I'm sorry to have to miss today's meeting. I had come across a great article that I meant to share online yesterday, and would have been relevant to today's discussion.
Please check it out if you have time. It is focused on schools (because it is written by an education researcher), but I think you could replace "schools" with "institutions" and it would have broad relevance, given its main point that institutions cause, and can also reinforce trauma. The point is also raised that we have to remember to look for existing resiliency and avoid seeing the mission in terms of providers having to build resiliency from scratch.
The excerpted sections below are from an interview with educational researcher Tyrone C. Howard, the associate dean for equity and inclusion at UCLA.
“We are asking students to change a belief system without changing the situation around them,” he said. It can be irresponsible and unfair to talk about grit without talking about structural challenges, he said, referring to the recent interest in interventions tied to the concepts of grit and perseverance.
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Howard said that exposure to trauma has a profound impact on cognitive development and academic outcomes, and schools and teachers are woefully unprepared to contend with these realities. Children dealing with traumatic situations should not been seen as pathological, he argued. Instead, educators need to recognize the resilience they are showing already. The instruments and surveys that have been used to measure social-emotional skills such as persistence and grit have not taken into account these factors, Howard said.
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"Schools can do a better job of talking about the extent to which student trauma exists, teaching children coping mechanisms, and providing mental-health services.The conversation about growth mindsets has to happen in a social and cultural context, he said, because cultural, institutional, and historical forces have an effect on individuals".
Link to full article:
http://www.theatlantic.com/edu...-isnt-enough/418269/
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