What is Trauma-Informed Care?

In this episode of Raíces y Resiliencia, host DENISE VALDEZ, LCSW unpacks what trauma-informed care (TIC) really means in school settings and what happens when it’s practiced through a race-neutral lens. Denise walks listeners through SAMHSA’s six guiding principles of TIC, discussing how each one can foster healing or cause harm depending on whether schools acknowledge race, culture, and systemic inequities.

Link to reflection sheets:

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1MNg5hiSQ0-tb3W-k4tbUM7Ny9SIYEEkI?usp=share_link

Link to references:

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1aiafHEh5mOBkftfkM2HgjwMd4d2XS-76?usp=share_link

Transcript

Transcript

Episode 2: What is Trauma-informed Care

Hello and welcome to Raíces y Resiliencia. I'm so glad you're here. 

Intro music

Welcome back to Raíces y Resiliencia.

I'm your host Denise and I'm so glad that you're here. I also want to thank you for coming back. This is our second episode and if you haven't yet listened to the first episode, it will be also in the show notes so that you can go back and review it.

But in episode one, we explored the power of language. We talked about the history of labels like Hispanic, Latino, Latina, and Latinx and how the words we use in schools either build belonging or erase identity. We also really looked deep into how some of these language labels have changed and the impact that it has had on the Brown folks and also how or where the power stemmed from through these labels.

We also reflected on our own positionality. I shared a little bit about my intersecting identities, the privileges that I hold, and how those shaped the way I show up for my students and my families. And then we did together some deeper reflection on how our positionalities impact the students we service.

So today we're building on that foundation that we discussed in episode one. This episode is all about trauma-informed care or TIC. So if you hear me say TIC, it is just short for trauma-informed care.

Specifically, we're asking what does trauma-informed care really look like in schools and what happens when it's done in ways that ignore race, culture, and the realities of our students' lives. Before we dive in, I want to acknowledge something important. Today's episodes will bring up challenging topics such as trauma, inequities, racism, immigration stress, and the way schools sometimes fail our students.

So I really want to emphasize the importance of taking care of yourself while listening. Please make sure to pause if you need to, return when you're ready, take breaks, and really make this a space where you have that opportunity to reflect and to really feel present. All righty, let's jump in.

So what do we mean when we say trauma-informed care? Well, at its core, trauma-informed care is about recognizing the widespread impact of trauma and responding in ways that avoid re-traumatization and promote healing. It's not just about therapy work, it's not just about what happens in a counseling office, although these are part of that healing, but it's also about shifting how entire systems, in this case schools, interact with people who have experienced trauma. SAMHSA, or the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Service Administration, gives us six guiding principles of trauma-informed care.

I want to spend some time on each of these, not just reading the list, but really unpacking what they mean in schools and how they impact Latinx populations. The first principle of trauma-informed care is safety. Students need to feel physically and emotionally safe in school.

This sounds very obvious, right? We know that students come and they should feel safe in our schools and there shouldn't be any threat, but let's think about what it really means on a deeper level. For some students, the classroom is the only predictable space in their day. They know that they're going to come to school, they know that this is a place where they are going to be for at least eight hours, right? If a teacher yells unexpectedly, if the rules change without explanation, or if the environment feels hostile, that sense of safety is broken.

I'll give you guys a example of something that, you know, an experience that I have. I worked with a middle schooler who constantly scanned the room and I noticed that, like, when I would go do observations and he said a noise and he'd jump out of his chair, teachers thought he was distracted. What was really happening was that his nervous system was on a high alert.

His brain was trained by past trauma to expect danger. So safety in a trauma-informed school isn't just about locked doors or security drills that, you know, we do so often, right? We have the earthquake drills and the fire drills and the lockdown drills. It's about creating environments where students know what to expect, where relationships feel consistent, and where they don't have to be on guard all the time.

