"Although I am passionate about many things in education, my platforms are what I believe to be the necessary components needed for ALL students to experience success in learning, career, and life. My platforms, listed below, support ALL students in accessing an equitable and just education so that ALL can thrive as human beings."
- Lachanda Garrison
Being a trauma informed educator is the ability to recognize the signs of trauma in our students and colleagues. Educators, in particular, do not necessarily need to know what happened. However, we need to be able to recognize the signs that something has happened. Trauma is a body experience meaning the results of trauma impacts the brain, nervous system, and ways of being that can ultimately impact learning if not addressed. Being trauma informed allows us to stay curious about the people around us, interact with them in healthier ways, and create learning spaces that fosters belonging, independence, mastery, and generosity.
Being resilience-focused = hope. Resilience is the hope of healing from trauma. As educators, we can intentionally help our students build resilience by weaving emotional awareness, regulation, and expression into our instruction. A resilience focused mindset creates learning experiences that are equitable, responsive, and sustainable. This type of learning environment gives our students hope - now and for their future. Being resilience focused is a strength-based mindset. A mindset of hope that empowers our students because of their experiences versus seeing our students' experiences as deficits.
Lachanda wholeheartedly believes that being culturally responsive is a necessary component of being trauma informed and resilience focused. Cultural responsiveness is a response that intentionally acknowledges and incorporates our students' funds of knowledge within our classroom and instruction. All students come to our classrooms with a variety of backgrounds to include family dynamics, traditions, and cultures. She believes that in order to make instruction relevant, accessible, and impactful we need to incorporate the very essence of our students. This enables our students to see themselves in the learning, creates belonging, and makes the learning stick. It also builds respect between the members of the classroom community by raising the level of care, creating spaces for active empathy, and humanizing one another.
Storytelling and identity work fuels being trauma informed, resilience focused, and culturally responsive. Lachanda believes that taking into consideration the identities of students (socially and academically) causes educators to reflect on their own identities. This reflection helps educators identify and address biases we may have towards our students both intentional and unintentional. It can also help us reflect on our preferred modes of learning we may unknowingly place onto our students. To combat any harmful unconscious biases, we need to create spaces and opportunities to learn more about our students' identities.
Storytelling is a powerful way to share more about ourselves and to learn more about our students. Storytelling is a culturally responsive practice as many cultures have been using it to pass down learning, wisdom, and traditions for generations. Being trauma informed and resilience focused is how we can create a safe space of belonging for storytelling to happen. The telling of stories has to be earned, respected, and honored. As educators, we must make sure that this is demonstrated in our classrooms in order to truly know and see our students. When we are able to learn more about our students through storytelling (by being trauma informed, resilience focused, and culturally responsive), Lachanda believes that rigorous, high-levels of learning can take place.