students, many elementary students in these programs learn to equate leadership with obedience.
Recent years have seen a renewed interest in social and emotional learning (SEL) to promote well-rounded student success (e.g., Duckworth & Seligman, 2005; Seider, 2012; Tough, 2011, 2012). Indeed, the most recent issue of Phi Delta Kappan included a comprehensive examination of four SEL meta-analyses reporting on a host of positive outcomes for students, further validating the importance of social and emotional learning in schools (Mahoney, Durlak, & Weissberg, 2018). Programs may advertise certain outcome claims, many of them supported by research, and teachers may perceive initiatives as having notable outcomes, but how do students themselves experience these programs? If we do not genuinely listen to students, our picture of SEL's value will be incomplete.

From 2013 to 2017, I studied a large SEL organization that currently has programs in place in several thousand schools and that aspires to foster social and emotional learning and youth empowerment in participating students. The study involved nearly 1,000 4th and 5th graders attending 12 schools in urban, suburban, and rural districts across three states. Interestingly, interviews with teachers and students revealed very different perspectives. These differences are instructive in highlighting best practices for carrying out SEL initiatives beyond this particular program, and specifically in highlighting the importance of listening to students.
Teacher vs. student perspectives
Teachers and administrators across the participating schools overwhelmingly perceived the SEL program to be empowering for students. Ms. Cummings, for example, a 5th-grade teacher at Tully Elementary School, spoke about how the initiative encouraged her to have higher expectations of her students and give them more responsibility:

It definitely has changed the way I think about the consequences that I give . . . I'm a very like, controlling person. So I made it different, it's like, "You guys work it out." [Before,] I wasn't giving them enough credit. I was like, they're 10 and 11, they can't do this. And that's not true. They have way more social skills than we think.

Ms. Becker, a counselor at Tully Elementary, felt the program was empowering because of the way it celebrated each individual student:

It's just the simple idea that every single student is gifted. And that it's kind of our job as professional educators to reach in there and pull that out, and then hold it up in front of them. So they're forced to recognize their gift and to use it. And so it's just an empowering thought for our students who often, especially here with this demographic, often don't have a lot of control. There are a lot of factors in their lives that they can't control. So it's so empowering for them to take control of their learning, and their behavior, and it's, you know, it's just a really powerful program for them.

Ms. Becker believed that the program inspired her to acknowledge her students' strengths, and, in so doing, empower and encourage them to take ownership over their own learning. Indeed, 10 of the 12 educators interviewed spoke of ways they felt the program gave students more agency, control, and leadership.

However, participating students had very different perspectives. I asked students a number of questions related to the program's impact on SEL, youth voice, and school culture. Given the program's emphasis on leadership, I also asked students, "What does it mean to you to be a leader?" The most prominent theme from responses to this question was that students perceived leadership in terms of compliance or good behavior. For example, Abel, a 4th grader at Venture Elementary School, responded to the question in the following way:

ABEL: They don't be a follower.

INTERVIEWER: Are there ways that you try to be a leader in your class?

ABEL: Yes.

INTERVIEWER: Yeah? Like what do you do?

ABEL: To, uh, like be quiet.

Eliza, a 5th grader at Nodes Elementary, said that to her, being a leader "means like getting good grades and not being bad. Listening to teachers." Angela, a 4th grader at Orion Elementary, answered the same question by saying, "Like when we're not doing good in, um, our lines, we help keep people quiet. So we could get a good report or something. Like when we have a substitute." When Leigh, a 5th grader at Tully Elementary, was asked about what a leader does, she responded, "Like, help people. Be in charge of yourself. And um, not to be disrespectful to adults." Edward, a 5th grader at Nodes Elementary, commented, "A leader is a person who follows the rules." Guadalupe, a 5th grader at Hill Elementary, spoke a bit about the social-emotional components of leadership, but then gave an example related to compliance:

INTERVIEWER: What does it mean to you to be a leader? Like what is something a leader does?

GUADALUPE: Uh, nice? Um, don't get angered as easily, and patient?

INTERVIEWER: Are there ways that you try to be a leader in your class?

GUADALUPE: Um, I'm always telling everybody to be quiet.

Overall, 22 of 36 students spoke of the program in terms of compliance at some point in their interview. While clear and consistent rules and expectations are baseline needs for safe and effective schools (e.g., Jones, 2007; Simonson et al., 2008; Wentzel, 1993), these students' obedience-based definitions of leadership are surprising given the program's emphasis on youth empowerment. Although some students, such as Angela and Guadalupe, spoke of getting others to behave, I saw their responses as being more about compliance than about being an empowered role model. When students view leadership and compliance as synonymous, these same young people can hardly perceive themselves as empowered. Importantly, all the schools in the study serve predominantly low-income youth of color, adding a critical layer of concern to the findings, and revealing key lessons for educators.

Quantitative analyses further reinforced students' interview responses. Surveys were administered to 982 students at the beginning and end of the 2014-15 school year, measuring their sense of empowerment and voice and their capacities in areas of social and emotional learning aligned with the Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning's (CASEL's) five competencies - self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, relationship skills, and responsible decision making. Students attending the SEL schools demonstrated lower scores at the end of the year (controlling for their scores in the fall) on 9 of the 13 survey measures than students attending matched comparison schools in the same districts (the differences on the other four measures were not statistically significant). There are a few factors, such as student confusion and inconsistent implementation, that may have contributed to these negative survey results, but analyzed in concert with the qualitative interviews, one likely explanation is student disillusionment.
Student-centered SEL
How can schools resolve this tension between teacher intent and student experience? These three recommendations can help schools ensure that their SEL programs aren't merely teaching students to follow the rules.
Consider intent
As educators, we must clarify our purpose for bringing SEL initiatives into schools: Is our goal to nurture the whole child, or is it to give students just the tools they need to foster academic success? If we are committed to educating the whole child, then SEL is a valuable way to cultivate complex human beings in diverse contexts often deeply intertwined with histories of racism, classism, and inequality. Although it is absolutely critical for students to be socially responsible in their classrooms and to be good citizens, SEL programs have a larger purpose than merely creating compliant children who may be afraid to use their voices - especially if those children are from historically marginalized communities. An approach to SEL that focuses solely on academics may view students from more of a deficit perspective, judging students to be lacking and needing to be improved. Intention matters.
Prepare for roadblocks
Teachers' and administrators' emotions, competencies, histories, fears, and reactions can often impede reform. For example, veteran educators may feel as though they are novices again when asked to try new programs and will often unintentionally attempt to fit new techniques into old ways of doing things as a coping mechanism (Evans, 1996). Similarly, when unclear on the deeper purpose and outcome of a reform, teachers will sometimes make surface-level alterations without truly understanding the importance of a significant change (Cohen, 1990; Evans, 1996; Green & Hauser, 2009). This phenomenon is sometimes referred to as "false clarity" (Evans, 1996; Fullan & Stiegelbauer, 1991, p. 70) and is exemplified in David Cohen's (1990) qualitative case study of a teacher who proudly explains how she has implemented a new math program, while the researcher perceives her practices to be ineffective and virtually unchanged. Even if most teachers are deeply committed to promoting student leadership through SEL, change can be difficult if these same teachers are pulled in multiple directions by various constituencies, such as students, parents, district demands, curriculum, program expectations, and even personal commitments within their own lives (Evans, 1996).

It is also important to note that efforts to foster authentic social and emotional learning and youth voice often are in deep conflict with the hierarchical nature of schools (Freire, 1970/2000; Morrell & Duncan-Andrade, 2008; Shor, 1992; Silva, 2003; Silva & Rubin, 2003). Most SEL programs do not claim to require foundational restructuring in the schools in which they are adopted but instead suggest that social and emotional learning and youth empowerment can be fostered within the existing system (e.g., Quaglia & Corso, 2014; Weissberg et al., 2015). The conflict between youth empowerment and a highly regulated school structure poses critical tensions for SEL initiatives and for the teachers attempting to implement them. If teachers neglect to address this tension explicitly, they can (whether intentionally or unintentionally) end up making only surface-level changes. For teachers to be truly on board with a program, they must be willing to change their practice in more significant ways if necessary.
Listen to students
Finally, and most important, student perception matters. Well-intentioned youth voice efforts can fail if implemented inauthentically and without regular self-reflection (e.g., Levinson, 2012; Quaglia & Corso, 2014; Quiroz, 2001; Silva, 2003; Silva & Rubin, 2003). Teachers and schools must deliberately plan for how to avoid such pitfalls as quick dismissal of student voices and prioritization of privileged voices (Silva, 2003).

One recommendation for more effective and authentic change is the adoption of action-reflection cycles (e.g., Freire, 1970/2000; Dobbs, Ippolito, & Charner-Laird, 2017) aimed at evaluating student outcomes, gauging student perceptions, supporting teachers through resistance to change, and establishing an awareness of - and active preparation for - inherent power dynamics in schools. These steps in this process include "defining an inquiry question or topic; building background knowledge and drawing on experts; collaborative idea generation; individual 'idea testing'; shared reflection and idea revision" (Dobbs et al., 2017, p. 35).

Faculty and students could engage in formalized inquiry cycles to address questions such as, "Are students being authentically empowered?" and "Are teachers really extending leadership opportunities to all students?" and "Are empowerment efforts just surface level?" and "How is social and emotional success really defined at our school?" These practices are especially helpful when outcomes are not clearly defined and solutions to reach those outcomes are not clearly delineated (Heifetz et al., 2009). While this work is typically done with teachers and teacher leaders, it can include student voice as well.
Empowering SEL
When students are encouraged to speak up but are ignored, or when schools and teachers listen disingenuously, young people can be left feeling disillusioned and disempowered. SEL programs have enormous potential to support student success across a range of outcomes, but we must be mindful of student voices to accurately measure how well these initiatives are truly achieving their stated goals. If SEL programs are operating within traditionally structured schools, educators must plan strategically for how to work around and ultimately against entrenched systems that may deprioritize student empowerment, or even promote student compliance over student leadership. Listening to the students is a crucial place to start.
References
Cohen, D.K. (1990). A revolution in one classroom: The case of Mrs. Oublier. Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, 12 (3), 311-329.

Dobbs, C.L., Ippolito, J., & Charner-Laird, M. (2017). Investigating disciplinary literacy: A framework for collaborative professional learning. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Education Press.

Duckworth, A.L. & Seligman, M. (2005). Self-discipline outdoes IQ in predicting academic performance of adolescents. Psychological Science, 16 (12), 939-944.

Evans, R. (1996). The human side of school change: Reform, resistance, and the real-life problems of innovation. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.

Freire, P. (1970/2000). Pedagogy of the oppressed (30th Anniversary Edition). New York, NY: Continuum.

Fullan, M. & Stiegelbauer, S. (1991). The new meaning of educational change. New York, NY: Teachers College Press.

Green, A. & Hauser, J. (2009). Managing to change the world: The nonprofit leader's guide to getting results. Washington, DC: The Management Center.

Heifetz, R.A., Grashow, A., Linsky, M. (2009). The practice of adaptive leadership: Tools and tactics for changing your organization and the world. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Business Press.

Jones, F. (2007) Tools for teaching (2nd ed.). Santa Cruz, CA: Fredric Jones Associates.

Levinson, M. (2012). Diversity and civic education. In D.E. Campbell, M. Levinson, & F.M. Hess (Eds.), Making civics count: Citizenship education for a new generation (pp. 89-114). Cambridge, MA: Harvard Education Press.

Mahoney, J.L., Durlak, J.A., & Weissberg, R.P. (2018). An update on social and emotional learning outcome research. Phi Delta Kappan, 100 (4), 8-13.

Morrell, E. & Duncan-Andrade, J. (2008). The art of critical pedagogy. New York, NY: Peter Lang Publishing, Inc. (pp. 49-67).

Quaglia, R.J. & Corso, M.J. (2014). Student voice: The instrument of change. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.

Quiroz, P.A. (2001). The silencing of Latino student "voice": Puerto Rican and Mexican narratives in eighth grade and high school. Anthropology & Education Quarterly, 32 (3), 326-349.

Seider, S. (2012). Character compass: How powerful school culture can point students toward success. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Education Press.

Shor, I. (1992). Empowering education: Critical teaching for social change. Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press.

Silva, E.M. (2003). Struggling for inclusion: A case study of students as reform partners. In B.C. Rubin & E.M. Silva (Eds.), Critical voices in school reform (pp. 11-30). London: Routledge Falmer.

Silva, E.M. & Rubin, B.C. (2003). Introduction: Missing voices: Listening to students' experiences with school reform. In B.C. Rubin & E.M. Silva (Eds.), Critical voices in school reform (pp. 1-7). London: Routledge Falmer.

Simonson, B., Fairbanks, S., Briesch, A., Myers, D., & Sugai, G. (2008). Evidence-based practices in classroom management: Considerations for research to practice. Education and Treatment of Children, 31 (3), 351-380.

Tough, P. (2011, February 14). What if the secret to success is failure? The New York Times Magazine.

Tough, P. (2012). How children succeed. New York, NY: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.

Weissberg, R.P., Durlak, J.A., Domitrovich, C.E., & Gullotta, T.P. (2015). Social-emotional learning: Past, present, and future. In J.A. Durlak, C.E. Domitrovich, R.P. Weissberg, T.P. Gullotta (Eds.), Handbook of social and emotional learning: Research and practice (pp. 3-19). New York, NY: The Guilford Press.

Wentzel, K. (1993). Does being good make the grade? Social behavior and academic competence in middle school. Journal of Educational Psychology, 85 (2), 357-364.

Citation: Soutter, M. (2019). Unintended lessons of SEL programs. Phi Delta Kappan, 100  (5), 59-62.

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Unintended lessons of SEL programs - kappanonline.org

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Although social and emotional learning may be intended to empower students, many elementary students in these programs learn to equate leadership with obedience. Recent years have seen a renewed interest in social and emotional learning (SEL) to promote well-rounded student success (e.g., Duckworth & Seligman, 2005; Seider, 2012; Tough, 2011, 2012).

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info@empathy-action.org

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Drop a comment! =)

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What Anti-Racist Teachers Do Differently 

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What Anti-Racist Teachers Do Differently 

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They view the success of black students as central to the success of their own teaching.

