The "Woke" Manifesto: Creating "Woke" Students Through "Woke" Educational Environments

• In Event: Sheraton Roundtable Session 14
  In Roundtable Session: Envisioned Futures: Transformative Work With Young People

Abstract

This paper posits that American schools need to incorporate a trauma-informed care curriculum that is centered around grassroots organizing and protest history (Gomez, 2017). Studies have shown that students in well-resourced schools have more negotiating power and also expect more from the school administration, whereas students from under-resourced schools, who would benefit from such negotiating powers and should expect the same standards from public schools, do not (Best, 2017). We argue that this can be accomplished by teaching the history of protests and social movements in a way that students are able to understand their current circumstances as a result of all of these social forces and not as an isolated moment in history.

Authors

• Akashi Kaul, George Mason University

• Dee Delfin, George Mason University