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What Is This Section About?

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Commonly, community members, families, tribes, and businesses are underutilized partners, with few pathways to meaningfully include them in academic, social, emotional, and cultural outcomes for students and schools.

To truly transform schools, to become trauma-engaged, requires an approach that builds not only on individual experiences, but also collective experiences. To work collaboratively – or to co-create your approach in partnership with the school, community, and families -- requires strong relationships and an understanding of students’ families and cultures.

The reflection questions and tools in this section do not stand alone. In fact, they are woven into each section to expand understanding of trauma, shape professional learning, influence community-school relationships, improve family partnerships, and build foundational skills for students.

What Can Leadership Do?

What Can Staff Do?

Additional Resources

Please click to expand
    Books:
  • A Yupiaq Worldview : A Pathway to Ecology and Spirit, Angayuqaq Oscar Kawagley
  • Culturally Responsive Teaching and the Brain, Zaretta Hammond
  • Help for Billy: A Beyond Consequences Approaching to Help Challenging Children in the Classroom, Heather T. Forbes
  • Restorative Practices Handbook for Teachers, Disciplinarians and Administrators, Bob Costello, Joshua Wachtel, and Ted Wachtel

Milestones

The Transforming Schools Guide offers some steps and a starting point to deepen personal growth, establish a common vision with colleagues and community, and remind each of us that this is a process of preparing, starting, applying, and refining our trauma engaged work. Individuals and teams move through the steps and cycle many times to continue to improve upon and deepen our trauma engaged approach. Seeing the path forward and celebrating successes are key components of effective implementation. These Milestone guides offer four levels of section to complete, broken out by role. Each of the 11 components within the framework and toolkit.

Milestones: Cultural Integration (Word)

Knowing to Doing

There are over 50 peer-led and statewide experts' short videos that are availabile in the Transforming Schools video library. These are organized by the 11 component areas and are tied to topics in the framework. They are under 10 minutes and are easily accessible for personal review or in a group setting to simulate discussion.

Health

Trauma can profoundly impact how we respond to the world. It is also clear that it can have large impacts on our physical health as well. Taking care of our physical health is foundational to heal from the emotional and physical impacts of trauma. These resources are designed to address ways we can make schools healthier places for students, school staff and families. Please click to expand Health Resources.
  • 1. Using local foods and activities helps connect all students and families to school. This guide includes various recipes, translated and culturally adapted informational materials, videos, and physical activities that are designed to be culturally relevant to some of the various Alaskan communities.
    dhss.alaska.gov
  • 2. The Native Youth Olympics brings together student athletes from across the state each year to celebrate Alaska Native culture through competitive events. This is just one great culminating event of a year-long training effort for Alaskan youth that celebrates their culture.
    citci.org
  • 3. Find out how to participate in RurAL CAP’s Elder Mentor Program, where volunteer elders support students through in-school mentoring and sharing of cultural values
    ruralcap.org

Checklist

Coming Soon...