Editor's Note: In 1988, a teacher most commonly had 15 years of experience. In recent years, that number is closer to just three years leading a classroom. The "On Teaching" series focuses on the wisdom of veteran teachers.
Ask black students who their favorite teacher is, and they will joyfully tell you. Ask them what it is about their favorite teacher, and most will say some version of this: They know how to work with me. So much is in that statement. It means that these students want to work, that they see their teachers as partners in the learning process, and that they know the teacher-student relationship is one in which they both have power. In other words, black students know that they bring intellect to the classroom, and they know when they are seen-and not seen.

As the principal of San Francisco's Mission High School and an anti-racist educator for more than 30 years, I have witnessed countless black students thrive in classrooms where teachers see them accurately and show that they are happy to have them there. In these classes, students choose to sit in the front of the class, take careful notes, shoot their hands up in discussions, and ask unexpected questions that cause the teacher and other classmates to stop and think. Given the chance, they email, text, and call the teachers who believe in them. In short, these students are everything their families and community members have raised and supported them to be.

I have seen some of these very same students walk into another teacher's classroom, go to the last row of desks, and put their head down. I have seen them sit frozen in their seat, staring at an assignment-when earlier I had heard them make jokes, talk excitedly about the content of their history class, celebrate solving a vexing algebra equation, or shake a test tube with authority, waiting for a result. Their report cards often reveal this disparity in classroom experiences: A's and B's in classes where they feel valued and C's, D's, or even F's in classes where they don't.

When black students' academic strengths are overlooked, black students are marginalized. They are kept out of advanced courses, given bad grades, and sent to the dean's office. Over the years, the power that they initially bring to school is siphoned off by educators at every level of the educational system who do not respect, and in some cases do not wish to respect, the intellectual contributions of black students.

Anti-racist teachers take black students seriously. They create a curriculum with black students in mind, and they carefully read students' work to understand what they are expressing. This might sound fairly standard, but making black students feel valued goes beyond general "good teaching." It requires educators to view the success of black students as central to the success of their own teaching. This is a paradigm shift: Instead of only asking black students who are not doing well in class to start identifying with school, we also ask teachers whose black students are not doing well in their classes to start identifying with those students.

I spent the majority of my career in the classroom, and I loved it because-to do it well-it required that I call on all aspects of my humanity. Standing in front of my black students, I knew that it was my responsibility to invite them into the classroom and then to see, push, and protect them once they were there. Over the years, collaborating with other anti-racist educators, I co-developed an approach that was successful-and it showed in the students' attendance, grades, and quality of work.

We read articles and books, and we attend workshops centered around black pedagogy. That helps us examine cultural differences in discourse styles, so we can better understand black students' analytical approaches in essays. We learn how to integrate oral language into our curriculum, such as adding a debate unit or a poetry-recitation assignment, and to provide ample opportunities for students to work together. And we learn that nothing goes without saying and that praise and direction should be plentiful. In essence, we do what works for black students, which also works for all students.

Educators who are committed to black students use evidence in their own classrooms to find ways to improve. They analyze the assignments handed in, identifying ways in which their teaching reached-and didn't reach-all of their students. They recognize the brilliance of a black student's contribution to a class discussion and seize on it. They disaggregate data such as grades and attendance by ethnicity, look for patterns, and problematize their own practice-rather than assume that their students weren't motivated or sufficiently prepared to engage with challenging material. They ask themselves: Why did Taylor get a C on the final when he earned an A or a B on all of his other assignments, many of them equally demanding? Why is Vince silent in his group? What inspired Hile to write multiple drafts of her essay, each time asking for more detailed feedback? They seek support from colleagues who are effective teachers for all of their students, including black students, because they know that the changes they make to their teaching practice will have an impact on their students' achievement. All of this makes them better educators.

Teachers who do not value black students will shift the discussion away from their own practice when they see that black students are not succeeding in their classes. They will create bonds that eventually turn into factions with fellow educators who are also unwilling to change their approach.

To fight against systemic racism means to buck norms. Educators at every level must be willing to be uncomfortable in their struggle for black students, recognizing students' power and feeding it by honoring their many contributions to our schools. Teachers need to insist on using their own power to consistently reveal and examine their practice, and seek input from black stakeholders; they must invite black parents to the table, listen to their concerns and ideas, and act on them. Principals must clearly and consistently communicate the anti-racist vision for their school, create professional-development opportunities for staff, recognize teachers who successfully teach all of their students, and intervene when they see problems. District-level administrators must more firmly root their anti-racist messaging in black students' school experiences, making expectations for educators clear. And school-board members need to listen to educators who have shown efficacy in educating black students. They must enact policies that hold us all accountable to our black families. We must make demands of ourselves and work together in our communities.

The only measure of our anti-racist teaching will be the academic success of all of our students, including our black students.
This article is part of our project "On Teaching," which is supported by grants from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, the Spencer Foundation, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and the Panta Rhea Foundation.

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What Anti-racist Teachers Do Differently

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They view the success of black students as central to the success of their own teaching. Editor's Note: In 1988, a teacher most commonly had 15 years of experience. In recent years, that number is closer to just three years leading a classroom. The "On Teaching" series focuses on the wisdom of veteran teachers.

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Culturally Responsive Teaching & the Brain

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Culturally Responsive Teaching & the Brain on Facebook Watch

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Culturally Responsive Teaching and The Brain

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Culturally Responsive Teaching and The Brain

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Culturally Responsive Teaching and the Brain: Promoting Authentic Engagement and Rigor Among Culturally and Linguistically Diverse Students a book by Zaretta L Hammond

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A bold, brain-based teaching approach to culturally responsive instruction To close the achievement gap, diverse classrooms need a proven framework for optimizing student engagement. Culturally responsive instruction has shown promise, but many teachers have struggled with its implementation--unti…

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Cultivating Genius: An Equity Framework for Culturally and Historically Responsive Literacy a book by Gholdy Muhammad

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In Cultivating Genius, Dr. Gholdy E. Muhammad presents a four-layered equity framework--one that is grounded in history and restores excellence in literacy education. This framework, which she names, Historically Responsive Literacy, was derived from the study of literacy development within 19th-cen…

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"A useful rejoinder, half a century on, to Paulo Freire's Pedagogy of the Oppressed; deserving of a broad audience among teachers and educational policymakers."
-- Kirkus Reviews

"This text is helpful for gaining a better grasp of oppression and what teachers can do about it."
-- Library Journal

"Love's new book is uncategorizable in the best way possible. It is memoir, history, indictment, textbook, guide, and manifesto . . . Educators who aspire to activism will find inspiration in the pages of this book."
-- Rethinking Schools

"Offering readers a profoundly fresh perspective on teaching, Bettina Love breaks new ground. Using both the language of critical thinking and radical resistance, this book challenges and dares us all to teach for justice."
--bell hooks

"Through unflinching and daring inquiry, Dr. Bettina Love has stepped out on faith to articulate our pain, suffering, and eternal search for joy. Her words resurrect the abolitionist credo of 'education' over 'school.' Because they are two different things, the question remains: can school be the place where education happens or do we need to radically rethink what we're doing? Dr. Love's work suggests that if we do not choose the latter, we are complicit in our own demise."
--David Stovall, professor of African American studies and criminology, law, and justice, University of Illinois at Chicago, and coauthor of Twenty-First-Century Jim Crow Schools

"This book is exactly what we need: a powerful indictment of our education system as an industry that robs dark children of their potential. Dr. Love challenges us to become abolitionists by holding ourselves and our colleagues accountable for our complicity in perpetuating the 'educational survival complex.' As educators, we must recognize the impact of whiteness on our classrooms, demand the impossible, welcome the struggle, and refuse to oppress dark children by calling out racism, recognizing our students' cultures and histories, and showing them they matter to our communities and to our world. This isn't about reform; it's about freedom, and I'm moving from ally to coconspirator. Every educator needs to read this book, to freedom dream, and to challenge oppression with intersectional justice."
--Mandy Manning, 2018 National Teacher of the Year

"This much-needed book is at once personal, analytic, poetic, exacting, and soaring. Dr. Bettina Love brilliantly weaves, in artisanal and scholarly fashion, the threads and fabric of history, the present, and the possible future. She weaves in a way that we are invited to understand what moving past survival means, in personal, communal, and nation-building ways. This book is a call to building a different future: one made for freedom."
--Leigh Patel, author of Decolonizing Educational Research

"This book is a treasure! With rigorous intersectional theory, careful cultural criticism, and brave personal reflection, We Want To Do More Than Survive dares us to dream and struggle toward richer and thicker forms of educational freedom. With the mind of a scholar and the heart of a revolutionary, Bettina Love has penned a book that places her in the tradition of Freire, Giroux, hooks, and Ladson-Billlings. This beautiful text also affirms her position as one of the leading education scholars of her generation."
--Marc Lamont Hill, author of Nobody: Casualties of America's War on the Vulnerable, from Ferguson to Flint and Beyond

" We Want To Do More Than Survive is endarkened feminist wisdom in dark times. In the tradition of a skilled kente weaver, Dr. Love brings together abolitionist traditions of educational freedom work with contemporary struggles for Black humanity and creates a stunning tribute to the absolute necessity of joy and love in resistance struggles. What sets this book apart is Love's critical understanding that the splendor of kente is seen not in the weaver's individual efforts or strips of cloth, but instead when those pieces are woven together to illuminate our larger narrative as people of color in community. That narrative of Black freedom dreaming is this book you hold in your hands. And it is a must-read for those who love dark people, who love education, and who love the possibilities of educational freedom as intersectional justice right now."
--Cynthia B. Dillard (Nana Mansa II of Mpeasem, Ghana), Mary Frances Early Endowed Professor of Teacher Education, University of Georgia, and author of On Spiritual Strivings: Transforming an African American Woman's Academic Life

"Bettina Love has managed to write a book that is both a love song to our children and a potent weapon. Part memoir, part manual, part manifesto, We Want to Do More Than Survive explains that abolitionist teaching is neither a new set of standards nor a social justice curriculum, but a revolutionary commitment to transforming ourselves, our country, and the world. Written in breathtaking prose and bold cadences, it reminds us that 'mattering' is a verb, and making sure all of our kids truly matter is unfinished business for which we are all responsible. Educator or not, read this book: it is our North Star."
--Robin D. G. Kelley, author of Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination

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We Want to Do More Than Survive: Abolitionist Teaching and the Pursuit of Educational Freedom a book by Bettina Love

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Winner of the 2020 Society of Professors of Education Outstanding Book Award Drawing on personal stories, research, and historical events, an esteemed educator offers a vision of educational justice inspired by the rebellious spirit and methods of abolitionists.

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CASEL's New Definition of SEL: What You Need to Know

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CASEL's New Definition of SEL: What You Need to Know

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Twenty-six years ago, the Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning (CASEL) first introduced the term "social and emotional learning (SEL)" to the education world. The SEL field has evolved tremendously since then.

updates reinforce CASEL's commitment to "an expanded vision and growing research base for social and emotional learning" that emphasizes SEL's ability to This year, CASEL has released a 2020 update to the definition of SEL along with new iterations of the "CASEL 5" core competencies and "CASEL Wheel" visual framework. These advance educational equity and excellence.

As Karen Niemi, president and CEO of CASEL, said on an October 2020 webinar announcing the updates:
"As things have evolved, we have seen a lot of variability around the understanding of what constitutes 'high quality' SEL and how to implement SEL. We see the need to offer clarity around what is necessary to achieve the vision for SEL... for educators, for adults, and for young people everywhere, particularly those who have historically been marginalized."
Below, we've summarized the updates to CASEL's definitions of social-emotional learning (SEL). Learn what changed, why it matters, and what it means for your school or district.

What Is CASEL's Updated Definition of Social and Emotional Learning?

Per CASEL's press release, the new definition of social and emotional learning is as follows:

Social and emotional learning (SEL) is an integral part of education and human development. SEL is the process through which all young people and adults acquire and apply the knowledge, skills, and attitudes to develop healthy identities, manage emotions and achieve personal and collective goals, feel and show empathy for others, establish and maintain supportive relationships, and make responsible and caring decisions.

SEL advances educational equity and excellence through authentic school-family-community partnerships to establish learning environments and experiences that feature trusting and collaborative relationships, rigorous and meaningful curriculum and instruction, and ongoing evaluation. SEL can help address various forms of inequity and empower young people and adults to co-create thriving schools and contribute to safe, healthy, and just communities.

Watch the webinar: "A Reintroduction to SEL: CASEL's Definition and Framework" (Oct. 2020)

What Changed in the Definition?

CASEL's updates to the definition for SEL align with how social and emotional learning is being implemented and practiced in schools and districts today. The new definition more clearly outlines the role of social-emotional learning in promoting equity in education. It also emphasizes student agency while acknowledging that the context and environment in which students live cannot be dissociated from their academic, social, and emotional development.

Exploring the new definition in full, here are the key additions:

Explicitly states how SEL can advance educational equity and excellence.

Elevates identity, agency, and belonging as critical pillars of SEL.

Acknowledges the positive impact that SEL can have on building just communities through collective goal setting and making caring decisions.

Emphasizes how environments, relationships, and broader contexts (e.g., societal realities, individual realities, socioeconomic status, family dynamics, cultural background, access to opportunities, and experiences in schools) shape learning and development.

The second paragraph, in particular, offers a more holistic view of where and how SEL occurs. This broadened scope allows for a more explicit inclusion of areas like family engagement, adult SEL, social justice, cultural competence, curriculum and instruction, continuous improvement, and equity.

Updates to the 5 Core Competencies and the CASEL Wheel

In addition to the new definition of social and emotional learning, CASEL has updated its SEL Framework (the "CASEL Wheel") and its definitions for the five core competencies (the "CASEL 5"). Here's what changed.

The CASEL Wheel

The new version of the "CASEL Wheel" includes the same five core competencies (Self-Awareness, Self-Management, Social Awareness, Relationship Skills, and Responsible Decision-Making).

Now, four "key settings" wrap around the competencies: Communities, F amilies and Caregivers, S chools, and C lassrooms.