So I want to take the time in this first principle to really reflect. Think about your own school. Are routines predictable? Do students know what to expect from you? How might the environment feel to a child whose body is constantly bracing for danger, especially in today's political climate with our Latinx students? How does the outside fear, which is the constant fear of threat and the constant fear of having to be on the lookout for, you know, immigration agents or the possibility of someone coming to their school and wanting to get more information about their status, how does that have an impact on their safety? I want you to sit with that and really reflect on it.

The second principle I want to talk about is trustworthiness and transparency. Trust is fragile when families have experienced discrimination in schools, right? Latinx parents who've been dismissed or ignored often expect schools to hide information or make decisions without them. An example that I have for this principle is a mother once told me, every time the school calls, I think it's bad news.

They never call me to tell me something good. For her, the school wasn't transparent. It was punitive, right? Every interaction that the school made with this mom was to report something bad.

So what we decided to do was to shift by calling home, not only for discipline about their student, but for also celebrating those positive interactions or those positive days that the student had. That small act of consistency began to rebuild that trust, right? Transparency means explaining why decisions are made, not just announcing them. It's saying we're changing the homework policy because we notice families are spending too many late nights translating assignments.

That level of honesty matters. I also think part of this, like being that trustworthiness and transparency in this example of like we're changing the homework policy can also mean we're being transparent in the way that we are implementing accommodations for Latinx students, specifically like newcomers who might not speak the language, right? The third principle of trauma-informed care is peer support. Healing doesn't just come from adults.

It comes from peers who understand what you're going through and who understand each other, right? And so an example for this principle is in one of my schools, I ran a group for newcomer students, all recent arrivals from Latin America. They had this space, this group to share stories of missing their home, of being bullied for their accents or of not knowing the rules and the difficulties that came from that, right? And during this group, one boy said, I thought I was only one. When he heard another student say the same thing, his whole kind of posture and demeanor and the engagement that he then had for the group changed.

He was involved, he participated more, and peer support gave him a sense of belonging. For Latinx students, peer support or peer groups can buffer the isolation of being the only one in the classroom or feeling that way, right? Schools that intentionally create safe spaces for these connections are practicing trauma-informed care in this way. With this story, however, I do want to acknowledge that in this case, I'll reference back to our first episode of Privilege, I had the possibility or my school had the possibility of having me as the facilitator who was bilingual, right? So I was able to connect with students on this level too, and I was able to hold even like a newcomer group because I spoke the language that they spoke.

But not all schools have this possibility, right? And so it's really trying to find that peer support with some of the resources that we have, and sometimes some of those barriers are the systems that we work for or even the staff that work and how well can they create a group like this, right? Like a Spanish-speaking group. Principle four in trauma-informed care focuses on collaboration and mutuality. Too often, schools make decisions about families instead of with them.

Trauma-informed collaboration means recognizing families as equal partners, not just as those who are receiving the services that the school is providing, right? An example that I have for this is one that I clearly remember. I was in an IEP meeting where staff spoke English the whole time, even though the parents spoke only Spanish. The parents sat quietly nodding, and I mean like we were having this meeting and I was the translator for this meeting, but amongst each other they only spoke English.

Finally, when I asked her her opinion in Spanish, she said, I don't understand. I just want to know how to help my daughter. That moment made or reminded me that collaboration is impossible without that language access.

Once we provided translation to even what we were saying, right, like through the debriefing or processing of the support we were trying to provide, her insights changed the plan completely because she's the one knows her daughter the best, right? She's the one that sees some of the behaviors that we don't, and we definitely needed that input. Collaboration with Latinx families also means respecting cultural roles. Maybe it's not the parent who comes to meetings, but an older sibling, an aunt, or a grandparent.

Trauma-informed schools honor that. Principle five of trauma-informed care focuses on empowerment, voice, and choice. When we think about trauma and the impact of trauma, one of those is the feeling of trauma stripping away some of our control, right? Empowerment means giving it back, especially to students whose voices have been historically silenced.

