Often, we are confronted with dehumanizing practices in education setting—practices that cause trauma, induce shame, and contribute to the adversity that many children and adults already face. Practices that push us away from our better selves, and strip others of their dignity and humanity. Practices and institutions that punish, harm, exclude, degrade, dismiss, disrespect, and disregard. Educators and students alike have experienced being dehumanized in their school environments at some point.
During this pandemic, we have shared a collective trauma, a universal human experience, an event that threatened our collective humanity. In some ways, the online educational settings of our homes during the shutdowns forced us to face each other's humanity anew, experiencing vulnerability collectively. We saw each other's living spaces, saw babies crying, pets running around, kids being silly, the natural chaos of actual living exposed. The curtain was drawn back.
The pandemic also laid bare what many of us already knew: Things weren't working so well for many students and staff before and there is no “going back to normal.” It is time to reboot the system.
So, what does it mean then to create a humanizing school environment? How do we cultivate an ecosystem that celebrates, uplifts, preserves, and reveres the humanity of those that walk through the doors? How do we encourage joy, promote healing, foster safety, and celebrate our community?
That does not mean all sunshine and rainbows, though—we must have spaces where it is safe to express and experience the range of human emotions and conditions. We must face the pain together. We have to be able to share and support each other through the collective grief for what and who we have lost as well as celebrate our resilience. It must be OK to not be OK. This is essential for educators to experience so they can then model it for their students.
An integrated approach with a common vision is essential. Schools and districts across the country are continually attempting to implement initiatives and approaches such as social emotional learning, a multi-tiered system of support, trauma-informed schools, restorative justice, whole child and many more. At the heart of these varied approaches is a desire for a humane education system, environments that foster and nurture our collective humanity. Safety and belonging are the pathway to learning, and creating environments rooted in relationships that foster these is essential.
These initiatives are aiming to shift our paradigm or mindset from behavioristic and punitive to more humanistic and restorative. They seek to create schools that value the dignity of humans within their walls. Places where adults and youth want to be and feel they belong, in environments where all feel authentically valued and seen. Places where the genius of every child is realized and allowed to flourish. Places for connection to learning and to each other, where everyone feels supported and nurtured.
But why do these initiatives often fail, even with the best of intentions? Very rarely do schools and districts view these holistically; rather, they are siloed and disconnected with equity as an afterthought, if included at all. Without a systems approach rooted in the science of positive and adverse childhood experiences—PACEs science—which includes equity, social justice, and community, the result is fragmented initiatives that often perpetuate the harm they are trying to prevent, retraumatizing students, families, and staff. Staff suffer initiative fatigue (which fuels resistance) and the attempt to respond to these disconnected efforts in policy and practice contributes to burnout.
We experienced a collective trauma from the existing education system prior to the pandemic—just look at all the tropes of school trauma in our movies and stories. School is often equated with pain rather than joy. We must engage in a root cause analysis of the problems rather than tinkering at the edges. It is time for the reboot, time to humanize our schools.
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