In doing so, CASEL advocates for a systemic approach to SEL-practices, programs, and policies across classrooms, schools, families, and communities all influence students' learning and development. If supports are coordinated and working in harmony, this can promote student voice and agency, create supportive school climates, foster family engagement, and build student and adult social-emotional learning.

The CASEL 5: Core Competencies

Adjustments to the definitions of the "CASEL 5" emphasize the importance of embedding SEL into academic curriculum and of reviewing school-wide practices and policies to create equitable learning environments. Here are the five competencies and their updated definitions.

Core Competency

(New) Definition

Why Are These New Definitions Relevant to the 2020-21 School Year?
"While SEL alone will not solve longstanding and deep-seated inequities in the education system, it can create the conditions needed for individuals and schools to examine and interrupt inequitable policies and practices, create more inclusive learning environments, and reveal and nurture the interests and assets of all individuals."
If we had to name one takeaway from CASEL's update to the definition of social-emotional learning, it's this: SEL and equity are interwoven. Any conversation about social-emotional learning is also a conversation about equity.

As Rob Jagers, vice president of research at CASEL, said on the "Reintroduction to Social-Emotional Learning" webinar:

As we enter the 2020-21 academic year, district leaders and educators are responding to the challenges posed by the COVID-19 pandemic while our nation is reckoning with a renewed focus on systemic racism and racial equity.
Read: How senior district leaders at D.C Public Schools, Portland Public Schools (OR), and Aldine ISD are addressing SEL and equity.
Supporting students, staff, and the school community has always been complex and multi-faceted. In our current context, true leadership requires reimagining the way in which we address unconscious biases in schools, foster social-emotional learning, and tend to student and staff members' mental health and emotional well-being. Integrating SEL skills into educational experiences with a focus on equity is more important than ever before.

According to Dr. Lorenzo Moore, executive director of social emotional learning and culture at Aldine Independent School District (TX), "If you are talking about social-emotional learning but not equity, you are not talking about SEL. One practical way to do this is to infuse equity and social-emotional learning competencies in school-wide procedures. When you consider how you deal with misbehavior, SEL and equity should be at the heart of any policy so that we can move away from punitive measures and shift to restorative practices."

What Do These Changes Mean for SEL Measurement and Assessment?

In CASEL's Districtwide SEL Framework -which outlines four focus areas to help districts and schools achieve systemic SEL- Focus Area 4 remains "Practice Continuous Improvement." Within this area, CASEL advises districts to "collect and reflect on data, address challenges, and build upon successes to continuously improve SEL implementation."

Measuring student and adult SEL through surveys is one way to practice continuous improvement. In selecting a survey instrument and interpreting SEL perception data, it is essential to:

Consider how situational or systemic forces, such as racism and racial bias, shape students' lives.

Recognize that students' social-emotional growth is the shared responsibility of students, educators, families, and their broader communities.

Measure not just students' skills and competencies, but also the social, cultural, and educational variables that support student growth.

Identify an SEL measurement provider that matches this expanded view of social-emotional learning.

Download the open-source Panorama Social-Emotional Learning Survey.
Panorama for Social-Emotional Learning helps schools and districts measure and take action on SEL data from students and adults. Our CASEL-aligned survey offers 30+ topics on social-emotional learning, school climate and supports, skills and competencies, well-being, and equity and inclusion in school.

adult SEL. The Panorama platform makes it easy to explore survey results and take action on the data using strategies from our CASEL partner districts use Panorama survey data as a formative tool to identify social-emotional strengths and areas of need, integrate SEL into school improvement plans, differentiate supports for children, and address SEL curriculum partners.

Explore Additional Resources

Get in touch with us to learn how Panorama can support your district with CASEL-aligned SEL measurement this year.

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CASEL's New Definition of SEL: What You Need to Know

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Twenty-six years ago, the Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning (CASEL) first introduced the term "social and emotional learning (SEL)" to the education world. The SEL field has evolved tremendously since then.

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A Reintroduction to SEL: CASEL’s Definition and Framework - YouTube

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A Reintroduction to SEL: CASEL’s Definition and Framework - YouTube

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A Reintroduction to SEL: CASEL’s Definition and Framework

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A few years ago, I had the great fortune to meet Bronx native Dena Simmons on a fellowship trip and hear about her life's work and experience. She's an educator, a TED speaker, and currently, the assistant director of the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence-not to mention a keynote speaker at the EdSurge Fusion conference later this year.

What I didn't realize at the time was just how much of a confluence there would be between her work and the current trendiness of one particular phrase: "social-emotional learning" (SEL)-something which Simmons has been exploring and researching for years.

As has happened with other buzzwords in the education space-from "personalized" to "project-based" learning-when a concept gains traction on Twitter or becomes trendy among edtech company offerings, it runs the risk of being mishandled or cheapened. Simmons is well aware of that reality, and has written and spoken about that risk for organizations from ASCD to large public school districts.

Namely, are we at risk of bastardizing SEL to the point where it becomes less helpful and more harmful for the students we seek to serve? How should educators work with kids to truly develop those soft skills-and escape the inevitability of impostor experiences?

Last week, Simmons and I sat down to discuss just that, and more.

What's the point of teaching children about conflict resolution skills, if we're not talking about the conflicts that exist because of racism or white supremacy?

Dena Simmons

From Social-Emotional Learning to Social-Emotional Equity

For the last five years, Simmons has risen through the ranks at the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence-first starting off as associate director of school initiatives, then moving into a director of education role and finally making it to assistant director.

But for Simmons, her growth isn't simply driven only by a desire to climb the career ladder. In fact, her work in equity comes from a very personal place. When asked to recall a key memory that defined her as an educator and a human being, she mentions her twin sister, who has a chronic, debilitating illness.

"It really is hard to watch my sister struggle and suffer, but it has really brought out the activist in me, because I've had to fight for her since I was young," she describes. "I've had to tell doctors to respect what she's saying when she's in pain. It really taught me about how black lives are valued-especially within the chronically sick black folk community."

As a young girl growing up in the Bronx, Simmons was ever-aware of the importance of personal safety and community. Today, she works with her colleagues to ensure that "our young people have safe spaces to learn"-hence the research and efforts around spreading social-emotional learning and helping students figure out how to navigate and manage their emotions, relationships and well-being.

However, according to Simmons, the world of SEL isn't all hearts and stars. On the contrary-we are at risk of delivering a "very flawed narrative" when it comes to SEL. Here's how.

When Social-Emotional Learning Becomes 'White Supremacy With a Hug'

First, Simmons describes the fact that when SEL is taught to students-particularly students of color-without any context, it can become inherently problematic. "What's the point of teaching children about conflict resolution skills," she says, "if we're not talking about the conflicts that exist because of racism or white supremacy? Without that nuance, she says SEL risks turning into "white supremacy with a hug."

To help address this issue, Simmons recently wrote a piece for ASCD entitled " Why We Can't Afford Whitewashed Social Emotional Learning," in which she argues that teaching SEL needs to happen within a sociopolitical and racial context.

"Educators often teach SEL absent of the larger sociopolitical context, which is fraught with injustice and inequity and affects our students' lives," she wrote, adding that educators oftentimes "feel ill-equipped and uncomfortable in addressing topics like poverty, gun violence, racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, and other forms of injustice that many students, particularly our most marginalized, experience daily."

Beyond that, the trendiness of SEL is something that also gives Simmons pause-something she recommends practitioners be aware of.

"People's lives are at stake and so we have to approach anything we do with them-SEL, project-based learning, any of the sort of big names or trendy things-we just have to do it responsibly. We just can't do it for the sake of doing it," she states, later adding, "I worry that sometimes because of the trend, we do it for the sake of doing it and not because it could enhance people's lives."

Beyond the Defensiveness: Starting with Educator Self-Analysis

At the heart of this all, however, is a need for educators-those folks ultimately in charge of the SEL instruction-to recognize and confront their own internalized racism and sexism, defensiveness and lack of true SEL understanding as it applies to their own awareness and biases.

Simmons, who gives trainings on equitable social-emotional learning to districts and schools across the United States, oftentimes sees that defensiveness and white fragility (a concept first coined by scholar Robin DiAngelo) firsthand.

"The second flawed piece about SEL is [the idea] that some groups of children need it more than other children. When I do SEL trainings, it's like 'kids with special needs need this more,' or 'our black and brown children need this more,' as if because they're not calm enough..." Simmons says. She explored this in a piece she wrote for the Greater Good Science Center.

But what teachers really need to do, she explains, "is to understand themselves, recognize their power and privilege and identity," and "what that means in the work that they do and the people with whom they often work."

And that, as Simmons adds, takes humility, time and most importantly, effort.

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Dena Simmons: Without Context, Social-Emotional Learning Can Backfire - EdSurge News

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A few years ago, I had the great fortune to meet Bronx native Dena Simmons on a fellowship trip and hear about her life's work and experience. She's an educator, a TED speaker, and currently, the assistant director of the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence-not to mention a keynote speaker at the EdSurge Fusion conference later this year.

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Research Questions

1. How does ESSA address SEL?

2. What SEL interventions appear to satisfy ESSA's evidence requirements?

3. What grade levels do these interventions target, and what outcomes do they seek?

The reauthorization of the U.S. Elementary and Secondary Education Act, referred to as the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), emphasizes evidence-based interventions while giving states and districts new flexibility on the use of federal funds, including funds that could be used to support social and emotional learning (SEL). The authors review recent evidence on U.S.-based SEL interventions for K-12 students to better inform the use of SEL interventions under ESSA. This report discusses the opportunities for supporting SEL under ESSA, the standards of evidence under ESSA, and SEL interventions that meet the standards of evidence and might be eligible for federal funds through ESSA. Federal, state, and district education policymakers can use this report to identify relevant, evidence-based SEL interventions that meet their local needs. A companion volume (available on the website) catalogues these interventions in more detail and outlines the research that has examined them.

Key Findings

ESSA Supports SEL Through Several Different Funding Streams

The funding stream most directly relevant for SEL is Title IV (21st Century Schools).

Titles I (Improving the Academic Achievement of the Disadvantaged) and II (Preparing, Training, and Recruiting High-Quality Teachers, Principals, or Other School Leaders) also provide opportunities to support SEL.

Numerous SEL Interventions Across Grade Levels Meet ESSA Evidence Requirements

In general, ESSA has three tiers of evidence ranging from Tier I (strong evidence) to Tier III (promising). An additional tier (IV) involves interventions that lack evidence to date but seem likely to succeed and are currently undergoing evaluation.

The authors identified 60 SEL interventions evaluated at U.S.-based K-12 schools that met evidence requirements for Tiers I-III.

Educators in Elementary Schools and Urban Communities Have the Most Options of SEL Interventions that Meet ESSA Evidence Requirements

The majority of the 60 interventions were evaluated at the elementary school level and in urban communities.

A substantial number of interventions have been validated with samples that mostly consist of students who come from low-income families or from racial/ethnic minority groups.

Interpersonal Competencies are the Most Common Outcomes Positively Impacted in Studies of Evidence-Based Interventions

Most of the interventions reported positive results on building students' interpersonal competencies (e.g., prosocial behaviors, interpersonal communication, and social problem-solving skills), followed by intrapersonal competencies (e.g., attention, emotional regulation, and resilience).

Several interventions also demonstrated positive results on school climate and safety, academic achievement and attainment, disciplinary outcomes, and civic attitudes and behaviors.

Recommendations

Use this review to find SEL interventions meeting ESSA evidence Tiers I-III.

Take advantage of Tier IV flexibility for interventions with no empirical research.

Address local conditions to facilitate effective intervention implementation.

Look beyond explicit interventions when designing approaches to promote SEL.

Provide professional development and other supports to build educators' capacity to gather and use evidence.

Continue to improve SEL measurement.

Provide feedback on remaining ambiguities of evidence tier requirements.

Table of Contents

Chapter One:

Introduction

Chapter Two:

How Does the Every Student Succeeds Act Support Social and Emotional Learning?

Chapter Three:

How Does the Every Student Succeeds Act Define Evidence?

Chapter Four:

Our Approach to Reviewing the Evidence on Social and Emotional Learning Interventions

Chapter Five:

Evidence-Based Social and Emotional Learning Interventions Under the Every Student Succeeds Act

Chapter Six:

Guidance for Tier IV Interventions

Chapter Seven:

Key Findings and Recommendations

Appendix A:

Additional Technical Details for Evidence Review

Appendix B:

Summary of Evidence Table

The research described in this report was commissioned by The Wallace Foundation and conducted by RAND Education.

This report is part of the RAND Corporation research report series. RAND reports present research findings and objective analysis that address the challenges facing the public and private sectors. All RAND reports undergo rigorous peer review to ensure high standards for research quality and objectivity.

Permission is given to duplicate this electronic document for personal use only, as long as it is unaltered and complete. Copies may not be duplicated for commercial purposes. Unauthorized posting of RAND PDFs to a non-RAND Web site is prohibited. RAND PDFs are protected under copyright law. For information on reprint and linking permissions, please visit the RAND Permissions page.

The RAND Corporation is a nonprofit institution that helps improve policy and decisionmaking through research and analysis. RAND's publications do not necessarily reflect the opinions of its research clients and sponsors.

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Social and Emotional Learning Interventions Under the ESSA

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How does ESSA address SEL? What SEL interventions appear to satisfy ESSA's evidence requirements? What grade levels do these interventions target, and what outcomes do they seek? The reauthorization of the U.S.

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The Secret to Improving Students' Social-Emotional Skills? Start With the Adults

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To weather the stressors caused by the pandemic, students need strong social and emotional skills. But for schools looking to invest in students' social emotional learning, the place to start is not necessarily with the students, but with the adults.

Teachers, administrators, and support staff at schools must understand their own social-emotional abilities and attend to their own well-being before they can teach those competencies to their students. And professional development plans for implanting new social-emotional learning programs should include explicit efforts to build adults' SEL skills. Those are among several conclusions from an extensive report from the RAND Corporation and The Wallace Foundation on lessons learned during the early implementation of SEL programs in schools and before- and after-school programs in six cities.

While interest in social-emotional learning is surging, research on how best to implement SEL programs and practices has lagged behind the demand, says the report. The report examines two years of data from the 2017-18 and 2018-19 school yearsfrom student surveys, staff interviews, and school observations in elementary schools and out-of-school time programs in Boston; Dallas; Denver; Palm Beach county, Fla.; Tacoma, Wash.; and Tulsa, Okla.

