Describe your agency’s strategy to provide trauma-informed services in the community you are serving.
Hack the Hood’s philosophy of education is a justice-centered approach to data science education that emphasizes liberation through socio-political action within the tech sector by individuals, for themselves and the community. We view our learners “as transformative intellectuals who exhibit complexity, commitment and credibility” (Morales-Doyle, 2017) and design the learning experience to promote critical awareness and engagement toward action. We recognize that our learners, like most of the population, have likely had a few adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) and many have also been educationally underserved--especially in technology and STEM. We also recognize that technology and STEM education have had negative impacts on people of color that we must address and contend with. Our strategy to provide a trauma-informed learning environment is built on these realizations we implement with a few strategies including developing a sense of belongingness and identity, leveraging a whole-program approach, and teaching relevant sociotechnical content that prepares learners to take action.
Developing a sense of belongingness in the Hack the Hood community, as well as the technology field is intentionally fostered through staff engagement with learners. Our program staff, technical instructors, and instructor aids have a combination of educational, technical and experiential expertise as folks of color in education and technology sectors. The staff are encouraged and positioned to develop relationships with learners and foster relationship building within the group through intentionally designed programming sessions, dialogue, and learning activities. Engaging our full staff to build connections with learners enables multiple touch points for us to understand and respond to learner needs that are related to the program or showing up in the program experience. Enhancing learners' sense of belonging in tech, especially as Black, Latinx, Indigenous, and AAPI youth is supported through mentor matching with tech professionals of similar backgrounds, panelists, and workshop speakers who are able to share how their experiential expertise has advanced their career in technology. We support learners social emotional learning to understand the ways that their cultural knowledge and social justice values are necessary and needed in technology.
We gather direct feedback from learners regularly, and empower them to express their thoughts, ideas, and needs through multiple methods. Affirming competence is an important part of the Hack the Hood learning experience. Learners are given frequent, social-justice aware feedback, opportunities to collaborate, and teach and learn from each other across the technical, teambuilding, identity and sociotechnical aspects of the program. Finally, the sociotechnical course content deals with the intersections of technology and society with specific attention to the ways that race, gender, socioeconomic status, politics and other identity and social factors have a unique impact on Black, Latinx, Indigenous and AAPI communities in our modern world. This unique learning experience promotes critical consciousness, activism, empowerment, and technical ideation to support liberation and positive futures for our communities with technology. We take on difficult topics of systemic harm with a social-emotional perspective first, ensuring well-being, promoting understanding for learners and establishing an ethic of community care as technologists.