Healing Racialized Trauma: Centering Grief To Foster Wellness In Education

Colloquium
Stephanie Cariaga,  Allyson Tintiangco,  Tiffani Marie,  Lauren Daus,  Sharim Hannegan Martinez  

This colloquium explores how racialized trauma and grief impact understandings of wellness in education, from high school classrooms to higher education. In the United States, 35 percent of children have experienced more than one type of traumatic event. This data does not account for social toxins like racism, sexism, poverty, and other forms of structural trauma that disproportionately impact the mental and emotional health of communities of color. Teachers are often the first responders to student trauma, especially within classrooms built on safety, trust, and connection. Despite growing scholarship on trauma, research on how to address racialized trauma in various school contexts is still emerging. At the same time, little research addresses the necessity of grief as a tool for healing trauma, how schools can cause disproportionate trauma and grief for communities of color, or how compounded trauma and grief impact the health and wellness of educators themselves. In order to contribute to a more robust understanding of racialized trauma, grief, and wellness across education, the panel of educator/scholars will draw from public health, somatic, and radical feminist frameworks to address these questions: How do educators center grief to address trauma and disrupt racial injustice across varied classrooms? How can teaching about grief improve mental and emotional health for communities of color? This session challenges discourse that stigmatizes and disenfranchises the emotions of students and educators of color and situates grief as a necessary component of health and wellness in education and beyond.