Problems With Train-the-Trainer

There is hunger among the teaching force for more professional development on social-emotional learning. A separate survey released by RAND earlier this month, but conducted before the pandemic, found that 80 percent of teachers want more professional development on several topics related to SEL.

But in interviews and surveys for this most recent report, RAND found that teachers want their professional development to be both more hands-on and to specifically address how to teach social-emotional skills to different populations, such as students from different cultural and linguistic backgrounds or students with disabilities.

Schools found that relying solely on train-the-trainer professional development models-where someone from the central office trains a few school-based staff who then train more people within their school-overburdened school-level trainers and created inconsistencies among schools, especially when it came to training on SEL curriculum. Several schools in the study responded to this challenge by recentralizing SEL curriculum training, although the report recommends reserving the train-the-trainer strategy for some instances, such as when a particular school may need more tailored training to address a specific issue or student population.

Several schools also used SEL coaches to work with teachers, which helped schools customize professional development to meet teachers' needs. However, because there was some confusion over the role and purpose of SEL coaches in some schools in the study, the report recommends clarifying, codifying, and communicating SEL coaches' responsibilities.

SEL training was often challenged by staff turnover, especially in before- and after-school programs. One way schools and out-of-school time programs in the trial dealt with this issue was by offering some professional development opportunities in smaller units and more frequently throughout the school year. For example, one school did this by offering 30-minute professional development units on SEL topics before the school day started.

Building SEL Skills and Dispelling Myths

Principals reported a variety of other ways they helped teachers develop their own SEL competencies and boost emotional well-being, such as setting aside time for SEL instruction, starting an SEL book club, encouraging deeper relationships among adults at their school, modeling at the administrator level strong social and emotional competencies for teachers, and developing a charter outlining what teachers and other school staff need to feel safe and supported at school.

Principals also borrowed some strategies used to teach students social-emotional skills, such as giving teachers more say in decision making and starting meetings with warm welcomes and optimistic closures.

Finally, school leaders reported that they ran into some misconceptions about, and resistance to, SEL among their teachers, such as beliefs that SEL is only for students with behavioral issues or young children. An Education Week Research Center Survey early last springalso found that while 81 percent of educators said their school placed "some" or "a lot" of focus on SEL for grades 1-3, only 66 percent said the same was true for grades 9-12, even though teenage years are a particularly important time for students to develop their social and emotional competencies. That survey was conducted before the pandemic forced mass school closures in the U.S.

Furthermore, while all teachers in the RAND study said in a survey they agreed SEL would improve students' academic performance, one-third said they either agreed or strongly agreed that adults other than themselves, such as school counselors, psychologists, or parents, should be primarily responsible for meeting students' social-emotional learning needs.

The report recommends that principals and superintendents make it clear in their professional development efforts that supporting students' social emotional learning is a "foundational element" of each adult's role in the school, and that SEL benefits all students, not just students with behavioral issues.

The report examines several other aspects of implementing SEL programs, including creating strong school climates, developing partnerships between schools and before- and after-school programs, and the system-level steps district leaders must take to successfully coordinate SEL initiatives across multiple schools and programs.

This study comes two years into a six-year project launched by The Wallace Foundation called the Partnerships for Social and Emotional Learning Initiative. As part of the initiative, The Wallace Foundation awarded grants in 2016 to nine urban school districts and the out-of-school time programs they partnered with to support students' social and emotional skills.
Related stories: Image credit: E+/Getty

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The Secret to Improving Students' Social-Emotional Skills? Start With the Adults

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To weather the stressors caused by the pandemic, students need strong social and emotional skills. But for schools looking to invest in students' social emotional learning, the place to start is not necessarily with the students, but with the adults.

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Dena Simmons is assistant director of the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence and faculty at the Yale Child Study Center, where she supports schools to use the power of emotions to create a more compassionate and just society.

She has been a middle school teacher, teacher educator, diversity facilitator, and curriculum developer, and is a leading voice on social justice, anti-racism, and equitable social and emotional learning in teacher education.

Her writing and speaking have led her to the White House, the inaugural Obama Foundation Summit, the United Nations, TED, and beyond. She is the author of the forthcoming book White Rules for Black People.

Q: How did you get into the work you do with teachers about social justice?
A: I always wanted to work with young people. I decided to become a teacher because my 7th-grade teacher, Mr. Dillon, pulled me aside at dismissal one day and said, "Promise me you'll spend at least one year being a teacher."

Before that, I wanted to be a pediatrician because I reasoned that it would allow me to help children and make money. Growing up in poverty, I knew I did not want to struggle like my mother. But his comment really sparked the idea for me that I could be a teacher.

Education in many ways has opened up the world for me, even though it didn't always come easy, and I thought that if I became a teacher, I could open up the world for others.

I got into teacher education in grad school out of necessity. I didn't have any funding, and I needed to pay rent. Once I went into teacher education, I realized the power of working with educators.

I fell in love with supporting teachers' growth and practice and pushing them so they don't commit harm and can create spaces where students can thrive. You are still working for students, in a sense, because you are ensuring that the people who show up in front of the classroom are going to do the best by students.

What drives my work in education is safety. When I was growing up in the Bronx, I didn't have the privilege of safety, like so many of our young people who grow up in underresourced communities.

Then, as a high schooler, I went to boarding school, where I was one of the few students of color for the first time in my life. Now I had to worry about a different type of safety - emotional safety. I asked myself, "Am I safe to be Black in this environment?"

After getting my education and continuing to be in mostly white spaces, I still end up standing out in my difference, and, as a result, I constantly ask myself, "Am I safe to be my full authentic self in this space?"

When I got my doctorate, I aimed to learn how we can create safe spaces for everyone where people can live and learn in the comfort of their skin. As a former middle school teacher, I was looking at teacher preparedness to address bullying in the middle school context. I fell into studying SEL [social and emotional learning] from bullying prevention because research shows that SEL programming can help mitigate antisocial behaviors like bullying.

Q: You write and speak frequently about the need to approach SEL from an equity lens. Why is it important for educators to have professional learning about equitable SEL?
A: My interest is at the intersection of social and emotional learning and culturally responsive practices so that we can ensure equitable and anti-racist practices. I want to be sure we say anti-racist because I don't want us to forget to do the work of racial justice.

We are now in a place in society where we see what happens when we let a wound fester. The wound we have is a race problem, and we've allowed it to fester for too long, and we're now experiencing civil unrest, which we have experienced before in cycles.

We have to understand that SEL happens within a context. You can't teach people how to get along without talking about why we don't get along. One of the reasons we don't get along is because of the racial strife in our country, the racial barrier between groups of people. If we don't address the wound, we cannot heal.

''You can't teach people how to get along without talking about why we don't get along.'' @DenaSimmons #LearnFwdTLP Click To Tweet

We can leverage SEL for an anti-racist future and for racial justice, but SEL without deliberate and active anti-racist work is not enough. SEL alone will not solve racism and oppression. We need systemic change, where racial justice is at the core.

''We can leverage SEL for an anti-racist future & for racial justice, but SEL without deliberate & active anti-racist work is not enough. We need systemic change, where racial justice is at the core.'' #LearnFwdTLP Click To Tweet

Also, we have to recognize that SEL happens within an education system where the curriculum, if we're being honest, has been and is based on the ways of whiteness. So, if we don't apply an anti-racist lens to SEL, it has the risk of being used as a weapon, as something else Black and brown kids don't know how to do.

I've done a lot of work with districts across the U.S., and what I have seen is how the narrative about SEL changes according to the group of students. When we talk about white kids and privileged kids, SEL is about college and career readiness and about thriving in those settings. When we're talking about Black and brown students, people say, "Our students of color need to learn how to control their behavior." It becomes about compliance and control, and it perpetuates the racial hierarchy.

We have to be careful because how we speak about something becomes how we live and interact, and it impacts our practice. I've said before, and I will say again, that, if we don't apply an anti-racist lens, SEL has the risk of becoming white supremacy with a hug.

Q: Where is the starting place for teachers in this work, especially for teachers who haven't reflected on these issues before?
A: I think the starting place is self. Who am I? How do I show up in this world? What access and power do I have or not have? And then you start to place yourself in your context as a teacher. How do my students see me? What do I want my students to know about me? And then the question that is important to consider is, how do I want people to leave their interaction with me?

Then you ask those questions about the people around you, about your students. What power and privilege do my students have or not have? Who are they and who are they not? What do I not know and what do I need to ask? Too often, we create narratives about people.

I recommend starting to do this work in racial affinity groups with a focus on healing. This is especially important in our current context. We are all experiencing a collective trauma, and as a result, we are all in need of collective healing.

Once people feel a little secure in what they have to offer the world through their affinity groups, then they can start to have conversations across difference. It's important to be very clear about the purpose of why you're coming together. You have to make a commitment to anti-racism and equity and say, "This is all of our work." Then, together, you ask, "What do we hope to accomplish?" and "What do we hope to learn together?"

It's always hard to start. There's a certain level of vulnerability and courage you have to have to engage in these conversations. But you create the space and time to have conversations in affinity groups. You do a lot of expectation and norm setting, and ask, "How do we lean into human goodness as we engage in this very important work?"

Once these conversations become a practice, you'll see it become part of the culture. But you have to scaffold it. We know it's not going to feel comfortable, but what we've all learned as educators is that you need to be in that space of disequilibrium in order to grow and learn.

Q: This kind of reflection and connection takes time and ongoing support. What do you see as some of the most promising professional learning approaches to achieve these goals?
A: Storytelling is an important piece. When I work with school districts, it's always grounded in narrative. Narrative humanizes us and others. It gives us a window into another's life and allows us to open a window for another. It allows people to see what they may have in common - or what their differences are and how to lean into them and learn from someone else.

Storytelling can happen even in a short activity with another person, and during that activity, you could learn something new about someone you've worked with for 20 years. We have to really look at the world and our colleagues as people we can always discover something new about. I always say that I walk around and I see the world as art. It allows me to see the beauty in other people, in the world.

Q: You've been doing a lot of writing and speaking lately about self-care for educators. What advice do you give?
A: First of all, I think it's important to understand the revolutionary and radical aspects of self-care. Particularly, I think of Audre Lorde's quotation, "Caring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation, and that is an act of political warfare." For me, the act of taking care of one's self is crucial, especially those of us who are continuously oppressed. That is why I talk about self-care, equity, and healing together because care has not been distributed equitably.

It's important for teachers to take care of themselves because, if they don't, they cannot take care of others. They're more likely to report feeling stressed and burnt out, and research has shown that, when teachers are stressed, their interactions with students are less warm, student achievement suffers, and the classroom climate is not as warm, either. That's why I believe that a stressed and burned-out teaching force is an equity issue, and if school systems truly care about equity, then they would do better at taking care of their teachers.

''I believe that a stressed & burned-out teaching force is an equity issue, and if school systems truly care about equity, then they would do better at taking care of their teachers.'' @DenaSimmons #LearnfwdTLP Click To Tweet

So, first, I want to tell teachers to take care of themselves, to start with whatever's causing their stress. Begin to think about an action plan for, "How am I going to address these barriers to care and the stresses I'm facing?" We can't just "do self-care" and not address what's causing our burnout.

And we can't only think about self-care. We have to think about collective care. When we talk only about self-care, we're basically telling teachers, "It's your responsibility. It's your life. Get it together." Instead, people need to ask, "What about the system has contributed to my lack of care? And what practices and policies contribute to the health and well-being of my colleagues?" I think school systems could be doing better with taking care of educators.

Q: In the midst of the collective trauma we're all experiencing, do you see any opportunities for change?
A: The way I've lived my life, I try to look at the light that's coming through the crack. I think a lot of people are now feeling the importance of togetherness. We used to sit at a table together looking at our phones. Now we're thinking, "Please get me away from the screen!" We're really striving for authentic connection right now. We can see this as an opportunity to ask, "How can we do better?" As we strive for being together in person again, how do we do better at connecting and at learning? How do we do better at everything?
This article is based on an interview conducted on Aug. 21, 2020. Dena Simmons' comments are her own and do not represent the views of Yale University or any other entity.
Teaching tips

Check out Dena's "quaranteaching tips" for SEL and culturally responsive pedagogy during remote learning at #quaranteaching and @DenaSimmons.

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Dena Simmons is assistant director of the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence and faculty at the Yale Child Study Center, where she supports schools to use the power of emotions to create a more compassionate and just society.

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The good news: Social-emotional learning is hot. The bad news: Some of it is giving cognition a bad name.

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These days it's hard to miss the compelling evidence that shows social emotional learning (SEL) improves learning and life skills. Educators are also becoming increasingly aware that high numbers of students face trauma that impedes their learning and that understanding and addressing it are critical. They're also learning that racial inequities hamper the success of certain groups of students, and acknowledging and ameliorating them is necessary if all children are to thrive.

There is great overlap across these three areas: SEL, trauma-informed work and equity. A student of color who cumulatively experiences racist taunts, reduced expectations and micro-aggressions, for instance, is challenged socially and emotionally, experiencing trauma and suffering inequity - all at once.

Below is the latest research that shows your school can't ignore these three areas of student support, why they should be integrated, and resources to achieve it.

SEL Shows Results

Last year, the Aspen Institute's National Commission on Social Emotional and Academic Development's Council of Distinguished Scientists-leading researchers across character education, emotional intelligence, health and mental health promotion, neuroscience, SEL and mindsets-released a consensus statement to solidify research findings across their disciplines. Most importantly, they agreed that social, emotional and cognitive capacities are intertwined and interdependent. This means that academic learning has its basis in social emotional learning, and that development in one area supports the other. They also agreed that SEL yields results: two sweeping meta-analyses show academic gains, one up to 3.5 years after students' last SEL intervention, in addition to improved behavior and life outcomes. In sum, SEL shouldn't be a "maybe" in schools.