I actually have a specific example for this. I have an eighth grade student, an eighth grade Latina student, who came to my office one day because she felt nervous, and she stated she felt nervous because she didn't want to do a presentation. It took her a few minutes to be able to find the underlying reason why, but as she explored that, she was then able to say, I am feeling nervous.

I don't want to do this presentation because I have an accent, and it makes me nervous, and that actually made me connect with her in two ways. One, professionally, in the thought of like, how can I help her, but also personally, in that I've navigated thoughts like this and the challenges that come from having an accent, even now as a professional and in higher education, and so the first thought that came to my mind was really working with the teacher to collaborate and identify alternative ways to be able to help her, and so instead of forcing her to present, the teacher gave her a choice. She could either record her part of the project at home, or she could present one-on-one to the teacher.

That choice didn't lower her expectations, right? She was still responsible for presenting, and she was still responsible for showing up. It was just done in a different way. It empowered her to show mastery in a way that felt safe for her.

For Latinx students, empowerment also means affirming bilingualism as a strength. Too often, English learners are told they're behind, right? You have parents at your conferences, and they pull up this data and these test scores, and they all really you hear is they're behind, they're low in literacy, they're low in comprehension, and they are, yes, because of new language that they're adapting and learning, right? Trauma-informed care flips that script and really pushes for the fact that being bilingual is an asset, not a deficit. The sixth principle of trauma-informed care is cultural, historical, and gender issues, and I'm going to be real honest.

A lot of the times this principle is often seen as an add-on and doesn't have as much emphasis as the first five principles we discussed, but if we look at this for Latinx students, it's the core principle, right? Trauma cannot be separate from culture, from history, and from identity. For immigrant families, history matters so much. Many of these families carry intergenerational trauma from colonization that has existed for many years, political violence, or migration, and what that those challenges in that story brings.

Ignoring that history is not trauma-informed, right? Like if we ignore the history that comes from the oppression that Latinx students and families have navigated, we ignore that it's part of trauma-informed. Schools must create spaces that affirm cultural pride. For example, Spanish-speaking clubs, heritage celebrations, or lessons that include Latinx contributions.

In my school setting, we are very proactive about this, and so for Latinx Heritage Month, the teachers dedicate that whole month to do specific projects that center Latinx culture and just be really thinking about the diversity that exists and creating these creative and unique ways to represent that, and I think it's really important that students have that space to feel seen and valued, and that they can feel that pride that exists even when they are in another country that maybe doesn't feel like they're a part of. So when we talk about the six principles of trauma-informed care, safety, trustworthiness, and transparency, peer support, collaboration, mutuality, empowerment, and choice, and cultural historical gender considerations, we can't just talk in general terms. We have to ground them in the realities of our students.

For Latinx children and families, trauma is shaped by racism, immigration, language, and cultural erasure. Trauma-informed care that ignores that will always fall short. Okay, so now that we've grounded ourselves in what trauma-informed care means and how the six principles look in practice with Latinx students, I want to shift into a hard but necessary conversation.

What happens when trauma-informed care is presented as race-neutral? I want you to sit with that question. What happens when schools embrace trauma-informed language but ignore the realities of race, immigration, language, and systemic inequities? Here's the truth. Neutrality is never neutral.

When trauma-informed care is treated as a universal framework that applies equally to everyone, it can erase the very experiences that Latinx and other marginalized students live with every day. For a U.S. born white student, trauma might come from a car accident or a natural disaster, right, and we validate that. For a Latinx student, trauma might come from family separation, discrimination, or living in constant fear of deportation.

To ignore that difference is to ignore the context that shapes their stress, their behavior, and their resilience. This reminds me of a recent training that I actually took. I attended a district trauma-informed trauma care training.

It was a virtual training that I was a part of. We spent three hours learning about the amygdala and the fight-flight-freeze response, all very valid, very useful information. But not once did the trainer mention racism, ICE raids, especially because here in California, there is an increase in ICE raids, and they are very close to this district that I received the training from, or discrimination.

