![]() ![]() ![]() Where Trauma-informed Practices Meet Culturally Responsive TeachingĪs with trauma-informed practices, culturally responsive practices are often mentioned but rarely understood within school communities. In order for trauma-informed practices to be meaningful for students-especially the ones I work with-their teachers and school leaders must question whether those practices are being rolled out in a culturally responsive way. Mainstream approaches to trauma-informed practices often fail to address or prevent trauma, and at worst can actually perpetuate harm. While research has shown school-wide trauma-informed practices benefit all students, one-size-fits-all programs don’t work. In my experience, teachers who have the most success with their Native students take into consideration these cultural strengths during their planning and instruction. All these things contribute to a higher chance of trauma-exposure, but more importantly the Native students in my district are citizens of tribal nations with longstanding cultural traditions of valuing reciprocal relationships with all living things, including their communities, lands and waters. The Native American students I work with, like so many other Indigenous youth, experience high rates of poverty and health disparities, especially in regard to COVID-19, which has hit Native populations particularly hard. On any given day, you might find me performing the duties of an instructional coach, professional development facilitator or classroom teacher for the 1,300 Native American students in our district. As a Native American student achievement teacher for a federally funded grant program, I work directly with teachers of Native American students to develop their capacity for culturally responsive practices. Many years later, I find myself drawing on my early understanding of trauma from an Indigenous context quite often in my current position working for an urban school district in Arizona. In order to truly address trauma, we must also consider both the cultural experiences and socioeconomic inequities that impact our students. I realized that in many cases, our understanding of trauma-where it comes from and how to address it-is limited. That research paper was the beginning of my relationship with what most educators know as “trauma-informed practices,” a term used for acknowledging the widespread effects of trauma, and started me on my journey of advocating for Native youth through education. For the final research assignment, I choose to explore the disproportionate rates of suicide among Native American youth-an issue that impacts nearly all tribal communities, including my own, the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe.įrom that assignment I learned that understanding trauma can help us better address complex behavioral issues in the communities we care about, whether those communities are our tribal nations or classrooms. Years ago, before I became an educator, I took a contemporary Native American studies course as one of my first college classes. ![]()
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