Trauma Can Have Dire Effects

There is growing awareness of the seminal ACEs study, which showed that the more adverse childhood experiences or trauma children experience - including physical, sexual, and emotional abuse; family and community violence; and the cumulative impact of poverty, racism, and oppression - the more they're at risk for negative life outcomes. In the US, two-thirds of children have experienced at least one potentially traumatic event by age 16. When research emerged showing that traumatic stress "hijacks the brain", making it incapable of learning, trauma became an education problem. Yet, by making educators aware of students' trauma and giving them tools and strategies to address it, these barriers to learning can be reduced or removed.

With Equity Come Gains

Students of color face increased adversity both outside and inside of school. Outside, they're more likely than white students to suffer socially and financially. Inside, they're often the subject of low expectations, micro-aggressions and bias. Zaretta Hammond, in her book, Culturally Responsive Teaching and the Brain, describes how these biases put students of color at a learning disadvantage and backs it up with neuroscience. Yet powerful research out of the New Zealand Maori population shows steep academic gains when educators "double down" on incorporating cultural identity and relationship work. By leveraging students' cultural identities and assets, educators can facilitate growth mindsets and learning gains.
Social-emotional skills support student achievement, but embedding SEL into the school day can be complex. If you're launching a new SEL program or enhancing an existing one, these tips will help you avoid common implementation mistakes.
Why Integrating These Areas Is Necessary

Schools provide a unique opportunity to build kids' social emotional assets, address their trauma, and move towards educational equity. Many are focused on doing so, but too often they make these interrelated domains of support separate.

"A trauma-informed, SEL, cultural awareness model of supports allows (educators) to create a safe environment to address trauma and SEL skill build, while also tapping into the strengths and opportunities of students' culture. In this way, prevention assets don't just build on each other, they multiply," says Dr. Gregory Leskin, Ph.D, Director at UCLA/Duke University National Center for Child Traumatic Stress.

American Institute of Research's David Osher and Juliette Berg, Harvard's Todd Rose, and Turnaround's Pam Cantor and Lily Steyer corroborated this in a series of research papers that synthesized knowledge from multiple scientific domains regarding how humans develop and learn. They concluded that relational, environmental, instructional and curricular factors - factors that include SEL skill building, addressing trauma and building cultural competence - must be integrated to produce effective learning.

There are also unintended negative consequences of failing to integrate these domains. These include an exclusive focus on the deficits or trauma of students of color, failing to leverage their strengths and resilience.

Where to Start

Aspen SEAD's recently released "Pursuing Social Emotional Development Through an Equity Lens: A Call to Action" and Robert Wood Johnson Foundation's June report, "Applying an Equity Lens to Social, Emotional, and Academic Development" both offer broad strategies for integration. These include addressing the root causes or trauma underlying SEL skill deficits, such as a lack of impulse control; and ensuring that supports specifically focus on injustice and related trauma. Zaretta Hammond gets more granular in her book's "learning moves", which operationalize two of three (SEL and equity). Helping students process content using methods from their own cultural traditions is one example. This practice honors students' cultural history while modeling how to connect with others. It also makes student learning "stickier".

There are few evidence-based programs or interventions that successfully integrate the three. Ripple Effects, where I serve as director of K-12, offers a digital program that stands out: it builds SEL, resiliency assets and cultural identity development in its interactive lessons, many of which address trauma. The personalized program empowers students to identify what they think are the biggest challenges in their lives, then choose from nine different evidence-based learning modalities to address them.

"We don't always know what's going on with kids - often they don't want to share," says implementer Marni Parsons, Director of Student and Family Services at Bright Star Charter Schools in Los Angeles. "Kids want to explore their challenges with Ripple Effects, and almost every lesson encourages them to connect and get help from people they trust." The program boasts over 430 topics including racial bias, poverty, suicidal thoughts, anxiety and homelessness. Data shows improved behavior and academic gains, specifically in underserved student populations.

Educators can also learn from other educators who are recognizing the value of integration and creating their unique "how-to" maps. Dr. Julie Frugo, Head of School at the high-performing Premier Charter in St. Louis, Missouri is one to watch. She focuses on developing adult culture to achieve equity, address trauma and build SEL skills in her students, who come from 14 different ethnic backgrounds-including a substantive number of Bosnian refugees-and 20% of which have special needs. A multi-tiered system of supports serves as the school's structure, yet her key to integration is staff development and relationships. "We need to be bonded warriors working together," says Frugo, "in order to be truly student-centered and do the arduous work of meeting each student's needs."

There is a long road ahead to achieve educational equity, provide SEL for all, and address the range of trauma that prevents students from learning. Yet by intentionally integrating these three areas, we can move faster and more efficaciously in our efforts, empowering more young people to overcome their barriers and thrive

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Integrating SEL, Equity and Trauma Work for Multiplied Success - EdSurge News

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These days it's hard to miss the compelling evidence that shows social emotional learning (SEL) improves learning and life skills. Educators are also becoming increasingly aware that high numbers of students face trauma that impedes their learning and that understanding and addressing it are critical.

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Social development is an important topic to evaluate when considering diversity, equity, and inclusion. The Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning (CASEL) defines social emotional learning (SEL) as, "the process through which children and adults understand and manage emotions, set and achieve positive goals, feel and show empathy for others, establish and maintain positive relationships, and make responsible decisions." Because humans are social in nature, social emotional learning if done correctly can be a significant tool for navigating a complex society.

However, a lthough some SEL programs either directly or indirectly address diversity and inclusion, many of these programs at best perpetuate identity blindness , and at worst rely on and reinforce the white supremacist idea of "grit" as an equalizer , rather than emphasizing that equity is an action that the pr ivileged themselves must take. I dentity blindness, including racial " color blindness, " harm s marginalized and underrepresented groups by diminishing the very characteristics that are often central to their own sense of self. Similarly, centering "grit" and " resilience" in these programs inherently underestimates, and consciously seeks to downplay, the lived participants' experiences of being marginalized and oppressed, ins t ead putting the onus on them to "fix" themselves.

Although some SEL programs either directly or indirectly address D&I, many of these programs at best perpetuate identity blindness, and at worst rely on and reinforce the white supremacist idea of "grit" as an equalizer. Click To Tweet

Identity blindness is when one claims to not see different forms of identity, like race, gender, or sexual orientation, instead arguing that they simply strive to treat everyone the same. Individually and as a society, we cannot judge someone or "see" others based primarily on race, gender, disability, and so forth. .. AND we also cannot overlook the injustices or experiences that different groups have faced and continue to face, otherwise we become complicit . It is crucial that SEL programs and curricula take this into account, teaching children how to effectively evaluate and regulate their emotions and social interactions while honoring the inequity and injustice that chi ldren from marginalized populations have experienced. As noted in the Institute of Education Sciences' meta-analysis of SEL programs:

Teachers and staff should understand that racial/ethnic minority students may behave in ways that are specific to their own social and cultural background and that these behaviors may not match the norm of the mainstream culture ( Farahmand et al., 2011). When working with students from diverse backgrounds, it is important to know their backgrounds well enough to be able to judge whether they will find the values, beliefs, and skills in the SEL intervention to be useful. If students perceive the program as irrelevant, they are unlikely to benefit from the lessons (Merrell & Gueldner , 2010).

We also cannot overlook the injustices or experiences that different groups have faced and continue to face, otherwise we become complicit. Click To Tweet

Indeed, as m ore individuals and groups are complementing social emotional learning with frank discussions of mental health and the conscious di smantl ing of the many stigmas associated with seeking therapy , teachers, staff, and administrators must be acutely aware of who the program is serving-that is, in order to be effective they must also be culturally responsive. When we think about mental health services, barriers such as costs, insurance, and time often come to mind. One major issue that many minority groups, especially communities of color, face is access to mental health providers or mental health resources that recognize and understand how various social and cultural forces negatively impact marginalized and underrepresented groups.

Teachers, staff, and administrators must be acutely aware of who the program is serving-that is, in order to be effective they must also be culturally responsive. Click To Tweet

A recent article in The Calgary Journal entitled, "Decolonizing mental health: The importance of an oppression-focused mental health system," highlights how traditionally, mental health gatekeepers have determined how mental health should be addressed and who has a say regarding mental health, however, based on indigenous scholarship and activism, many communities of color are working to decolonize mental health. By decolonize, the mental health advocates featured in the article mean embracing research, knowledge, lived experience, and ways of knowing that counter, critique, or transcend many Western perspectives surrounding mental health, which typically are individualistic and medical in nature.

As DEI scholars and practitioners, we must remember to partner with and actively listen to marginalized and underrepresented groups as we navigate our work.

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A Point of View: Social Emotional Learning and DEI Work | The Inclusion Solution

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Although some SEL programs directly or indirectly address D&I, many of these programs at best perpetuate identity blindness, and at worst rely on and reinforce the white supremacist idea of "grit" as an equalizer, rather than emphasizing that equity is an action that the privileged themselves must take.

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School Suspension Data Shows Glaring Disparities in Discipline by Race

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School Suspension Data Shows Glaring Disparities in Discipline by Race

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Students missed out on 11 million instructional days due to out-of-school suspensions in a single academic year, according to new research that details major disparities in how those suspensions are given to Black and Hispanic students and paints a portrait of an alarming and systemic problem with school discipline in the U.S.

The findings headline a new report from the Center for Civil Rights Remedies at the UCLA Civil Rights Project and the Learning Policy Institute, which analyzed federal data from the 2015-16 school year for nearly every school district in the country.

"The focus on the experiences of middle and high school students reveals profound disparities in terms of lost instructional time due to suspensions - stark losses that most policymakers and many educators were unaware of," said Dan Losen, director of the Center for Civil Rights Remedies and the lead researcher on the report.

Editorial Cartoons on Education

The report found the rate of lost instruction is more than five times higher in middle and high schools than the elementary school rates - 37 days lost per 100 middle and high school students compared to just seven days per 100 elementary school students.

In addition, the rates for Black students and other students of color are significantly higher than those of white students. Black students lost 103 days per 100 students enrolled, 82 more days than the 21 days their white peers lost due to out-of-school suspensions.

As other research has suggested, the learning loss for Black boys and girls was the highest: Black boys lost 132 days per 100 students enrolled, while Black girls lost 77 days per 100 students enrolled.

Notably, the report details how state-level racial disparities are often larger than the national disparities suggest, with several states reporting "exceedingly high" rates of instruction loss for students of color when compared to their white peers. In Missouri, for example, Black students lost 162 more days of instructional time than white students. In New Hampshire, Hispanic students lost 75 more days than white students. And in North Carolina, Native American students lost 102 more days than white students.

Glaring disparities were also visible at the school district level, with some large districts reporting rates of more than a year's worth of school - over 182 days per 100 students.

"These stark disparities in lost instruction explain why we cannot close the achievement gap if we do not close the discipline gap," Losen said, underscoring that it's especially important to address now that the coronavirus pandemic is also accounting for significant learning loss.

"With all the instructional loss students have had due to COVID-19, educators should have to provide very sound justification for each additional day they prohibit access to instruction," he said.

The report, which is the first to capture the full impact of out-of-school suspensions on instructional time for middle and high school students, and for those groups that are most frequently suspended, comes at a time when congressional Democrats are calling on Education Secretary Betsy DeVos to reinstate a slate of Obama-era civil rights regulations aimed at preventing schools from disproportionately disciplining Black and Hispanic students and students with disabilities.

DeVos rescinded those regulations in 2018, following a report of recommendations from the White House school safety commission, formed in the wake of a 2018 school shooting in Parkland, Florida.

The secretary argued that the guidance did a disservice to schools, creating disruptive classrooms where teachers felt unsafe because they were pressured by school administrators not to report students. But Democrats ripped her for basing the decision to repeal the guidance on an academic study that assumes Black students inherently exhibit poor behavior.

Last year, DeVos also recommended removing certain reporting requirements for the Civil Rights Data Collection that would prevent researchers from tracking racial disparities in areas like school discipline for early childhood education.

Though not the focus of the report, it also compared the learning loss from suspensions to the organizations' previous report on school policing, finding overlap among high schools with higher rates of lost instruction from suspension and those with higher numbers of security guards on campus. And in some districts, the report found, more than one out of every 20 Black middle and high school students were arrested.

"Our hope is that this research will help policymakers and education leaders at the federal, state and local levels to better comprehend the extent of the disparate harm for students," Losen said.

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School Suspension Data Shows Glaring Disparities in Discipline by Race

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New research details major disparities in how suspensions are given to Black and Hispanic students and paints a portrait of an alarming problem with school discipline in the U.S.

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When SEL is Used as Another Form of Policing | by Communities for Just Schools Fund | Medium

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When SEL is Used as Another Form of Policing | by Communities for Just Schools Fund | Medium

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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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Historically Responsive Literacy: A More Complete Education for All Students | Cult of Pedagogy

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Historically Responsive Literacy: A More Complete Education for All Students | Cult of Pedagogy

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Sponsored by Pear Deck and ISTE U

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For years teachers have been looking for ways to improve the academic performance of all students, especially students of color and those from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds. While some of these efforts have been successful, many more have had lackluster results.

In the past, we've explored different approaches teachers can take to do a better job of reaching all students: interviews with Dena Simmons, Zaretta Hammond, Pedro Noguera, and Hedreich Nichols, to name a few. In these conversations, we looked at more effective ways of relating to students, strategies for working toward equity outside the classroom, and instructional methods that are more culturally responsive.

This post continues that work with a fresh response to the question of how to better serve diverse students. It's a framework that deals directly with the curriculum side of things, the standards, the actual content we teach in our classrooms. The framework is called Historically Responsive Literacy, and it was developed by Dr. Gholdy Muhammad, a professor, a former middle school educator, and the author of the book Cultivating Genius: An Equity Framework for Culturally and Historically Responsive Literacy, where she makes the case for this framework.

Dr. Gholdy Muhammad

In short, Muhammad believes we're not reaching many of our students, especially Black students, because our curricula and standards are lacking. The emphasis in our current standards is mainly on skills-skills that can be measured easily on standardized tests-and not a whole lot else. Some teachers go beyond the tested material, pushing students to think critically, exploring social emotional competencies, and designing opportunities for inquiry-based learning; unfortunately, the standards themselves don't require those things.