So we, you know, had the time to process some of what trauma looks like and how children respond to it, but there was no direct talk about these other issues, right, things that are happening for Latinx students that impact their trauma. So then it made me think that teachers left thinking trauma explains why kids misbehave, which it does, right? It allows us to look at a different, through a different lens, and be able to be more aware, but no one asked how does systemic racism cause trauma in the first place, and what role do we play in that. That's the danger of race-neutral trauma-informed care.

It may sound like there's care, and there is to a very superficial level, but it doesn't challenge the conditions that are traumatizing students. Research shows that without cultural grounding, teachers often misinterpret Latinx stress behaviors, right? Davila and colleagues found that students experiencing deportation fears showed difficulty concentrating, sleep problems, and irritability. Teachers labeled them lazy or unfocused, and how many times have we not seen this in our school setting, right? We see a student displaying some of these behaviors that oftentimes are not acceptable in the classroom, and they are then mislabeled.

Brabeck and colleagues showed that discrimination symptoms often mirror PTSD. For example, headaches, stomach aches, withdrawal, but instead of seeing trauma, schools see discipline issues. I can think of an example for this.

I remember a teacher saying to me, this specific student, Latinx student, just doesn't try hard enough. They weren't grasping onto the language, and they weren't completing the work, but as I dug deeper into this, what they were really experiencing or demonstrating were those trauma symptoms. They were shutting down because of the fear of not understanding, because of the fear of embarrassment, and so because the school had never talked about immigration stress or racial trauma, or how Latinx students have unique challenges or face unique challenges, that teacher then fell back on stereotypes.

That's how race-neutral trauma-informed care can reinforce bias. Trauma-informed care is great. There's just a lot of benefits from it, but it allows teachers to have the language of trauma and to understand trauma, but without context, they still default to deficit-based explanations.

This is where we need to be real blunt and honest. Colorblind or race-blind frameworks don't just miss the point. They cause harm, and they continue to cause harm within Latinx communities.

If trauma-informed care is rolled out as, we treat all trauma the same because we use this framework and really abide by that without thinking about the cultural aspect of it, it silences the very realities that need to be named. A student who fears deportation doesn't just need grounding techniques. Although they're helpful, they need a school that acknowledges their fear as real and valid, so having conversations about trauma-informed care and being aware that trauma exists in school settings is great, but how do we then make trauma-informed care more culturally relevant, especially in today's political climate? I also can think of an example of a mother coming into our school, and her daughter was refusing to come, and she had already missed like a week, and we were trying to contact her, and we had planned a home visit.

So during that time where we were trying to address that home visit, she actually brought in her daughter, and then she expressed that her daughter has fear of her mother being deported, and that's why she doesn't want to leave her site. We obviously didn't know this, and when she disclosed that, it for me really allowed me to reflect on that, but she did say that she didn't feel like we understood her, and we didn't take the time to, and I 100% agreed with her. We were more of blaming her for neglect rather than seeing the reason behind why her daughter didn't want to come to school, and this is what trauma-informed care is about, being able to say where is this trauma coming from, and how is it impacting the students that we serve.

As we discuss trauma-informed care, it's also really important to disclose and talk about the connection between trauma-informed care and intersectionality. Kimberly Crenshaw reminds us that identities overlap, right? So I'll give you guys an example. A 14-year-old Latina who is undocumented, bilingual, and female is not just experiencing one kind of stress or one kind of traumatic experience.

She's experiencing the intersection of immigration fear, gender stereotypes, language barriers, and racial profiling, right, especially in today's political climate. Race-neutral trauma-informed care erases these complexities. It treats her as a generic traumatized student, which is true, rather than someone navigating multiple-layered oppressions and really taking the time to look at how those intersecting oppressions or identities have an impact on the way that she then portrays herself or behaves in the school setting, and then limits us to be able to support her in that way.

