Blog Post #10 Healing Centered Engagement Argument

The ways Healing Centered Engagement helps to overcome trauma.

In Shawn Grinwright’s Healing Centered Engagement, the argument is presented that Trauma-Informed Care (a form of trauma recovery that “encourages support and treatment to the whole person, rather than focusing on only treating individual symptoms or specific behaviors.”) is, despite its popularity in the modern day, a far more harmful method of trauma recovery than it is often credited for. 

Ginwright argues that Trauma-Informed Care fails to address the root of trauma, instead opting to focus on the aftermath of it, which leaves the opportunity for additional trauma or relapses from trauma wide open. Furthermore, Trauma-Informed Care can lead trauma survivors to victimize themselves and define themselves by their trauma, rather than grow from it. This is demonstrated in Ginwright’s recollection of a healing circle he led, wherein he attempted to lead participants through the steps of Trauma-Informed Care. During his explanation, he was stopped by a participant who told him that he was “more than what happened to him”.

Ginwright’s response to the weakness and failings of Trauma-Informed Care is Healing Centered Engagement, a new form of trauma recovery that “...views trauma not simply as an individual isolated experience, but rather highlights the ways in which trauma and healing are experienced collectively.” In other words, Healing Centered Engagement opts to focus on trauma survivor’s agency in the healing process, rather than how living with trauma will define them, and puts an emphasis on community, culture and self-identity as a means of developing your identity separate and overcoming of your trauma.

I find this approach to be very interesting, and would very much like to continue a discussion on it in class. I think the various benefits of Healing Centered Engagement are really cool, and I’d like to know if anyone who is comfortable sharing has any experience practicing it and how effective the method has been for them. I’ve been intrigued by what I’ve read about it, and intend to try practicing it in my own life.

Attached here is a hyperlink to an article on how to walk students through the steps of Healing Centered Engagement, and how to help them practice it in their daily lives.

Blog #9 Reflection on Past Blogs

Looking back on everything that we have studied and discussed over the course of the past semester, the things that I find continuously sticking out in my mind are the things that have since become noticeable in my everyday life. Working in a school (and a school open to students of many different cultural backgrounds, at that), I have been able to observe many of the different advantages and disadvantages demographics of students have in real time, and it has truly brought my ability to understand the readings to a new level. Likewise, the readings that reflect my real-life observations have given me insights on how to best aid and connect with students that I’d otherwise never bond with the way I have been able to. 

Richard Rodriguez’s Tongue Tied comes to mind as a prominent example here. In his writing, Rodriguez reflects on how his school treated English as a prominent and important language and Spanish as a taboo, altered his perception of his own languages, and left him to struggle with his cultural identity for a long time. This reading led me to think of my own kids from non-english speaking countries (ie. most of them, especially the Mexican boys I have who struggle with English) and how I’ve bonded with each of them. Since this reading, I’ve worked to make an effort to learn some (albeit very little in the grand scheme of things) basic Spanish, and have made an effort to show an interest in the culture. I watched the World Series with them, as they are big soccer fans, and it was a lot of fun. I’ve never even watched a soccer game before, and now I can name players!

Meanwhile, Beverly Daniel Tatum’s Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria? And Other Conversations About Race discussed the segregation of students of different race and class through social division, and how that affects student’s perceptions of the world and different cultures. This reading helped me realize why I was struggling to connect with a student I had, a black boy from New York. Surely, it was difficult for the student to feel as though it was easy to connect with me, a white kid who grew up in Connecticut with authority over him, and until now I hadn’t stopped to think about this. Since reading this piece, I have made efforts to both make it clear that I am interested in bonding with my student and learning about his life, and given the student space so as to take off the stress and pressure that comes with being forced to bond with someone you have such a different experience from. I have also been working to take a look at my own unconscious biases and correct any assumptions I may have about other cultures.

Finally, our newest readings on gender laws and gender activism in Rhode Island have stuck with me pretty strongly. I am a genderqueer student, who has struggled with my own identity and other’s perceptions openly since middle school and privately for as long as I can remember. Though I have my reservations about everything now being discussed and protected under gender laws and activism (which may be caused by internalized hatred I have to re-examine, I’m not sure), it hits me pretty hard to know just how far we’ve come in such little time in terms of acceptance of student identity and self-expression on all levels. I believe this is a vitally important message to instill in students at a young age, and is key to ushering in an era of acceptance and identity exploration that my child will be able to enjoy freely.