But there was a time in history when a more complete, more human form of "curriculum" did exist, and it energized and inspired its students-all of them Black men and women-to read, write, speak, and publish with the kind of passion and dedication we would want all of our students to have about learning. This curriculum evolved within the Black literary societies of the 19th century. These groups met regularly to read, write about, and discuss a wide range of texts and ideas. Their goals were far loftier than basic skill development or scores on a test, and engagement-to borrow a term we use in modern education-was at an all-time high.

These societies were the inspiration for Muhammad's Historically Responsive Literacy framework, a four-layered pedagogical model that places skills on an equal plane with three other learning pursuits: identity, intellect, and criticality.

The framework was designed with Black students in mind, but it will benefit all students. Muhammad explains it this way: "If we start with Blackness (which we have not traditionally done in schooling) or the group of people who have uniquely survived the harshest oppressions in this country, then we begin to understand ways to get literacy education right for all" (p. 22).

In our interview, she unpacks all four layers of her framework and helps us understand what it looks like to implement them in the classroom. What follows is a summary of our conversation.

First, Two Clarifications

Is Historically Responsive Literacy Just for "Literacy" Teachers?

No. In the book, Muhammad explains that in the past, "literacy was synonymous with education, so although I name 'literacy,' these four pursuits can be used and layered with math, science, ELA, social studies, or physical education/health" (p. 57).

In other words, this is not just a framework for ELA teachers, and in the book, Muhammad explores how to implement HRL in many different subject areas.

Is HRL different from Culturally Responsive Teaching?

Think of HRL as living under the broader umbrella of Culturally Responsive Teaching, which includes relationship-building, instructional strategies, and curriculum. "My work is taking a more historic look back and putting a practical model to the theory," Muhammad says.

The Four Layers of Historically Responsive Literacy

Historically Responsive Literacy is built on four layers, four "learning pursuits" that Muhammad believes should receive equal priority

1. Identity

For students to be fully engaged in school they must first find it relevant, and that starts with identity.

"Identity is who you say you are, who others say you are... (and) who you desire to be," Muhammad says. "I feel like children are trying to make sense of all three areas, and the curriculum and the pedagogy should be an opportunity for students to know themselves."

Muhammad believes this is especially important for children of color because "when we look at representation in children's literature, in society oftentimes, and historically, they are invisible or represented in negative ways. So the classroom needs to be a space for students to affirm and celebrate and validate who they are, so that they know they are enough, so they know they are brilliant and excellent and beautiful. Because society doesn't tell us that all the time."

Along with self-knowledge, the learning pursuit of identity should also include knowledge of others who are different from ourselves. "When students learn about the lives of other people," Muhammad says, "they are less prone to hate, to treat them in harmful or hurtful ways."

What it looks like in the classroom: Start by asking yourself, "How does my teaching and learning help students to learn about themselves and about others?"

From there, plan instruction and write learning goals to satisfy that question. Muhammad gives an example from science. "Some teachers have written it (in language like) Students will understand their environmental identity and their roles and responsibilities regarding the planet. Then in the lesson or unit there are opportunities for students to deeply reflect about how they recycle or (whether) they take care of the earth and the planet and the environment."Finally, be sure to assess for it. "Kids know that if my teacher values it that she or he or they are going to test it," Muhammad says. "You can assess it in discussion, in a quiz, or a summative kind of test at the end: What are five things you can do to take care of the planet? Or Name five roles that humans play on climate change. So it could be a qualitative or a quantitative assessment, but if you value it enough, you can assess it."

2. Skills

So much of our current curricula and standards already focus on skills, so this part of the framework is nothing new; what's important is to not throw it out when the other three layers are added.

Muhammad explains that this abandonment of skills is a common problem when new approaches to schooling are introduced. "That's a way of thinking that we have to dismantle," she says. "Sometimes we think that when we add identity or when we add voice and freedom of expression, that somehow we don't focus on skills at all. But that's just simply not true. You can have it all. You can have voice and fun and engagement and skills."

What it looks like in the classroom: Teaching skills is more or less what you'd expect typical school content to be, what our current standards are already prescribing. "In math it can be learning equations. In ELA it can be citing textual evidence. In social studies, it can be questioning the source. In physical education it can be learning to play basketball."

So the skills themselves may be taught in whatever way works best for your students. The difference now is that in terms of class time and assessment, their weight will be equal to that of the other three layers.

3. Intellect

Along with identifying the skills students need to acquire, Muhammad urges us to ask What do we want our students to become smarter about?

Because our recent standards have been so skills-driven, knowledge has fallen by the wayside in a lot of schools, and that can strip away the joy that comes from simply learning new things about the world. But the Black Literary Societies of the 19th century valued knowledge as a vital part of a person's development. "So I'm pushing this idea of intellectualism," Muhammad says, "of treating young people as if they are scholars and intellectuals and thinkers."

She sees the loss of intellectualism even in how we prepare and treat teachers. "It's like we're sucking the power out of them by telling them to read a script in a curriculum. We need to go back to teacher as intellectual, teacher as scholar, reserving the field for the brightest among us who are knowledge-seekers."

And Muhammad's definition of intellectualism goes beyond simply gathering facts. "Intellectualism is when you do something with that knowledge, where you apply it somehow, in your discussion, in your activism, in your actions."

What it looks like in the classroom: When developing lessons and units, ask yourself, "How does my teaching and learning help to teach students new knowledge and concepts? New histories, new people, places, and things?"

Muhammad cautions teachers not to confuse skills for knowledge. "You shouldn't say they became smarter about equations or citing textual evidence," she says. "That's not intellect. Those are skills."

4. Criticality

"Criticality is helping students to read, write and think in active ways," Muhammad explains, "as opposed to passive-when you ask a question and there's one correct answer, and you just take it in. We don't want them to be passive consumers of knowledge. We want them to question what they hear on the news."

"We see the word critical and sometimes our minds can go to critical thinking," she continues. "But it's more than just deep and analytical thinking. Criticality is deep and analytical thinking to understand power, equity, anti-racism and other anti-oppressions. This is where we help students to be woke."

This fourth layer is essential "because oppression exists in the world. Period. We want students to leave our schools not contributing to more oppression or wrongdoing and hurt in their relationships and with strangers. We also don't want them to be silent. If they see oppression, we want them to actively respond to it."

What it looks like in the classroom: "With criticality," Muhammad says, "the teacher is asking, How does my teaching and learning help students to understand power, equity, anti-racism and anti-oppression? So (students are) reading, writing, thinking in active ways to understand power, inequality, equity, oppression. They're investigating different standpoints, especially the marginalized point of view, and reading between the lines. In other words, reading for what's not being said and for what's not there.

The brilliance of the framework is revealed when Muhammad explains that the four layers are not separate, but progressive, each one building on the layers that came before it, starting with identity: "They see themselves, they validate themselves, they're learning about other people, which creates a safe space to learn the skills. If you learn the skills, you can learn the intellect. You cannot learn the intellectualism without first having those skills to do so. If you have the intellectualism and that knowledge, you can critique the knowledge. Because of all the layers that came before it, you now have the capacity to disrupt and to dismantle. If you're just woke without the identity and the skills and the intellect, you're not going to be able to make change in ways that you could with those things."

Tough, but Possible

Making this kind of shift-especially if our standards still don't reflect these four layers-will not be an easy task to take on. This concern has been expressed when Muhammad presents her framework to teachers. But despite its challenges, she feels this type of curriculum is exactly what any parent would want for their child.

"It's not a matter or a question of if it's tough," she says. "The question is, is it possible? Everything is tough. And if you had your own child, if you're a parent, parents are going to equally value the beautiful ways that their child loves themselves: identity, the skills they have, the intellect they have, and the social consciousness they have. I don't see parents saying No, let's just talk about my child's reading skills. They talk about their emotional intelligence, they talk about the whole child."

"And that's what we're trying to get to," she says. "This is humanizing work."

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Historically Responsive Literacy: A More Complete Education for All Students

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Sponsored by Pear Deck and ISTE U This post contains Amazon Affiliate links. When you make a purchase through these links, Cult of Pedagogy gets a small percentage of the sale at no extra cost to you.

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The Role Social-Emotional Learning Plays in Teaching White Children About Race | EdSurge News

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The Role Social-Emotional Learning Plays in Teaching White Children About Race | EdSurge News

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One night when I was in graduate school, I stayed up late talking with a friend. Our conversation meandered from one topic to another, and I ended up telling her about my family: my parents who came to the U.S. from Jamaica, and the Caribbean traditions that shaped my experience growing up Black in America.

My friend, who was white, listened with interest. "I'm jealous," she said. "You have so much culture and tradition. I'm just plain old American."

Over a decade later, I was sitting in a professional development workshop on race and racism. The speaker asked participants to partner up and share stories about our personal experience of our race, within a cultural context.

"I'm having a hard time with this prompt," my partner, a white colleague, said. "I don't have any stories. I'm just plain old American."

The words rang in my ears, and I thought of my grad school friend. "I'm just plain old American." What did that make me?

When you grow up white in America, you learn that you are simply American. If you're not white, you learn that you have to qualify your identity: African American, Asian American, Latin American. Children pick this up at a very young age. Non-white children figure out that they are different, they are "other," they are not the standard; the world was not designed for them. White children learn the opposite-that they are at the center and that others are defined by their difference.

As we now face a long-overdue reckoning with systemic racism in our country, I wonder whether we are finally ready to address the way we raise our children to understand their own race. What would happen if we taught white children that they are not just Americans, but white Americans or European Americans? That they are not the yardstick against which everyone else is measured?

Teaching them to be aware of their racial identity would allow them to better understand the privileges that accompany that identity, and to see how those privileges shape their lives and relationships. And if they were taught how the concept of "whiteness" was created, they could be on the lookout for ways to disrupt and dismantle the toxic racism that robs us all of our full humanity.

Social and emotional learning (SEL) has an important role to play in that education. At Open Circle, the evidence-based SEL program for school-age children that I direct, we work to develop children's skills for recognizing and managing emotions, empathy, positive relationships, and problem solving. These competencies promote intrapersonal, interpersonal, and cognitive knowledge, skills, and attitudes that support lifelong success. One of the core competencies we focus on, as a necessary foundation for the others, is self-awareness. That self-awareness must include race.

There have already been calls to incorporate a racial lens into SEL, which can actually do harm when it is based on white, cisgender, patriarchal norms and values. " Transformative SEL," a concept developed by Dr. Rob Jagers of the Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning (CASEL), elevates the importance of calling out and attending to racial identity within the field of SEL. Based on his work, CASEL says that developing self-awareness with an equity lens can help students and adults "examine what it means to belong to a group or community, including how ethnicity and race impacts one's sense of self and beliefs," and "recognize biases and understand how thoughts, feelings, and actions are interconnected." Also: "SEL competencies can be leveraged to develop justice-oriented, global citizens, and nurture inclusive school and district communities."

These sound like exactly the kinds of citizens and communities we need, now more than ever.

The Center for Reaching & Teaching the Whole Child (CRTWC) also integrates SEL and equity, focusing on bringing SEL skills together with culturally responsive teaching practices. It points out that cultural competency is as important as social and emotional competency when it comes to providing a foundation for academic achievement and lifelong success. That means that an understanding of context is key-whether it is one's family, community or the broader cultural and sociopolitical environment.

These organizations have led the way in thinking about how SEL should incorporate race and equity. Now we must do the work of transforming these theories into action. Integrating SEL and equity needs to be a priority as we consider how education must change in response to the challenges we face.

Though there are no clear frameworks around how to fully merge these two approaches, Open Circle is working on developing one. It needs to start with funders willing to invest in research and building the capacity of programs for thought partnership and curriculum development. We must take an integrative approach that calls on the leadership, expertise and lived experiences of BIPOC who are not often elevated as the experts in this field, but who have done this work in communities for generations.

In the midst of a pandemic, the challenges are many. But we can't wait any longer to make talking about race an integral part of our children's education.

If my grad school friend and my colleague at the professional development workshop had been taught to understand the racial context of their lives, they might have been able to see that they were not just "plain old American." They are white Americans, and I'm a Black American, and we all grew up within a cultural context, with its own values, beliefs and traditions that shape our understanding of ourselves and our relationships with others.

We are doing white children a disservice by teaching them to think of themselves as not possessing race within a racialized society. We are doing children of color a disservice by teaching them to think of themselves as "other." Imagine how our society might change for the better if the next generation can be taught differently.

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The Role Social-Emotional Learning Plays in Teaching White Children About Race - EdSurge News

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One night when I was in graduate school, I stayed up late talking with a friend. Our conversation meandered from one topic to another, and I ended up telling her about my family: my parents who came to the U.S. from Jamaica, and the Caribbean traditions that shaped my experience growing up Black in America.

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Restorative Justice in Schools - Hopkins - 2002 - Support for Learning - Wiley Online Library

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Restorative Justice in Schools - Hopkins - 2002 - Support for Learning - Wiley Online Library

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In this article Belinda Hopkins provides a welcome introduction to the use of restorative justice (RJ) principles in addressing challenging or disruptive behaviour. As an initiative, it shares much i...

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Implementing restorative justice practice in schools: what pedagogy reveals: Journal of Peace Education: Vol 11, No 1

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Implementing restorative justice practice in schools: what pedagogy reveals: Journal of Peace Education: Vol 11, No 1

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In the ongoing pursuit for creating safe, nurturing and relational school cultures, educators continue to turn to restorative justice (rj) principles and practice. Predominantly, schools begin to engage with rj in an effort to address harm done, causing its discourse to be situated in literature tied to classroom management and behaviour. However, in this location, the effectiveness of rj can be limited because the power relationships underlying the original punitive, managerial structures maintain their grip. Drawing on a qualitative study that examines the experiences of educators committed to implementing rj principles, this article explores how placing rj in the context of engaged, productive pedagogies better nurtures the hoped for relational and peaceful school culture.

Additional information

Acknowledgements

The author wishes to acknowledge the support of the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada and the Ontario Graduate Scholarship for this research.

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Implementing restorative justice practice in schools: what pedagogy reveals

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
In the ongoing pursuit for creating safe, nurturing and relational school cultures, educators continue to turn to restorative justice (rj) principles and practice. Predominantly, schools begin to engage with rj in an effort to address harm done, causing its discourse to be situated in literature tied to classroom management and behaviour.

