Let's Break Free: Towards a Humanizing Social and Emotional Learning

• In Event: Addressing Social Trauma in and Through Schools: Humanizing, Restorative Justice, and Critical Hope Approaches

Abstract

According to Jung (1977), wounded healers are therapists who choose to treat patients because the analysts themselves had experienced their own psychological wounds. Building on this notion from a Native American perspective, Duran (2006) argues that trauma also exists in people’s souls and calls for a “healing process that includes the healer” (p. 6), because in the context of genocide and other oppressions, “the community acknowledges their wounding and healing process, which then can provide the bridge of compassion needed in the healing of patients” (p. 6). Many critically conscious teachers of color come into school spaces with “spiritual injury, soul sickness, soul wounding, and ancestral hurt” (Duran, 2006, p. 15) as a result of being members of “internal colonies” (Gutierrez, 2004, p. 281) commonly referred to as communities of color. Silencing experiences with oppression and the subsequent lack of support in this context prominently contribute to not only teachers’ sense of professional marginalization (Amos, 2010), but also this project’s focus—the intensification of toxic stress and historical trauma in teachers’ lives as people of color.

To help their students and themselves thrive through this socially toxic stress requires critical teachers of color to commit to providing healing structures that help them move—in beautifully contested ways—to enact a more humanizing education, while confronting the painful present and pasts along the way. To that end, this project answers the following questions: 1) How do educators of color across subject-areas and grade levels heal from the socially toxic stress they experience in their professional contexts? 2) How do these processes manifest in pedagogies proven to facilitate academic engagement among urban youth that acknowledges and addresses the healing needs of students that would allow them to fully thrive? In other words, how does healing their social and cultural wounds as educators help them to assist students to heal their own?

Preliminary findings support the development of a wounded healer development framework for teachers of color that hinges upon: 1) coming to social consciousness; 2) deciding to use teaching as a platform for healing from their own social traumas; 3) collectivizing their agency to create cultural, policy, and programmatic change; 4) maintaining and sustaining their health and wellness when addressing the socially toxic stress of the profession; and 5) leveraging their relationships and resources to effectively serve the academic and holistic needs of their students. This project focuses on the critically holistic engagement of and by critically conscious teachers across grade levels and subject areas. Each participant employs critical theory, critical pedagogy, and health science research to analyze and sharpen their own cultural identity and pedagogical development, health and well-being, and political, holistic, and academic education of their students. Traditional data collection strategies was used in the form of field notes and other artifacts, video of community and classroom sessions, and teacher, student, and community member interviews. I use utilize Charmaz's (2006, 2009) constructivist version of grounded theory to substantiate my theory with participant narrative and rich, accurate, and detailed descriptions.

Author

• Patrick Camangian, University of San Francisco