So what happens when schools adopt trauma-informed care without context? Well, let's think about mindfulness. Let's say that a school adds a mindfulness program, right? They do the research and they see the benefits of mindfulness programs for grounding, but they use mindfulness programs as compliance tools. Take a breath so you behave.

That's not healing. That's control, and that's using our power to discipline. They may also hang posters about resilience, but keep punitive discipline policies.

They may train teachers on brain science, right? I discussed earlier in my training, we talked about the amygdala and the impact on trauma, but never talk about racism, immigration, or poverty. The results? Well, students continue to feel unseen. Families feel unheard, and the school, you know, celebrates and congratulates itself on being trauma-informed and really spreads it and talks about how important trauma-informed care is and how they're making changes to their policies to be more trauma-informed, while inequities stay the same.

For Latinx students and families, silence itself is a trauma. When schools talk about trauma but avoid words like racism, deportation, or xenophobia, they send a message to these students and families, which is, your pain doesn't belong here. I worked with a student once who whispered to me or has shared with me, I can't tell my teacher why I'm scared, what if she calls immigration, or my parents told me I can't let anyone know our legal status.

Imagine the weight that the student has had to carry. Race-neutral trauma-informed care didn't protect them, it actually silenced him further. So now I want you to pause for a minute and reflect.

Think about the last trauma training or professional development session you attended. Did it include conversations about race, language, or immigration? If not, what perspectives were missing, and how might that gap affect how staff interpret Latinx students' behaviors? So here's the bottom line. Trauma-informed care cannot be race-neutral.

Trauma is always experienced through culture, history, and identity. If trauma-informed care ignores that, it risks explaining behaviors without naming oppression, reinforcing stereotypes instead of dismantling them, re-traumatizing students by silencing their lived realities. To matter in schools, trauma-informed care must be culturally grounded, equity-driven, and honest about the systems that cause harm in the first place.

Today we've spent some time naming what doesn't work. Trauma-informed care that's race-neutral, culture-blind, or surface level. Now let's dig deeper and talk about what does work.

What does it look like to build trauma-sensitive schools? Schools that don't just adopt the buzzword but actually change practices, policies, and culture to meet students where they are. Think about that. What do you think that looks like? Well first, trauma-informed care cannot be the responsibility of just one or two people in the school setting.

Too often, trauma-informed care is left to the school social worker, the counselor, or a few caring teacher. That's not enough. For a student, every interaction matters.

The front office staff who greet them, the cafeteria worker, the security guard if those exist in your schools, the classroom teacher, the principal, administration. If trauma-informed care doesn't shape all of those interactions, then students are still at risk for re-traumatization. I once had a student in one of our sessions tell me, you're the only adult here who listens.

I'll be honest, at first I felt honored and felt like I was doing my job, but later and I as I dug deeper, I realized how heavy that statement was. Because if I was the only one, then that meant that the system was failing. The student deserves to feel safe in every classroom and with every adult in my school.

That's why trauma-sensitive schools must be whole school efforts. Another thing that often comes up is policy and discipline. Policies are often where the biggest disconnect happens.

You can't call yourself trauma-sensitive if your discipline system is punitive or zero-tolerance. I once, you know, came across a school that probably called itself trauma-informed and as I like did some of the, it's someone that I know, like another school social worker. She works in this school and as we discussed this, we talked about the disconnect between being trauma-informed, yet in one month they suspended five Latinx boys for disrespect.

The behaviors were talking back, wearing hats in class, refusing to hand over a cell phone. These were not acts of violence, they were normal adolescent pushbacks, but because the policies were rigid, the punishment was then exclusion. Trauma-sensitive schools have to align their policies with their values.

That means rethinking what counts as disrespect, examining how rules are applied unevenly across race, and shifting from exclusion to restoration. Restorative practices are one approach. Instead of punishment, restorative circles give students space to share their perspectives, repair harm, and stay connected to the school community.