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Restorative practices and the integration of social emotional learning as a path to positive school climates | Emerald Insight

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Restorative practices and the integration of social emotional learning as a path to positive school climates | Emerald Insight

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Copyright

License

Published in the Journal of Research in Innovative Teaching & Learning. Published by Emerald Publishing Limited. This article is published under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY 4.0) licence. Anyone may reproduce, distribute, translate and create derivative works of this article (for both commercial and non-commercial purposes), subject to full attribution to the original publication and authors. The full terms of this licence may be seen at http://creativecommons.org/licences/by/4.0/legalcode

Introduction

Restorative practices (RP) are the overarching philosophy and actions that regard relationships and learning from harm as paramount in any community setting. The International Institute for Restorative Practices (IIRP) defines RP as including the use of "informal and formal processes and practices that proactively build relationships and a sense of community to prevent conflict and wrongdoing" ( Wachtel, 2016, p. 1). RP encompass a spectrum of actions from proactively building community to responding in restorative ways when serious harm has occurred. Social emotional learning (SEL) programming supports the goals of RP by providing a "coordinated and coherent approach to helping children recognize and manage their emotions, appreciate the perspectives of others, establish positive goals, make responsible decisions, and handle interpersonal situations effectively" to enhance a student's connection to school ( Payton et al., 2008).

Informed by education policy analysis methods, this paper explores RP and considers such practices important to study due to the unintended effects stemming from "traditional" obedience-oriented punitive approaches to school discipline ( American Psychological Association Zero Tolerance Task Force, 2008; O'Malley and Austin, 2014). Based on our analysis of current research, we explain that when RP are implemented with SEL programming, it is an opportunity for educational practitioners to address issues around race, gender, disability, and other aspects of diversity. By integrating these approaches together, RP become a vehicle to develop students' SEL skills, which includes communication skills, kindness, empathy, and caring.

Thus, efforts to integrate SEL within the school culture and curriculum go hand-in-hand with the development of RP. With these ideas in mind, we explored the literature with attention to understanding how educational practitioners might employ and integrate RP and SEL skills in the school setting. We sought to gain insights into questions, including: How have school practitioners applied RP? What are factors to consider in the implementation of RP? And, can an understanding of students' social and emotional learning needs enhance our overall understanding and assessment of RP?

We begin our analysis by providing historical context of the development of RP, including a discussion of zero tolerance policies and the unintended consequences of such policies. After exploring RP and its connection to SEL, we explore the implementation of RP in schools. With a focus on developing and supporting relationships, we conclude our paper by discussing three models that may help to link RP with SEL approaches. With this work we hope to contribute useful research to support efforts to address school discipline and conflict in a peaceful and constructive manner, and help to address the roots of violence in both schools and society ( Bickmore, 2011). Through this review of the literature, we were able to expand our understanding of the connections between the work occurring in schools that is both dedicated to developing students' skills in SEL and to implementing RP.

Historical context of RP: early development to current state

During the 1980s and 1990s, school administrators' concerns about school violence led to an increase in implementation of zero tolerance policies ( Curtis, 2013; Skiba, 2014). Zero tolerance has been described as a "broad term that generally reflects rigid, mandated-response approaches to school discipline" ( Monahan et al., 2014, p. 1110). The term became widely adopted in schools in the "early 1990s as a philosophy or policy that mandates the application of predetermined consequences, most often severe and punitive in nature, that are intended to be applied regardless of the gravity of the behavior, mitigating circumstances, or situational context" ( American Psychological Association Zero Tolerance Task Force, 2008, p. 852).

One of the most common criticisms of zero tolerance policies is that students of color and students with disabilities tend to be more harshly punished under these policies, compared to white students. There is a high degree of racial disparity in school suspension and expulsion in US schools ( Skiba et al., 2002). Specifically, research shows ineffective outcomes for zero tolerance approaches and negative impacts on social and academic outcomes, particularly for students from historically disadvantaged groups in education - students of color, poor children, and children with disabilities ( Gregory et al., 2010; Thompson, 2016). The disproportionate discipline of students of color may be due to lack of training in culturally competent practices and/or racial stereotypes; and lack of teacher preparation in classroom management ( American Psychological Association Zero Tolerance Task Force, 2008, p. 854).

Another criticism of zero tolerance policies in schools is concerned with the increases in security and police presence. Skiba (2014) suggests that zero tolerance advocates believe that the failure to suspend or expel students allows "the cycle of disruption and violence to gain a solid toehold in our schools and community" (p. 28). However, there is a lack of evidence to show that school suspensions prevent future misbehavior or make schools safer ( Gregory, Clawson, Davis and Gerewitz, 2016) or that suspensions and expulsions reduce school disruptions or improve the school climate ( Skiba, 2014). On the contrary, research has found that out of school suspension and zero tolerance approaches do not reduce or prevent misbehavior ( Hannigan and Hannigan, 2016); that zero tolerance policies have contributed to the school-to-prison pipeline ( Skiba et al., 2002); and that these types of school disciplinary actions place students at risk for juvenile justice system involvement ( Monahan et al., 2014; Thompson, 2016). Reasons cited for the ineffectiveness of zero tolerance policies are due to: inconsistency of implementation; poor outcomes for the school climate; and unfair application of the policy ( Skiba, 2014). Often such policies do not work because the root cause of the misbehavior is not addressed. Positive behavior intervention supports (PBIS) is one strategy intended to address this issue.

In 2000, Skiba and Peterson posited "a new perspective on school discipline" (p. 340) and described the emergence of a comprehensive model of prevention to address "the complexity of emotional and behavioral problems in schools" (p. 341). They further explained that this model of school discipline might be conceptualized as an early response opposed to a zero tolerance approach to school violence. This is a valuable point to consider; it helps illustrate a useful idea and key takeaway from the research literature, that RP are both proactive and reactive ( National Center for Mental Health Promotion and Youth Violence Prevention, 2009).

RP has its roots in restorative justice, which is "a process whereby all the parties with a stake in a particular offense come together to resolve collectively how to deal with the aftermath of the offense and its implications for the future" ( Braithwaite, 1999, p. 5). Although restorative justice has a long history rooted in indigenous cultures, it is still considered a relatively new approach in schools in the USA ( Gregory, Soffer, Gaines, Hurley and Karikehalli, 2016). Models of restorative justice can be grouped into three categories: circles, conferences, and victim-offender mediations ( Latimer et al., 2005). Restorative justice is a way of "looking at criminal justice that emphasizes repairing the harm done to people and relationships rather than only punishing offenders" ( Wachtel, 2016, p. 2).

The benefits of restorative justice include emphasizing recovery of the victim through redress, vindication, and healing ( Van Ness and Strong, 2014) and coming together to restore relationships ( Llewellyn and Howse, 1998). Although related strategies may contain restorative elements, if they do not bring together the victim, the offender, and the community, they are not considered restorative justice strategies. Community building provides a foundation to help support discipline procedures.

RP provide an alternative to the "punitive school disciplinary policies" that have been shown to be ineffective and racially discriminatory ( Anyon, 2015, p. iii). There are several compelling reasons that schools consider restorative justice. These elements include giving schools that are seeking to limit out of school suspension/expulsion tangible and meaningful tools; giving schools the ability to address disproportionality of discipline on students of color; and evidence that such practices can improve teacher morale and retention. As Curtis (2013) notes, even with "seemingly clear-cut policies in place, teachers still decide which infractions are serious enough to report to the office and thereby determine when students are disciplined" (p. 1257). This is also an important point to consider for how teachers themselves become engaged in and are able to develop skills in relationship building and other RP. Some of the problems with students considered to be defiant relate to a lack of skills in communication and conflict resolution and underuse of effective behavior strategies due to inadequate teacher training ( Espelage et al., 2016; Skiba and Peterson, 2000). We offer this scenario as an example:

Teacher: Tina, you were talking during a test. Give me your paper.

Student: I was talking because Shaila stole my pencil again and I'm already in trouble with my mom because she stole my basketball. Teacher: That isn't the problem. You were talking during a test. Student (irritated): She was talking too. See? I told you this teacher hates me.

Teacher: Don't be disrespectful to me in my classroom when you were the one who broke the rule. Go to the dean's office.

RP and SEL

As we described in the previous section, an understanding of how zero tolerance policies have played out in the school setting has resulted in rethinking of current approaches to preventing conflict. Subsequently, "educational leaders and professional associations have led a shift toward alternative models and practices in school discipline. District, state, and federal policymakers have pressed for more constructive alternatives that foster a productive and healthy instructional climate without depriving large numbers of students the opportunity to learn" ( Skiba and Losen, 2016, p. 4). These approaches include RP, as well as integrating SEL into school practices and the curriculum. Skiba and Losen (2016) summarized these alternative strategies that address school climate and school discipline as:

Relationship building (i.e. through approaches such as RP).

SEL approaches (e.g. improving one's ability to understand social interactions and regulate emotions).

Structural interventions (i.e. PBIS).

RP are one form of relationship building. RP are rooted in restorative justice and support the development of positive relationships, which in turn, create healthy climates while also helping to generate a number of other benefits to support the success of students in school. Part of the work with supporting RP is helping schools to demystify skill building so that teachers and staff can respond with needed skill building strategies during times of conflict or when negative behaviors arise. When students are provided an opportunity to participate in RP, they get to participate in role playing on the conflicts experienced, and are able to receive support for skill development from a trusted adult and/or a small group of students.

It has long been known that a healthy school climate requires "instruction in important social skills" ( Skiba and Peterson, 2000, p. 335), and a safe and healthy school climate is a "prerequisite to academic rigor" ( International Institute for Restorative Practices, 2009, p. 3). Greenberg et al. (2003) recommend that SEL instruction begin in preschool and continue through high school. School-based SEL programs often entail implementing policies and practices that may help students (as well as teachers, staff, and administrators) to learn and apply knowledge, skills, and attitudes that enhance personal development, social relationships, health, and well-being ( Taylor et al., 2017).

SEL "helps students to recognize emotions first in themselves and then in others so they can also develop empathy. SEL curricula directly teach children appropriate actions and provide a safe environment for them to practice what they learn" ( Gunter et al., 2012, p. 151). SEL programs promote positive behaviors such as caring, empathy, and kindness to improve relationships between students, and between students and teachers. Thus, understanding the connection(s) between RP and the goals of SEL programming makes sense. Furthermore, the "stability and security of the student-teacher relationship is also foundational to SEL" (p. 152). Students able to have strong relationships with adults in school have been found to gain a sense of belonging. Gregory et al. (2011) also suggest that understanding the teacher-student relationship is critically important given that positive teacher-student relationships among all racial groups are essential to creating an equitable and supportive school climate that does not rely on punitive approaches to behavior.

Finally, PBIS and other structural interventions have been used as a method for schools to help change student behavior ( Thompson, 2016). PBIS is thought to be effective because of the school-wide system that is developed, consisting of a team of teachers, staff, and administrators. Sprague (2012) described PBIS as organized around three main themes: prevention; multi-tiered support; and data-based decision making. Thus, the idea that PBIS is concerned with preventing problem behavior disciplinary procedures; and that behavioral expectations are applied consistently school-wide, are two key characteristics and goals of PBIS. Sprague (2012) explained that "the focus is on establishing a positive social climate, in which behavior expectations for students are highly predictable, directly taught, consistently acknowledged, and actively monitored" (p. 5). Finally, although the above strategies have been thought of and defined as alternatives, it is important to note that these as practices can and are being integrated together by schools and districts.

Integration of RP and SEL

In recent years, researchers have devoted greater attention to the connections between the approaches of RP, SEL practices, and structural interventions. Indeed, it is important to note that practitioners and researchers are recognizing the possibilities for improving school discipline models by integrating both restorative and SEL practices (and structural strategies such as PBIS) and models. Sprague (2012), for example, examined the integration of school-wide PBIS and restorative discipline.

The recent SEL movement has helped to create more attention and interest in the social, emotional, behavioral, and mental health outcomes. According to Chafouleas et al., increased concern has emerged about these outcomes and how they connect to overall success in school to the multi-tiered supports of PBIS. Furthermore, "multi-tiered prevention logic" has created an opportunity to integrate trauma-informed approaches into schools and "are built on foundations involving early identification of risk, varied levels of intervention support designed to teach skills and prevent more serious problems, and continual data-driven evaluation of response" (p. 144).

Research on SEL ( Durlak, 2015; Taylor et al., 2017) may help to make additional connections between RP and neuroscience. Gregory, Clawson, Davis, and Gerewitz (2016) posit a need for more research and empirical evidence into developmentally appropriate school discipline interventions that can be integrated into daily instructional practices. Researchers have already integrated these current approaches to inform understanding around creating healthy school environments that support student learning. Increasingly, more attention is paid to how emotions influence learning, relationships, and behaviors ( Desautels, 2016). For example, Mary Helen Immordino-Yang's work examines the neurological and psychological bases of social emotion and self-awareness and the implications for learning, development, and schools. Daniel Reisel's "The Neuroscience of Restorative Justice" lecture applied both neuroscience and restorative justice theories together to ask questions about the brain and rehabilitation in the criminal justice setting.

SEL is the "process whereby children are able to acknowledge and manage their emotions, recognize the emotions of others, develop empathy, make good decisions, establish positive friendships, and handle challenges and situations effectively" ( Gunter et al., 2012, p. 151). Researchers have been able to identify and examine specific learning outcomes for SEL programming and curriculum. These "Core SEL Competencies" are: self-awareness; self-management; social awareness; relationship skills; and responsible decision making. When these SEL concepts are implemented along with RP, the advantage is that the concepts are not presented in a vacuum; rather, these SEL competencies are learned through the filter of the community. For example, "responsible decision making" is defined by the community itself. "Self-management" becomes desirable because the relationships and community are enticing enough to pull students in, rather than push them out.

Often proactive circles are filled with content from the participants themselves. Rather than teach a lesson on how to handle stress or anger, a circle allows the teacher to turn it over to students to discuss ways that they have experienced successful management of stress and/or anger. These strategies that come from within the community are often more likely to be heard and acknowledged by the students; and relevant and workable for the students. Further, in a restorative conference, often discussing misdeeds allows us to understand the missing skillset and "prescribe" specific lessons or skill development. In practice, these most often look like the need for emotional regulation, conflict resolution, and communication skills. The community, in all its diversity, is affirmed, by being the lens through which these social and emotional skills are learned and refined. There are multiple ways of being together and building relationships, and one is not necessarily superior.

