Crossing Cultural Thresholds- Engaging EL Caretakers in the Trauma-Aware Conversation
Let’s look to tools and strategies that facilitate re-directive capacities and champion long-term moves toward resiliency. We’ll spend a bit of extra time focused on our Recent Arriver Emergent Lingual (RAEL) students. In this space, we’ll highlight EL parents and families as critical stakeholders in students’ trauma restoration processes.
Trauma-informed pedagogy relies upon, in part, the explicit teaching and modeling of regulatory and prosocial behaviors. Eventually, these strategies can be holistically embedded into children’s everyday school (and life) experiences. In the context of RAEL populations, this also means bridging cultural norms and expectations around mental wellbeing. As learning places, this requires a concentrated shift toward integrating diverse cultural value systems into our trauma-sensitive practice.
The National Council for Behavioral Health names two dimensions of sustainability in trauma-informed programming:
1. Making changes, gains, and accomplishments stick
2. Keeping the momentum moving forward for continuous quality improvement.
So, how can we best support these two dimensions? A sustainable path toward resilience requires us, as practitioners, to monitor students’ success and adapt our instructional cues as needed. Fortunately, we already recognize this as a best practices approach across all grade levels, content areas and language domains. We are experts at checking in on our students and personalizing the learning experience based upon individual strengths and needs. The same tenets apply to the processes of transition shock, including trauma.
Shifts are required in the broader educational landscape, too. Sustainability requires honest conversations about our organization’s infrastructure, including leadership, policies, and procedures as they ignite or diffuse underlying transition shock. It demands moving away from punitive practices and toward restorative solution seeking. Sustainability relies upon the collection and analysis of data in order to determine if our trauma-informed programming is effective and equitable. It means that all team members are equipped with tools for understanding and addressing student trauma, and that educators are widely supported in recognizing and managing the secondary stress that may arise through our work with trauma-impacted youth.
Essentially, we are charged with ensuring that the strategies we introduce are good fits for individual students. A good fit means that they are not re-triggering and are both culturally responsive and language adaptive. A good fit means that learners are empowered to experiment with mitigation strategies in their toolboxes, to fail forward in a safe space, to reevaluate without self-admonishment, and to try again.
Involving Caretakers as Critical Stakeholders
If we are to truly address transition shock (including trauma) in our learning spaces, then we must also become active in engineering webs of support around our students- in this case, we’re speaking specifically about our RAELs. Here, we’ll concentrate on arguably the most critical stakeholder group of all- the parents and caretakers of our Emergent Linguals.
In communicating with culturally and linguistically dynamic caretaker groups about transition shock, it’s important to first identify our guiding principles. How do we cross cultural thresholds to build authentic partnerships?
As with our students, safety and trust are paramount. Cultivate these properties as we would in the classroom- practice welcoming, routine, predictability, and transparency.
Be cognizant of biases around mental health and trauma. Name observed behaviors and avoid labeling.
Reduce isolation by connecting families to appropriate resources, as well as to families with socio-cultural commonalities.
Strive to meet with parents in person and, if needed, arrange for a trained translator wherever possible. Avoid using children as conversational brokers.
Talk to parents about the link between students’ school performance and socio-mental health. Use direct and clear language.
Remember that mental health terms may be unfamiliar, unmeaningful, or untranslatable for Recent Arriver parents. Translate these terms ahead of time if possible, and provide visual cues where appropriate.
Honor socio-cultural perspectives when advocating for student care.
Champion wrap-around supports and refer students for advanced care in a timely manner.
Sustainability is enhanced when students’ home and cultural values show up in the school space. Highlighting the voices of our RAELs’ caretakers can simultaneously bolster our culturally responsive efforts and temper student anxiety. Meanwhile, opening doors to culturally responsive communication around trauma-sensitive topics builds trust and enables a collaborative approach to long-term restoration.