Roberto Rivera was a troubled, addicted youth engaged in criminal behavior who discovered his path to transformation in the pit of his traumatic pain. He harnessed the fire of early childhood trauma to change himself from being a problem to being a solution, not just in his own life, but also in the lives of many, many other under-privileged and under-performing young people.
The name of his solution is Fulfill The Dream (FTD). FTD is a unique, hip-hop(e) based, Social Emotional Learning program presented in schools and communities throughout the U.S., in association with 7mindsets.com. Its mission is to transform troubled young lives, schools and communities, as well as our culture as a whole, from the bottom up, so to speak.
Roberto transformed his trauma into personal growth and self-empowerment by devoting his creative drive and desire into facilitating positive social transformation. His work on self-transformation, then, involved liberating the fire of trauma from pain to gain in similarly traumatized youths in the most disenfranchised communities in the nation. He accomplishes this by helping them channel their creative passion into uplifting their own communities. What we have here is a proven paradigm of achieving post-traumatic growth through dedication to positive social and cultural transformation.
The Back Story
The quotes that follow are Roberto’s own words, gleaned from my interview of him.
Roberto grew up in public housing, “eating government cheese and drinking powdered milk”. It turned out that a documentary film on poverty during that time included interviews in the housing project where he lived. His parents were interviewed and “I was this little guy, an exemplar of the underbelly of American society.”
By the time he reached Middle School, Roberto was classified as Special Needs. The message he was receiving from authority figures up to that point was that hewas the problem: the problem at school and problem in the community. “I started to internalize that message and shared it with the world – living up to that assumption by getting in trouble.” Following one of his several confrontations with law during his middle school years, he dropped out of school and ran away from home.
Epiphany
One individual in Roberto’s troubled, rebellious life was his grandfather, who “treated me like I was not a problem to be fixed, but rather a solution to be released.” Roberto observed how his grandfather had turned his own childhood pain into a positive force that got him into college, empowered him to develop a successful career and made him determined to leave a powerful legacy of service to his community. “I began to experiment with the idea that pain can be transformed into propane (pro-pain)” - meaning a positive use of pain as fuel for personal empowerment and community change.”
Roberto’s grandfather, Floyd Brynelson, did a lot through his church and Rotary involvements. Thinking about this got Roberto thinking about a local teen center that needed support. “There wasn’t much mentorship there. The fire of pain was my flame, igniting my determination to turn my power for destruction into power for construction.”
From that small but meaningful beginning at that teen center, Roberto went on to create the Good Life clothing company as an outgrowth of his mission to “represent the true history and power of Hip Hop culture, which had been commoditized by big business”. He soon began sponsoring Hip Hop artists, poets, rappers, dj’s, dancers and more to come into troubled neighborhoods to inspire belief in oneself and enflame the passion for driving positive social change. These concerts and festivals culminated into five original Hip Hop productions that ultimately led to Roberto and his community organization being invited to perform at the Kennedy Center in Washington D.C. The name of the presentation was Fulfill The Dream. It was about the transformative power of hip-hop to cultivate healing on individual and community levels. Roberto co-wrote it with the youths of his community. The date was set for September 13th– so it never happened, having been preempted by the tragic events of 9/11.
While the play was not performed at the Kennedy Center, it was performed in the Midwest. Roberto’s service efforts up to that point had taken him a long way in empowering others and transforming communities, and brought him to a pivotal realization about himself. “It took all of that to finally “de-toxify myself from the idea that I was the problem. It seeded in me that I was part of the solution”.
Return To School
Roberto then went back to school, not to get good grades, “but to learn something that could further fuel me to be part of the solution and better serve my community.” He continued to serve the community and did well academically, eventually getting into the number one school for education at that time, the University Of Wisconsin. There, he created his own major: Social Change, Youth Culture, and the Arts. He began to realize to his amazement that “education can be transformative for me and for my community. So many people I grew up with were more brilliant and talented than me, but never had this realization!”