Implementation: training and evaluation

One 2009 report by the National Center for Mental Health Promotion and Youth Violence Prevention, called Implementation Guidelines, described restorative justice practices as "a brand new way of looking at resolving conflict, restoring relationships, and problem solving, especially in the school setting" (p. 7). As a result, buy-in, changes in culture and behavior, and especially training and evaluation become essential to a successful implementation.

Training is the most significant cost in implementing RP in schools ( National Center for Mental Health Promotion and Youth Violence Prevention, 2009). Prior to training beginning, we often hear about the importance of buy-in to successfully implement RP:

It requires buy-in at all levels of the school system and community, as well as a commitment to using and working through the restorative practices, not just with students but also among staff, to create a culture that produces results in students' behaviors. And it is an investment in time, staff, and training

(p. 5).

Buy-in and support for RP can be encouraged with the use and presentation of the data that is available on schools that have integrated RP into the school culture. Community members and leaders throughout the school community may help to serve as helpful advocates in communicating the benefits of RP for students and the school community. Policy studies conducted on policy implementation, specifically, may help provide further insights into how educational practitioners gather support and buy-in for a particular program or idea.

Training is one of the next important steps in the implementation process for RP and SEL programming. Along with the National Center for Mental Health Promotion and Youth Violence Prevention's Implementation Guidelines, the International Institute for Restorative Practices (2009) Improving School Climate: Findings from Schools Implementing Restorative Practices provides several great examples from schools to show the various ways the implementation of a program can be supported through training (and these data may also be helpful for other schools and districts considering RP). The training approaches vary from introductory trainings to trainings specifically on facilitating circles. In addition, the train-the-trainers approach may help to reduce training costs, make implementation more sustainable, and may help to create a leadership team that will support the sustainability of RP and SEL programming.

Finally, an organizational culture change is critical for implementing and meeting the desired outcomes and/or impact. Evaluation of a newly implemented program will begin on an ongoing basis, and may begin in the early stages of implementation to help ensure program fidelity. Both RP and SEL programs involve multiple components and require school resources to implement. In such cases, the intensity and duration of the activities provided will relate to program effectiveness ( Wang et al., 2015). One unique aspect of integrating the two approaches of RP and SEL together is that this may present some challenges in evaluating and/or determining which components are most essential to meeting a school or district's intended goals.

Theoretical models to support the implementation of restorative and SEL practices

To conclude our analysis we review theoretical perspectives and models that may help guide: the development of social emotional skills; and the implementation of RP. Based on this goal, three key models emerged from the literature as particularly helpful and useful to the work of restorative and SEL practices in the school setting: continuum of RP; social discipline window; and Morrison's (2004) hierarchy of restorative responses. To provide more detail and overview of RP, we briefly review these models with the goal in mind to guide and support the implementation of RP. Based on the findings from this discussion and analysis, implications for the design of schools and educational systems will be offered. In our discussion, we highlight school districts that have implemented RP to provide further insight into how practitioners make sense of and apply RP.

Continuum of RP

RP range from informal to formal ( McCold and Wachtel, 2001). In the San Francisco Unified School District, for example, RP are based on principles and processes that emphasize the importance of positive relationships as central to building community and repairing relationships when harm has occurred.

According to Morrison (2013), there are a number of different continuums of response; "no doubt, in practice there are many more" (p. 39). Morrison notes that there are various continuum models and approaches available and not one continuum has been shown to be more effective than the other - "school communities mix and match these models developing a continuum of response that fits their needs and concerns" (p. 40). Furthermore, research and development can "establish and test different models, and levels, of responsive regulation through a whole-school approach" (p.40). Indeed, as Braithwaite (2002) suggested, "a whole-school approach is needed that not just tackles individual incidents but also links incidents to [...] the culture of the school" (p. 60).

According to Morrison (2013) one of the first to be documented was McCold and Wachtel's (2001) continuum of RP ( Figure 1). Ted Wachtel founded the IIRP, one of the leading providers of professional development and training in the field of RP. On this continuum, the informal practices include affective statements that help to communicate people's feelings, and affective questions cause people to reflect on how their behavior has affected others. Small impromptu conferences, as well as a group or circle, are less structured and do not require the level of preparation required for formal conferences, as shown in the model.

Social discipline window

The IIRPs social discipline window ( Figure 2) is useful to dispel myths that RP are permissive and "soft on crime." The ideal is where the leader and the students are working with one another to create environments, which are conducive to high expectations, learning from mistakes, and positive relationships. This is a particularly useful tool in that it allows professionals to see the balance necessary to sustain a restorative environment. It also dispels the myth that RP are overly tolerant and "soft on crime." It is important to note that the support axis (shown in Figure 2) must include SEL. To support students to do better, they must be able to access pathways to do better, which often mean new ways of communicating and getting their needs met. Without meaningful SEL (even if only de facto SEL instruction after a problem occurs) there is not enough support to sustain positive behavior change.

In summary, by introducing the notion of a balance of control and support, teachers have an aspirational vision for their classroom and all staff have common language to understand what needs to be added or removed when certain environmental factors are not working for students. It allows us to shape environments so that our students are given the best combinations of factors that will encourage them to thrive.

Relationship pyramid: Morrison's (2004) hierarchy of restorative responses

To understand what a restorative setting or school might look like, Morrison's (2004) hierarchy of RP has been used to show how a school and its various stakeholders participate in the school community, from a RP perspective. Reminiscent of the PBIS pyramid, Figure 3, which is adapted from Morrison's model, demonstrates how important the foundation is of relationship building. The IIRP go so far as to say that 80 percent of RP work should be proactive. By investing in this proactive bottom tier, relationships are fortified so that they can weather challenging conversations and conflicts in circles. All work, in this diagram, is outlined in reference to relationships.

This notion of how central relationships (student to student, teacher to student, teacher to administrator, etc.) are to the health and effectiveness of a school is common sense and widely believed, but rarely discussed in education. Take, for example, a teacher who made you uncomfortable or with whom you had a strained relationship. Likely, that teacher is not one who you recall as a particularly effective teacher or one who taught you a great deal. Contrast that with a teacher who made you feel cared for and supported. Likely, that was a teacher who was able to motivate you to work hard and to learn as much as possible. That is the core underlying philosophy of RP and of SEL: relationships matter. The more work we invest at the bottom two tiers, the less there will be to do at the top tier and the more effective the top tier work will be when it is necessary.

Implications for practice and policy

Several challenges and opportunities lie ahead. Based on our firsthand work with schools and districts implementing restorative and SEL practices, as well as the knowledge and insights gained from this analysis of research, we conclude with a discussion of implications for practice and policy.

One important need to consider is the need to integrate school disciplinary practices, including RP, into the school context and existing structures. One of the most commonly cited reasons when there is difficulty to implement (perhaps any school-wide initiative) is time. Although initially training, planning, and implementation do take a great deal of time, the tradeoff is that less time is then spent in dealing with conflict and behavior problems; instead, more time is spent on task and learning, and because teacher retention improves, less time is spent hiring and onboarding new staff. In addition, there still remains limited comfort, familiarity, and knowledge of both RP and SEL, in general. It would be easy to offer a "binder" of how to do this, but if the protocols are not inclusive of the school community and its strengths, weaknesses, and needs, it would not work.

There are also several other factors related to implementation that are important to consider. For example, how do school administrators create the needed processes, supports, and provide information required to encourage buy-in from teachers and staff? Professional development and resources for staffing are very likely to be needed. For example, a full-time RP coordinator with the responsibility "to sustain all the other essential strategies for success" may benefit a school greatly and would require funding for a person who could play an important role in developing relationships, monitoring student agreements, providing coaching and training to other staff members ( Anyon, 2015, p. 8). The need to balance staff buy-in while simultaneously implementing can be challenging for schools. Staff led protocols and processes are ideal, but can be challenging to implement in real time - especially when they are unlike procedures the staff has experienced. In this regard, these procedures can often require trial and error to be readily accepted by the staff and functional for the whole school community.

In addition, educational leaders and practitioners are realizing, as Carter et al. (2017) explained, the need to create safe spaces for school personnel to talk openly about race, to better understand why racial disparities occur, and to support student-teacher relationships, in general. They further noted that addressing the race aspect of racial discipline disparities may require specific strategies for improving relationships and preventing and handling conflict. For example, efforts to improve the cultural responsiveness of instruction has been shown to be beneficial for the classroom and student outcomes ( Brown et al., 2010; Carter et al., 2017).

Conflicts are defined as the oppositions among interests, ideas, or demands and can arise in any community, which include schools ( Bickmore, 2011). Bickmore explains that how educators handle these conflicts can directly and indirectly shape the learning experiences of students. She further notes a difference between "negative peace" and "positive peace." Whereas negative peace focuses on controlling problems through exclusion and force, positive peace creates options and supports relationships to address conflicts constructively. Public schools offer "logical places to facilitate learning and practice of thoughtful, inclusive conflict dialogue, as a key element of creating positive, sustainable peace;" however, implementing peacebuilding strategies is especially difficult in schools where "poor and racialized students are clustered in under-resourced schools, and constrained by standardized curriculum and testing" (p. 2). Restorative justice leverages the social needs and impulses by teaching kids proactively first (learning about their peers in circles (e.g. morning meeting or community circle) then graduates into circles that are strong enough to withstand conflict and harm.

At the same time, Smith et al. (2015) also suggest that adults avoid escalating situations and to keep in mind that "all too often, adults become too confrontational and assert their power too forcefully" (p. 78). They suggest Wolfgang's (2008) continuum, which guides teachers on how to respond to or prevent problem behaviors along a continuum based on the intensity of the issue. This continuum ranges from looking (making eye contact or using a simple gesture) to directing (such as separating students to prevent a problem from happening).

Educators' role in preventing problems and conflict was a constant theme emerging from the research reviewed. In recent years, there has been wide interest across various human service sectors, including education, in the concept of trauma-informed care. Evans and Coccoma (2014) explain that this term refers to an attempt to create a paradigm shift, where trauma-informed approaches in the school setting have expanded. They further elaborate that to make the paradigm shift, there is a need to move from asking the question "What is wrong with you?" to asking "What has happened to you?" (National Center for Trauma-Informed Care, n.d.). Future research into neuroscience related to trauma and best practices appropriate for the K-12 school setting, as well as in higher education, can provide more understanding into how trauma impacts the brain and influences behavior.

The trauma-informed schools approach encourages educators and other human service providers to approach individuals' social and personal challenges with an informed understanding of the impact trauma can have on the entire human experience. Evans and Coccoma (2014) note that advances in neuroscience research support a trauma-informed approach. Specifically, new insights on the neurobiological changes that can occur in the human brain because of traumatic events provide important evidence and support for why schools should consider implementing trauma-informed practices.

Conclusion

As we prepared to synthesize the evidence learned from articles, models, and reports on RP pertaining to school discipline policies, we agreed that a paradigm shift is needed within many schools. Hansberry (2016) in the guide, Restorative Practice in Schools: Theory, Skills, and Guidance, optimistically encourages the reader to think restoratively:

A restorative mindset holds that the best way to deal with a problem or incident is to bring those involved, and affected, together (if possible) to discuss what has happened and how people have been affected. The next task is to help people to take responsibility for their misdeeds and bad decisions, and decide on a way that the harm might be repaired. This is a far more sophisticated approach than simply punishing those we judge to have wronged others [...]. The ability to do this face-to-face restorative work is something that we can teach young people to do, beginning the moment they enter formal education settings. It is useful to think of restorative practice as a pedagogy rather than a bag of tricks that we pull out to use with some students in some situations

(p. 26).

As complex as this may seem, as it is admittedly a profound divergence from most schools' disciplinary paradigms, we have found that the practitioners who really "get it" and who are natural and successful at implementing this work are characterized by a few remarkably simple traits, all of which are native to us when we consider how we, as humans, most like to be treated:

1. They are willing to see the humanity in every situation: conflicts are less about behavior and rules which were broken and more about the humans and their needs. They are able to see the child who was simply doing the best they could with the tools they had and work to help give that child more tools the next time around. They keep their eye on the big picture: this classroom is a group of humans, much more alike than we are different, trying to grow and learn together.

2. They trust others, especially youth: by expecting that students will rise to the occasion of solving their own problems they teach students that they are wise and capable. They know when they need to let go of control and let the experts get to work! They let it go when a solution is not one that they would have chosen because they know that making and living with your own solutions is an invaluable learning experience.

3. They are willing to be wrong: many situations we see in restorative circles involved some inadvertent escalation by school staff. Modeling what it looks like to own our own mistakes is one of the greatest ways to teach accountability and to sustain relationships.

4. They are creative: they come up with ways to make time for circles, to have the restorative chats their groups need, and to model restorative language, even when it seems like they do not have enough time or tools. They view the obstacles to implementation as challenges to solve.

For further reading

The Peace Learning Center (Indianapolis, Indiana) has collected stories on restorative justice conferences from the past two years. Please visit: https://peacelearningcenter.org/restorative-justice/

Figures

References

(1999), "Restorative justice: assessing optimistic and pessimistic accounts", Crime and justice, Vol. 25, pp. 1-127, www.jstor.org/stable/1147608

(2014), "What Works Brief #11: proactive and inclusive school discipline strategies", http://californias3.wested.org/tools

(2016), "Eliminating zero tolerance policies in schools: Miami-Dade public school's approach", http://digitalcommons.law.byu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1390&context=elj

(1999), "Restorative justice in everyday life: beyond the formal ritual", www.iirp.edu/eforum-archive/4221-restorative-justice-in-everyday-life-beyond-the-formal-ritual

Further reading

Corresponding author

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Restorative practices and the integration of social emotional learning as a path to positive school climates

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An understanding of the effects of zero tolerance policies in schools has resulted in rethinking of approaches to prevent conflict and creating a healthy school climate. Restorative practices (RP) have been looked to as an alternative to zero tolerance policies.