This is trauma-informed because exclusion re-traumatizes while connection heals. So definitely looking into restorative practices and how we can then incorporate some of these students into this practice, right? So for example, the student that I mentioned or the students that I talked about earlier that were suspended, like the constant talking back or you know, wearing hats in class, really taking time to dig deeper and really allow that student to share their reason why this is happening rather than assuming that we know why it's happening. At the classroom level, trauma-sensitive practice doesn't always look big.

It is in the small daily interactions, greeting students by their name in their language, making routines predictable so kids know what to expect, offering choices in how to participate, like the example I shared earlier about my student who was able to do a one-on-one presentation rather than a whole group, allowing bilingual expression in assignments, redirection that is gentle and private, not public and shaming. Here's a part that often gets left out, and that is adult wellness. Educators, counselors, and social workers absorb students' pain.

Many of us bring our own histories into the work. When staff are burned out, unsupported, or we traumatize themselves, they cannot create space or save spaces for students. Trauma-sensitive schools care for staff too.

That could look like reflective supervision, wellness rooms, peer support groups, or simply a culture where it's okay to say, I need help, right? I once worked with a teacher who told me, I love my students, but I cry in my car before going home when they share really heavy things. That is a sign that the system isn't supporting staff. If we want teachers to show up fully for students, we need to show up fully for teachers, and how do we do that, and how can we also be able to be supportive to them? Family engagement is another important thing to consider.

Too often, schools view Latinx families through a deficit lens. They don't come to meetings, they don't care, but trauma-sensitive school asks, why are meetings scheduled only during work hours when parents can attend? Is translation provided or, you know, some sessions offered in Spanish only? Are families greeted with respect or suspicion when they enter the building? Trauma-sensitive schools honor families as partners. That may mean engaging siblings, grandparents, or extended kin.

It may mean hosting community cafecitos where parents can connect informally. It may mean asking, what do you see as your child's strengths, rather than just focusing on the deficits that exist. So now I want you all to take a moment to reflect.

In your own setting, what's one school policy or classroom practice that might re-traumatize Latinx students? Maybe a policy that you know exists whole school wide, or a specific classroom practice that you've noticed a teacher engage in. And what's one most step you could take to shift it toward healing? So what does it mean to build a trauma-sensitive school? It means shifting from individual interventions to whole school culture. It means aligning policies with care, not punishment.

It means creating classrooms where safety and choices are the norm. It means supporting staff so they can support students. It means partnering with families as equals.

And it means honoring not only trauma, but also resilience. Most importantly, it means being explicit. Trauma-informed care that does not name racism, immigration trauma, or systemic inequities is incomplete.

Trauma-sensitive schools face those realities head-on, and it's so important to acknowledge in the Latinx community, especially in today's political climate where there is a lot of anti-immigrant policies that are impacting the Latinx populations. Now, I want to bring all this together with some practice, because frameworks and principles matter. But where we really see the difference is in the day-to-day lives of our students.

I'm going to walk you through three case scenarios. As you listen, I encourage you to pause, jot down your thoughts, and maybe even imagine what you would say if the student was sitting in front of you. Okay, so the first case scenario is Marisol.

Marisol is a 14-year-old, recently immigrated from El Salvador. In class, she avoids eye contact, rarely speaks, and often does not turn in homework. Her teacher refers her to you for lack of motivation.

Now, as we reflect and think about this, I am going to share the race-neutral trauma-informed care lens. A staff member might say she's probably experienced trauma from migration. We just need to give her patience and time.

On the surface, that seems gentle, but it still frames Marisol as passive, as someone broken by trauma who just needs to be waited out. If we look at this through a culturally responsive trauma-informed care lens, we ask deeper questions. What does her silence mean in her culture? In some Central American cultures, avoiding direct eye contact is a sign of respect, not defiance.