Roberto then started a company that he named Fulfill The Dream, aimed at using Hip Hop to reach kids who were deemed chronically disengaged. This young population had undergone severe trauma, but their needs had been overlooked or misunderstood as strictly discipline issues, and they thus had been traumatized further because their real problem was neither being identified nor met.
“The approach we took was to relate to these young people, not as problems to be fixed, but as solutions to be released” – to pass on and build upon what his grandfather had given to him. Roberto’s ingeniously creative angle for fostering this positive transformation was to employ Hip Hop, a culturally relevant approach, to focus on their strengths and fan their passions into an undefeatable flame, “making these young people agents of change, instead of objects to be changed. This approach worked to transform their perception of themselves, of their schools and communities, and of the possibility of what they could be and do in the world.”
From an academic standpoint, the youths’ GPA rose a full point cumulatively in as little as 10 weeks. In one month attendance soared from 55% to 96%. In one of the Alternative Schools where every student was deemed chronically disengaged, Beloit Fresh Start High School in Beloit Wisconsin had their first 100% graduation rate.
Since then Roberto Rivera has been invited to teach courses at university levels. He’s lectured at the University of Washington, the University of Chicago and other Ivy League schools. He soon realized he would need to further his own education to be as relevant as possible in these settings, and went on to receive a Masters Degree in Education. Then “I eventually engaged in something I never thought I could ever do, pursuing a PhD in Education. All of this has served to educate Roberto about the academic and theoretic aspects of what he had been effectively since 1998.
Trauma Informed, Trauma Transformed
Roberto’s own personal trauma had informed this movement, but he does not regard the clinical form of treating trauma as being complete. “Trauma Informed is important because it helps to identify the trauma that exists in the lives of youth. However, it’s too focused on taking a clinical view of young people, and on only looking at trauma on the level of the individual”. What is needed, Roberto has found, is to understand that the root causes of the trauma extend beyond individuals and interpersonal relationships, “that institutions and systems have been created and situated in ways that cause, perpetuates and exacerbate trauma.
“Take for instance police brutality. Some of these kids, many of whom have already experienced trauma, have been traumatized by police harassment. Cops would pick up our students from an area occupied by one gang, and perhaps to intimidate these kids into more obedient behavior – or for sick amusement - would take those kids to a rival gang territory and make them walk home. This could and often would prove deadly to those youngsters.”
Roberto goes on to explain that it’s not just the experience of isolated individuals that fosters the destructive behavior that stems from a traumatized emotional core. “There is a broader systemic and institutional experience that has to be addressed and confronted. “ The research that Roberto draws from in this field has been called Post-Traumatic Growth. The idea here is similar to the concept of resilience in that both are concerned with how to overcome emotionally severe experiences that can set people back. Resilience is about coming back to base line, though, while Post-Traumatic Growth is about actually growing from having to contend with a traumatic experience.
Post-Traumatic Growth is what Roberto believes he achieved through his commitment to personal growth and community service, and it is the aim of his work at engaging at risk youths in transforming themselves and their communities. Graduates of his Fulfill The Dream program emerge with a healthy sense of personal empowerment, clarity of purpose, enhanced relationships, and a stronger sense of identity. “Fulfill The Dream re-frames the pain of trauma from a perceived deficit into a potential asset!”
Roberto points out that a great deal of the current research into trauma and recovery focuses on veterans from Iraq, Afghanistan, and Ruanda, as well as on survivors of incest. “But what I’m putting forth is that in places like Chicago, South Central LA, and the Northside of Minneapolis it is like experiencing a war zone. Beyond identifying the trauma, the experience of post-traumatic growth can be experienced in classrooms, schools and communities. “
Getting More Specific
Roberto cites that the literature relating to Post-Traumatic Growth list three basic contributors:
- Listening to stories of other people who have experienced pain and trauma but found redemption, healing and growth from it.
- Being able to tell your own story in a culturally relevant way (to connect with your own culture and experience and gain strength from that – the Spanish saying that applies here is: “La cultura cura” – “The culture is curing”.
- Collectivist cultures – when people start to organize to share story and take social action from the story.
