My personal philosophy of educational equity is that students need different things. We can be equitable without being equal. Not all students need to be treated equally. Children of trauma need equity and an understanding of the culture they come from. They may need more attention, support than the child that is not affected by trauma. The same holds true for communication and relationship with student families. We have to realize that just because they do not communicate with us does not mean they are not invested in their child’s well-being. Other factors may be a play. My current reality is I want to help staff members at my school learn from my own experience. I had a rough year with about half of my students dealing with trauma. I did not have the tools to help them or myself. I managed through with support from colleagues and administration but felt the need to dive into my own personal study and education of Trauma informed schools. I convinced my colleague and friend, Dacia Lackey to join me on this TLI project.

Currently my school has varying perspectives on behavior as it relates to trauma. Some staff understand that many behaviors result from trauma while others do not see the connection or see this venue as a scapegoat or excuse for just “bad behavior” or poor parenting. Although administration has tried numerous trainings, relating to student behavior and childhood trauma, nothing systematic has been fully implemented. This left much of the staff feeling like what was next? "Oh no, another way to document behavior that takes even more time than the last initiative from the previous year."

In order for our school to become a Trauma Informed School, 80% of the staff must buy in to the new approach. Staff needs to stop blaming others and start being proactive and collaborative to fixing the current sometimes toxic environment surrounding behavior at our school. The equity work that needs to happen is a mind-shift on how we deal with children of trauma. There needs to be a systematic approach led by a team of teachers/staff for a successful transformation. Our school staff is good at forming relationships and connections with students. This is already in place and a key component of equity but it needs to go further. Teachers need to feel supported by each other and administration and need the tools through educational about trauma to learn how to effectively deal with everyday trauma students.

Book study is part of the educational process but further education and tools are needed on an ongoing basis to bring staff to a higher level of mastery. We have already implemented one book study and will continue with a second book study come fall. This will help teachers make the mind shift to a more trauma-informed approach. This may be repeated for staff members that did not attend a past book study for continued staff development to this new mindset. During our first book study the group recognized that children experiencing trauma may or may not be in a "socially just" learning environment. In the book club we discussed that many of the children that are dealing with trauma come from a low socio-economic demographic in varying ethnic groups (native american, hispanic) which can impeded their learning with limited access to adult support or technology. We talked about how this could become more socially just for children.

After meeting with the principal, we have a plan in place to implement this plan January 2020 with previous months being educational support through book study and meetings with a leadership team and the current foundations team to discuss planning and rollout. We are thinking that in the future, perhaps mentors/coaches on staff that are most learned on trauma can serve as coaches to help teachers that don’t know how to move forward with interacting with students of trauma and create and maintain a socially just learning environment accounting for the fact that many children do not have access to adult support at home or technology due to lower socio-economic factors affecting diverse groups. Leadership that implements this approach needs to lead with the “why” we are doing this rather than the how and what we are doing. (article: One to Grow On / Leading from "Why",Carol Ann Tomlinson) We started our book club talking about why we are holding this book study: to understand how we can help students with undesirable behaviors succeed in the classroom and why its important to understand that behavior is a way of communicating for them.