Over half of all U.S. children have experienced trauma in their lives. Educators are often affected by this trauma as well as they help students meet the challenges they face. This course will inform you about anti-racist, trauma-informed education while helping you become more aware of the presence of oppressive practices within our school systems. Materials are provided that guide you in reflecting on current policies and practices that may perpetuate harm to students and educators and how to take action toward creating more humane systems that support healing and facilitate learning.
In this course, you will:
- Identify how personal definitions of trauma and beliefs held about trauma impact young people in school,
- Examine the concepts of healing justice and thriving.
- Recognize how the culture of policing, prisons, and punishment show up in the everyday life of classrooms and consider ways to reject the propensity for punishment,
- Articulate how approaches to restorative and transformative justice support educators’ ability to model responses to harm that center justice, community wellbeing, and individual and collective thriving, and
- Explore how you might manage and prioritize your own wellness and how school leaders could work to promote community care within schools.