Through these three mediums, “We can change the oppressive systems and institutions that are causing, perpetuating and exacerbating trauma in our youths who have so much incredible potential for catalyzing positive change in their own lives and in their schools and communities.”
From Hip Hop to Hip Hope
Hip Hop culture embodies the above three basic contributors to Post-Traumatic Growth through its jazz, blues and gospel roots. The Jazz impulse connects with tradition and history, while adding something new. It’s influence in Hip Hop acts as an underlying intergenerational connection with the elders, borrowing from the past and infusing it with the contemporary.
The blues impulse connects with personal story. As the great African American novelist, scholar and literary critic, with formal music education in his background, Ralph Ellison wrote: “The blues is an autobiographical chronicle of personal catastrophe expressed lyrically”. What blues artists have been doing indigenously is what therapists now tell us is a way to process through events – to tell your story in such a way that you can laugh – if you can laugh at something that could lead to your demise it loses its power.
Taking action, mobilizing the community, connects with the gospel impulse within Hip Hop. Through it we connect to something larger than ourselves, to our Creator, to our community. As Roberto puts it, “Instead of just succumbing to the forces of oppression we can find redemption, healing and growth.”
The Fulfill The Dream Social Emotional Learning (FTD SEL) Curriculum
Fulfill The Dream uses a transformational Social Emotional Learning model that includes and goes beyond cultivation of the Five Core Competencies of Self-Awareness, Self-Management, Social Awareness, Relationship Skills, and Responsible Decision-Making. It redefines rigor to include young people taking what they learn in class and connecting it what is happening in their community, while strengthening their cultural and ethnic identity.
It creates a place for healing that also stimulates critical thought for social action. Students realize that what they are learning is not just for individual betterment. It connects them with the members of their community at large and empowers them to begin to change the social fabric of their reality.
A Practical Example
A Chicago high school math teacher in a school in a violent, under resourced community that was implementing FTD SEL was tasked with responsibility for teaching high-level math to his students. Before he attempted to impart his lesson he spent time listening to what was going on in his students’ lives. He learned that many were grieving over their families losing their homes (this was during the housing crisis). He shared this with other math teachers in the school and learned that they were hearing similar stories.
Together these teachers created an approach to their math lessons that addressed the current social context of balloon interest rates and subprime mortgages that were so deeply affecting the students. He introduced his lesson to his students by saying that he was going to teach them math so that they can understand what is happening to their community’s homes and have the power to do something constructive about it. He assured them that he would support them in any way they want to use this math knowledge to help their community.
His students started showing up for class early and staying in class late to master this math, as they saw themselves as potential bringers of the solution to the community. They came up with the idea of a community forum to share with family, friends, and neighbors how balloon interest rates were working against them. They create power points, they translated their presentations into Spanish, they created flyers, made food to serve at the forums. The collective strength of these young people created project that ended up empowering the community to hold onto their homes and even to get some homes back. At the end of the school year they took a standardized test and passed with flying colors. Roberto caps off his telling of this case history by saying, “A study was not done on this, but I would speculate that healing, empowerment and Post-Traumatic Growth resulted from the pain of their grief over the situation.”
Trauma Transformed In The Classroom
Roberto adds, “Trauma informed often times does not address how transformation can take place in a traditional classroom setting. It involves singling students out by pulling them out, giving them special care and lowering the bar as it relates to rigor. I think the example of our math teacher demonstrates how Post-Traumatic Growth can be achieved in the regular classroom. FTD is a Social Emotional Learning curriculum that, in tangible and culturally relevant ways, helps to empower students to experience healing while strengthening their cultural, racial and ethnic identity and experiencing themselves as agents of change.”
How You Can Help
Check out 7 Mindsets Fulfill The Dream Social Emotional Learning programs at www.7mindsets.com. Connect with Roberto Rivera at Roberto@7mindsets.com to bring Roberto in as a transformational speaker and thought leader for youth, school and community transformation at your conference, school, district or community event. Here is a link to the TED Talk that Roberto presented: https://www.youtube.com/watch?...Q0ffu19iY&t=522s
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