Disentangling the Reproductive From the Liberatory: Trauma-Informed Practice for Racially Just Systemic Teaching

Session Type: Symposium

Abstract

Although existing trauma-informed education-based practices have the potential for transformative action, they are often constructed without explicit attention to systems of racism and social inequity. By operating as if trauma exists in a race-free vacuum, educators run the risk of ignoring the role these systems play in constructing and reproducing trauma, and can harm the very students they aim to support. This symposium will highlight liberatory, systemically trauma-informed practice (Authors, 2020) while unpacking and disrupting existing harmful approaches. Each paper will focus on: the weaponization of trauma-informed practice, an investigation of how current practice leads to production or re-production of trauma for children at school, and then consideration of how to center liberatory, systemically trauma-informed practice (Authors, 2020).

Sub Unit

• Division G - Social Context of Education / Division G - Section 5: Inquiry, Transformation, and Communities

Chair

• Simona Goldin, University of North Carolina - Chapel Hill

Papers

• "Who Are You Really Doing the 'Saving' For?" Interrupting White Saviorism in Trauma-Informed Practice - Simona Goldin, University of North Carolina - Chapel Hill; Addison Duane, University of California - Berkeley; Debi Khasnabis, University of Michigan

• Black Feminism, a Holistic Trauma Framework and Healing - Adam J. Alvarez, Rowan University; Abiola Farinde-Wu, University of Massachusetts - Boston; Candice Christa-Gaye Peters, Rowan University

• Unsnarling Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports and Trauma-Informed Education - Alex Shevrin Venet, Community College of Vermont; Rhiannon Kim, The University of Vermont

• Exploring Resources of Black Youth in the Midst of a Double Pandemic - Tyrone C. Howard, University of California - Los Angeles

Discussant

• Yolanda Sealey-Ruiz, Teachers College, Columbia University