Through our many interactions with educators we continue to hear about the struggles of the past two years, the challenges currently being faced and the successes individuals and schools are realizing as they interrogate inequitable systems and restrictive structures. CASDA’s Fall Newsletter focuses on the power of educators to change systems and structures to be more equitable and human-centered.

In the book, “Equity-Centered trauma-informed education,” Alex Shevrin Venet (2021) describes four shifts for schools to become “fully trauma-informed and equity-centered” (p.15). In describing one of the four shifts to becoming trauma-informed, Venet (2021) describes, “... seeing trauma-informed practices as the responsibility of individual teachers to embedding them in the way that we do school, from policies to practice” (p.15). The significance in this shift is the lens through which individuals view the systems and structures they often have a hand in creating or certainly in operationalizing on a daily basis.

In “Community: The structure of belonging,” Peter Block (2018) states, “Belonging is best created when we join with other people in producing something that makes a place better” (pp.xvii-xviii). He connects the ideas of belonging and community asserting, “To belong to a community is to act as a creator and co-owner of that community” (Block, 29018, p.xviii). In our work with educators we often speak about the opposite forces of deficit-based and asset-based approaches. Community is one of the most impactful assets educators and schools can draw from. To tap the deep well of community assets, we encourage educators and leaders to challenge their own narratives about certain people or parts of the community. As Block (2018) notes, “In our attraction to problems, deficiencies, disabilities, and needs, the missing community conversations are about gifts” (p.146). What gifts do people and groups within our community have to offer in support of students and schools?

To close, what do we mean by the phrase “community conversations?” To bring full circle the theme of this message “community conversations” must transcend the historic focus group, town hall meeting or survey. These are systems and structures of the past. Truly empowering conversations with the community will require educators and school leaders to as Brene Brown (2018) says “rumble with vulnerability” and by what Ishimaru (2020) describes as “enacting equitable collaborations” (p.4). Equitable collaborations “... begins with the premise that nondominant families (which includes young people themselves, their caregivers, and extended relations) represent a largely untapped source of expertise and leadership for achieving educational equity and justice” (Ishimaru, 202o, p.4). This will require the courage to challenge narratives and we at CASDA are ready, willing and able to assist at any time.