Trauma, including abandonment, neglect, poverty, or abuse, affects students. Because of this, a classroom community is vulnerable to the sheer unpredictability of behaviors. Students who have experienced trauma need support in order to create a classroom community where they can thrive and learn. This study examines a Whole-Child Approach…

Farms and gardens are increasingly being recognized as dynamic educational settings through which learners can engage in a wide variety of activities and practices to connect with land, food, self, and community. Across these settings, teaching with political clarity represents a pathway for identifying, interrogating, and disrupting systems of…

This article explores prevalent stories about "Gen Z" students that unintentionally undercut both their success and learner-centered pedagogies. The authors consider how those beliefs might be reframed to serve all learners more effectively. We also explore how the racial reckoning, health pandemics, social unrest, and additional…

Nearly every student today is coming into informal education programs with some form of trauma. This is especially true as we examine the long-lasting impacts of climate change, the pandemic, and identity-based prejudice on children. In response, the Monterey Bay Aquarium has undertaken a transformative journey in its education programs. This…

Social Emotional Learning (SEL) programs and curricula have emerged as a priority in schools over the past three decades, with greater urgency since the COVID-19 pandemic. While SEL programs may show promise in supporting students' social and emotional needs generally, current SEL practices apply color-evasive approaches, leading to White-centered…

Over a period of nine years (2011-2019), I have had the opportunity to engage with -- and to contextualize through a decolonial and mental health lens -- the growing threats to and the policing of students at different Southern Californian community colleges. These interactions occurred with a non-White majority of students, mainly Xicanas/os, who…

While studies in the biological and psychological sciences have suggested that writing can promote physical healing, such studies offer a limited understanding of writing as a complex, embodied, and social practice. This article asks how and under what social and pedagogical conditions writing might promote experiences of healing in community…

The "Rainbow Journalism" (RJ) course was a way to proactively channel the devastating effects 45 had on the CSUSB community. This article focuses on the decolonial tactics of RJ, which are simultaneously founded in the "transfronteriza" experiences of the author and Xicanx, Africana, Feminist, Queer resistance approaches. Both…

A commitment to empathetic understanding shaped the field of religious studies; although subject to critique, it remains an important teaching practice where students are charged with the task of recognizing, and perhaps even appreciating, a worldview that appears significantly different from their own. However, when the focus of the course is…

The term "newcomers" is commonly used to describe students who have recently arrived in U.S. schools. Depending on usage, newcomers may mean students in their first 6 months in U.S. schools, in their first 4 years, or anywhere in between. A majority arrive speaking little to no English, most are from socioeconomically disadvantaged…

In September 2020, local education agencies ("LEAs") in California adopted Learning Continuity and Attendance Plans ("Learning Continuity Plans"). These plans included key information on how LEAs were preparing to provide instruction, programs and services to their students during the global COVID-19 pandemic. Among other…

In my three-article dissertation, "Concerning the Other: Empathic Discourse in Worldwide, National, and Student-Authored Textbook Historical Narratives," I explore how textbook authors empathize with marginalized groups. My data includes approximately 1,000 textbooks published from 1910 to 2010 from over 100 countries around the world,…

Serving a working-class suburb of the Los Angeles metropolitan area, the Hawthorne School District (HSD) is a small district with 11 schools: seven elementary schools, three middle schools, and one dependent charter high school. HSD's students are predominantly from low-income families (87%). Most students (71%) are Latino/a and about fifth (21%)…