To fully support students, schools must attend to the trauma that occurs within their own institutional cultures. Equity advocate Paul Gorski describes three transformative commitments schools can make to maximize the potential of trauma-informed education.

Paul Gorski

1020_14-19_00020663_p14_CSI

How Trauma-Informed Are We, Really? thumbnail

Whole Child

Supported

Social-emotional learning

School climate and culture

Safe

Cultural competency

How Trauma-Informed Are We, Really?

School Culture

Social Emotional Learning

School leaders committed to bringing racial equity must ask why educators in schools who advocate fiercely for equity often feel isolated or face repercussions, while educators who are reluctant to make change for equity are rarely challenged. Gorski, who has decades of experience working for school-based equity, says most racial-equity efforts in schools are derailed by four "equity detours": pacing for privilege (the comfort of teachers threatened by equity issues is prioritized over progressing quickly); poverty of culture (racist actions and inequities connected to racism are talked about only as "cultural" issues); adopting a deficit Ideology; and celebrating diversity (a focus on celebrations that help white or privileged students learn about other cultures and races without confronting racism). To avoid these detours, Gorski recommends school leaders adopt and hew to five general principles of "equity literacy," which he discusses.

0419_56-61_shutterstock_1200876208_left_DL

Avoiding Racial Equity Detours thumbnail

Culturally responsive teaching

School and district leadership

Equity detours

Avoiding Racial Equity Detours

Equity

If the authors have learned anything working with schools across the United States, they've learned this: When it comes to educational equity, the trouble is not a lack of multicultural programs or diversity initiatives in schools. Nor is it a lack of educators who appreciate and even champion diversity. The trouble lies in how so many diversity initiatives avoid or whitewash serious equity issues. At the heart of a curriculum that is meaningfully multicultural lie principles of equity and social justice–purposeful attention to issues like racism, homophobia, sexism, and economic inequality. "When we invest our multicultural energies in surface-level cultural exchanges, fantasies of colorblindness, or celebrations of whitewashed heroes while ignoring the actual inequities many of our students face in their own lives," they write, "we demonstrate an implicit complicity with those inequities." The authors suggest that schools use an equity literacy approach–that is, an approach to diversity or multiculturalism that relies more on teachers' understandings of equity and inequity and of justice and injustice than on their understanding of this or that culture. The idea is to place equity rather than culture at the center of the diversity conversation. The authors share five principles for developing curriculums that are meaningfully multicultural.

LiteracyStrategiesGrade4-12_Tankersley_3D

Equity Literacy for All- thumbnail

School improvement and reform

Diverse classrooms and schools

Equity Literacy for All

Landsman and Gorski decry what they see as the narrowing of curriculum, overemphasis on test scores, and overstandardization of curriculum in ways that undercut teaching critical thinking. They believe these trends stem from five myths that policymakers and teachers alike buy into: that curriculum enrichments are “frills”; that all students should follow the same standardized curriculum; that teaching for basic skills rather than critical thinking is “politically neutral” teaching; that low achievement reflects deficiencies in a student, not the system; and that tracking by ability promotes achievement. They discuss positive steps teachers and administrators can take to creatively counter these myths. The article lists strategies for teaching that boosts critical thinking skills and connects to students' overall lives and home cultures.

Paul Gorski

About

Expertise

Articles by Paul

How Trauma-Informed Are We, Really?

Avoiding Racial Equity Detours

Equity Literacy for All

Countering Standardization

Write for ASCD

We publish insightful, actionable, relevant work from educators across all levels of education that help educators learn, teach and lead.