How can teachers help children who have witnessed family separation (original) (raw)

Creating Safe Environments for Traumatized Children in Schools

Creating Trauma-Informed Schools

Exposure to traumatic events in childhood and adolescence can have lasting negative social, emotional, and educational effects. For schools, or any environment that serves children, to be truly trauma-informed, they must address three crucial areas: safety, connection, and emotional and behavioral regulation. Chapter 4 explores these three areas as the foundational pillars of a trauma-informed structure. Each area is explored, along with examples of how they can be created in a school environment. Concrete examples of safe behavior are provided, as are examples of classroom triggers and guidance for helping children regulate emotions in the classroom. Finally, key information on identifying early risk factors for bullying behavior is included.

Steps to Creating a Sanctuary Classroom (From #TrumpSyllabusK12)

Students must learn that the stories of the past have shaped their present reality and are the tools by which they can create their future. We are now at this place again where we must teach young people about tolerance, about the importance of sharing and hearing all stories, and about the need for having a sanctuary classroom in which to do all of this. This lesson plan is designed to use Dr. King’s “I Have A Dream” speech to engage our students in a broader conversation about the need for a sanctuary classroom.

(2019) The Work of Classroom Safe Spaces

Teaching Media Quarterly, 2019

Rosemary Clark-Parson’s critical reflection, “The Work of Classroom Safe Spaces,” historicizes and contextualizes the ongoing debate of “safe spaces” on university campuses in the United States. She offers an intervention into the safe spaces debate, arguing that safe space is a pedagogical practice, something contextual, contingent, and above all, a form of work, rather than a stable, closed concept. Drawing on her own ethnographic work, Parsons asks three fundamental questions regarding what constitutes a safe space: who is the space for, what is this space safe from, and what is safe to do in this space. She carries these questions into the classroom to collaborate with her students on the possible answers.

Classroom of hope: The voice of one courageous teacher on the US–Mexico border

Journal of Peace Education, 2012

In this study, the authors present peace education as a new model for twentyfirst century educators that embraces both pedagogical changes and practical relationships between teachers and students and fosters universal human rights. This case study recounts the lived experience of one novice teacher in a classroom on the US-Mexico border. Her middle school students' lives are embroiled in unprecedented violence in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, located only a few miles from El Paso, Texas. The case study underlines the need for redefining identity in the teacher-student relationship; focusing on teacher agency in students' lives; seeing teachers as peace educators in terms of listening, caring, being non-judgmental, and engaging in reflective practice. In light of the growing need for peace education in an era of increased transnationalism in preK-12 education, institutional change is a necessary component, including redefinitions of the roles of principals and counselors. New models for professional development for teachers are also considered. Future implications for practitioners and policymakers, building on the work of Dewey (1900; 1938), Freire (1970), and Giroux (2005), among others, are discussed that include helping students adjust and flourish as they cross both geographic and metaphorical borders between existing and new homes and classrooms.

Protective Factors Immigrant Children Bring to the Classroom

Cross-Cultural Considerations in the Education of Young Immigrant Learners

This chapter focuses on strengths and protective factors immigrant children bring into the classroom. If well nurtured, these strengths can enhance immigrant children’s positive outcomes and those of future generations. The “immigrant paradox” is a phenomenon used to describe the positive outcomes of immigrant children despite developmental risks associated with their relocation and adjustment. Unfortunately, the effects of these protective factors reduce with later generations. This incredible loss is a gap that educators could fill. Using strategies that give immigrant families and children “voice” is critical in breaking through the barriers, stereotypes, attitudes, and under-information that come between the educators and the immigrant children in their care. Some strategies that have proven effective in accessing immigrant children’s strengths are suggested in this chapter.

Schools as safe spaces - where do we stand

2018

Public discourse and policy on universalisation of education has primarily focussed on improving access to schools, and ensuring retention and participation of children in schools. The Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act, 2009 (RTE Act) and flagship programmes of Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA) mainly focus on providing right to education by guaranteeing admission in government/neighbourhood schools and right to schools with prescribed infrastructure and teachers. However, the RTE Act and SSA give scant attention to rights within education. However, provisions related to protecting children’s rights within schools and ensuring that schools become safe spaces can be found in various other legislation, government notifications, programmes, and schemes formulated by central and state governments. In this article, we discuss these provisions and present what we know is happening in practice. Provisions and Implementation Legislations pertaining to children address corpora...