The Argument of Woke Read Alouds: They, She, He Easy as ABC and Rhode Island Law

Visual Representation of the Spectrum of Gender Expression

In Woke Kindergarten’s video Woke Read Alouds: They, She, He Easy as ABC, the argument is presented to the audience that gender is a broad spectrum of different pronouns, dress choices, names and much more, and that every person's placement on this spectrum is to be respected and appreciated. It pushes to instill in students the values of exploring gender expression in its various facets, and accepting how that manifests for others. 

This argument is now supported by law, as shown in the Guidance for Rhode Island Schools on Transgender and Gender Nonconforming Students Laws and Guidelines, put together in 2016. These laws and guidelines serve to ensure that people of all genders will receive equal opportunities; prohibiting discrimination against anyone based on sex or gender expression in places of employment or education. This is the culmination of the efforts taken by groups like Woke Kindergarten, who have established a sense of normalcy for these previously devalued forms of identity expression, and done the work to raise the voices that have taken the first major legal steps in ensuring quality for people of all sex and gender.

Though all of the topics we cover in class are for obvious reasons important, this one in particular I hold a bigger stake in as a genderqueer student. I’m grateful for the work done by both organizations like Woke Kindergarten who have taken the effort to raise awareness on and educate on the intricacies of unique gender expression, as well as the lawmakers who have pushed to codify laws protecting students and citizens of different identities from discrimination. However, I hold some reservations about what we are presenting as aspects of the genderqueer spectrum in resources such as Woke Kindergarten’s videos. In particular, the use of neo-pronouns (pronouns such as Zie/Zim, Tree/Treeself, etc.) are an “aspect” of gender expression that I’ve found has served more to romanticize the experience of not identifying with your birth gender, rather than actually soothe gender dysphoria and other symptoms of not fitting in with your assigned gender. This is a very nuanced topic, of course, and what I’ve written here is a simplification of the wider conversation, but it’s something that stuck in my mind while watching the video and I am interested in hearing takes from others about the subject (especially if you’re also genderqueer).

Hyperlink: Attached here is a link to another article discussing the importance of and concerns about conversations regarding gender identity with students.

Eliminating Ableism in Education & Examined Life Argument

Thomas Hehir's Eliminating Ableism in Education

    In Thomas Hehir's Eliminating Ableism in Education, Hehir presents the argument that disabled people are regularly forced to confront and overcome difficulties in both everyday life and in a classroom setting. This is not because of their disability, but rather because of the way that society treats disabled people as defined by their disability. This argument is supported in Hehir's work by the transcribed accounts of disabled people, such as the account of one mentally disabled student. The student's mother recalls asking her child's teacher what they were learning in science, only to be informed that special education students were not learning science in favor of fine motor skills. Hehir highlights this as indicative of how schools teach students with mental disabilities: it's all centered around that disability. Furthermore, the education of the mentally disabled has been perpetually plagued by low expectations that leads educators to give less effort to disabled students relative to their neurotypical peers, which makes their learning an even greater challenge than it already is under the standardized form of schooling they face. This is supported by studies described in Hehir's work, which note that in schools where mentally disabled students who were given a focused education covering subjects akin to what their neurotypical peers were learning, there was a sharp increase in mentally disabled students that passed state tests. 

    This argument is also seen in the video "Examined Life: Judith Butler and Sanaura Taylor", in which we follow a conversation between Judith Butler and Sunaura Taylor, the latter of which is afflicted with arthrogryposis and uses a wheelchair. Together, they discuss various societal perspectives of able-bodied people versus disabled people, such as the false notion that abled bodied are radically independent and capable and disabled people are completely helpless and how society is designed to make disabled people further disadvantaged. 

    I think the detail that society furthers the disadvantage of disabled people through its lack of consideration for them is a really interesting one, and I’d like to further discuss and flesh out that idea and define some ways that societal expectations of a person’s ability provide further disadvantage to disabled people.

    Attached here is a Hyperlink to an article further discussing how society holds back disabled people: https://epicassist.org/the-biggest-barrier-for-people-with-disability/

Tongue Tied Reflection Blog Post

 

Tongue Tied, by Richard Rodriguez
 

            In Tongue Tied, this week’s assigned reading, Richard Rodriguez reflects on his experience with language surrounding his education, and how the treatment of Spanish and English in his life led him to misconceptions about the roles of the two languages. 

While I have been fortunate enough to never personally struggle with the loss of my linguistic identity, I am in a position now where I have begun to observe it in others. The first people that came to mind when reading about the author’s account of how he was confident speaking Spanish and would’ve been encouraged by his teachers or peers speaking it (and how being the only student whose first language was Spanish made him feel isolated from everyone else) are two of the middle school boys that live on the dorm I work at. Their names are Jeronimo and Mauricio, and they both come from Mexico. They’re both sweet kids, and are doing well socially from what I observe, but there’s no denying the identifiable drop in their voice whenever they speak with me or other staff. I hear them excitedly talking to each other in Spanish often, but they mostly keep to themselves and their other Spanish-speaking friends outside of light casual interactions with other students. However, there is one student who's been making an effort to learn Spanish, and I’ve noticed Mau and Jero opening up to this student far more than anyone else I’ve seen in my almost year of knowing them. It’s heart-warming to see, and this week’s reading has helped me to understand exactly what they’re feeling when they see one of their peers making the effort to communicate with them on their terms.

However, this reading has also enlightened me to exactly what they’re feeling living in a place where they’re feeling out of place on even a simple linguistic level. The segment of the reading about how Richard lost his escape from English when it began to invade his home was heartbreaking, and I’m keenly aware of how few people on campus and even in the dorm can speak with Mau and Jero in their native language. With this in mind, I am going to be more conscious of how I communicate with them, and though it’s difficult to dedicate time to learning a language while juggling work and college, I would like to pursue learning Spanish as a means of being able to speak with and bond with these kids on their terms. 

Coming into class after reading this, I think a point of discussion we should spend time with is ways to accommodate students who have a language barrier like this, when we (unfortunately) are not familiar with the language and do not have the time or resources to effectively learn the language. I’d love to know if there’s more I can be doing to effectively communicate with these kids, and if there are resources out there to make learning a new language on a tight schedule easier that I might be missing out on.

Attached here is a hyperlink to an article further discussing the struggles students with a non-english first language often face in educational environments, and some ways schools might be able to combat them: https://www.concernusa.org/story/language-barriers-in-classroom/

Literacy With An Attitude - Extended Comments on Vanessa's Blog

Literacy With An Attitude by Patrick J. Finn

        In Vanessa’s blog post discussing quotes of particular interest from Patrick J. Finn’s Literacy With An Attitude, she highlights several quotes that I found particularly interesting and worthy of discussion. This blog can be read in conjunction with hers, and I will be responding to each of the quotes she chooses to highlight and her takeaways from them as they appear. I will assume the reader has already read each point before reading my responses.

Quote One: I really like the point Vanessa makes here about how it’s odd that topics like civil rights are a discussion often avoided most in schools that would benefit most from these discussions. There's a common trend I’ve noticed in working-class schools of classrooms made up of mostly students of color, and a white teacher instructing them (this is also supported by a study linked below). This absolutely could lend itself to the avoidance of conversations that would greatly benefit the students: the teacher, in ignorance of the disadvantages they’ve sidestepped by simply being white, doesn’t think to or value the importance of having these discussions in the classroom. We’ve previously discussed in readings such as Delpit’s about how the cultural barrier between white educators and students of color can make it difficult for white teachers to adequately meet the needs of students of color, further supporting this theory. This, paired with the stigma around students of lower economic (or working-class) status that suggests they learn at a slower rate than their wealthier peers can create an environment where the conversations about the disadvantages certain groups have in the world are being avoided in the places they are most relevant.

Quote Two: Vanessa’s second quote was something that I found really interesting, and I found her connection to be even more so. I strongly agree with the assertion that relationships between educators and students is one of the most important factors in properly understanding where a student is at in their skills and how they’ll effectively improve on their weaknesses. The strengths of students are only practiced by them (and the weaknesses are only worked on) when they feel as though their efforts are being observed and acknowledged, and when students are put down for their struggles, it can become really unmotivating to try anything. I absolutely have noticed an increase in poor relationships between students and teachers over the years, and while it may just be my increased exposure to the behind-the-scenes of educations that is leading me to see this more often, it is really disheartening to see from people who are meant to be fostering these student’s paths to achieving their aspirations.

    Quote Three: While I absolutely agree with the sentiment that teachers shouldn’t be trying to control students, per se, and the students being challenged to do so here are absolutely being asked to do something well beyond their pay grade, I feel that there is still a responsibility on the teacher’s end to maintain structure and focus for the students. This is likely what was meant with the phrase “kept control of the class”, even if it was worded poorly. I’m very anti-authoritarian in educational roles and all aspects of life, but having been put in a position of authority over students a number of times, I’ve come to understand that students when left too much to their own devices can be ineffective. I think the difference between letting students run free and outright ordering them around, however, is understanding how to help channel the student’s ideas, interests and energy into their learning.

Hyperlink: https://www.axios.com/2022/01/23/teachers-schools-students-diversity

Video Analysis Links

Classroom Tour Notes: Link

Precious Knowledge Notes: Link