What about homework? Could she be caring for younger siblings after school while her parents work? Could language barriers be making assignments overwhelming? So, instead of labeling Marisol as unmotivated, we can provide bilingual resources, give her choices for participation, writing maybe instead of speaking at first, engage her family about her role at home and even just some of the things that we're noticing and honoring her silence as a valid form of participation while building her confidence. So, now I want you to think about Marisol. If Marisol were in your school, what's the first question you'd ask her or her family before assuming she's disengaged? Now, let's meet Jose.

He's 16, U.S. born Mexican-American. Teachers describe him as defiant. He interrupts classes with jokes, argues with authority figures, and has been suspended twice for disrespect.

Through a race-neutral trauma-informed care lens, staff might say, Jose must be carrying trauma. Let's teach him mindfulness or self-regulation skills so he can calm down. This frames the problem as Jose's behavior, not the school's response.

Through a culturally responsive trauma-informed care lens, we look at the bigger picture. Latinx boys are disproportionately disciplined in U.S. schools. Jose may be responding to stereotypes, being seen as a class clown or the troublemaker.

His humor might be a survival skill, a way of masking fear or stress. His arguing might be linked to feeling constantly disrespected by adults who underestimate him. So, with better practice, instead of focusing only on Jose's self-regulation, we need to train staff on implicit bias and racialized discipline, reframe humor as leadership potential, right, looking at Jose's humor through an asset base rather than deficit base, and give Jose safe outlets for voice.

For example, maybe encouraging him to join a debate team, student council, or mentoring younger kids. And it's important to address systemic discipline policies that disproportionately punish boys of color. Now, I want you to think of a student like Jose.

How could you reframe their humor or outspokenness as an asset instead of a liability? Finally, let's meet Ana. She's 10, from a mixed status family. Recently, her father was detained by immigration authorities.

Since then, she stopped speaking in class, kind of like selective mutism. At home, she talks with her siblings, but at school, she's silent. Through a race-neutral trauma-informed care lens, the response might be she's traumatized, so her silence is a symptom.

Let's refer her to counseling. Important, yes, but surface level. Through a culturally responsive trauma-informed care lens, we dig deeper.

Ana's silence may be used as a protective way for her, how she protects herself. Children in mixed status families often fear that speaking up will bring unwanted attention. Her mutism might not only be about trauma, it could also be about survival.

So, in better practice, instead of forcing Ana to speak, we can validate her silence as agency. We can offer non-verbal participation options, maybe drawing, writing, or signals. We can also reassure her that school is safe and staff will not call immigration, and we can also and should also partner with her family to support her emotional safety.

Now, I want you to reflect on this. If Ana were in your classroom or in your school, what's one way you could include her without pressuring her to speak? So, what do these three stories tell us? Well, for one, trauma-informed care that ignores culture misreads behavior. Silence becomes disengagement, humor becomes defiance, and respect becomes withdrawal.

Next, culturally responsive trauma-informed care practices interprets behavior and context. It asks not just what happened to you, but what's happening around you. And most importantly, it shifts responsibility from the child to the system.

Students don't need to be fixed. Schools need to change how they see, interpret, and respond. Before we move on, I want to pause here and give us more space to reflect on what these stories mean, not just for Marisol, Jose, and Ana, but for the students you see every day.

Let's slow down and walk through a few layers of reflection. In the first reflection, I really want you to think about the student lens. Think about one Latinx student you've worked with.

It could either be past or present, whose behavior confused you or maybe even frustrated you. How was their behavior interpreted by adults in the school? Looking back now to this scenario or this student, what might you see differently if you applied a culturally responsive trauma-informed care lens? What strengths or coping strategies might have been overlooked? Take a moment to picture that student, maybe even write their name down. Now zoom out.

Think about the school system around that student. What policies or practices may have re-traumatized them? Were suspensions or detentions used where restoration might have been possible? Did language barriers make families feel silenced? If you ever met with the family and discussed the behaviors, were there spaces where that student's cultural identity was affirmed or erased? These are the questions that move us from individual stories to actual systemic change. Now I want you to turn the lens on yourself.

How does your own positionality shape the way you interpret Latinx student behaviors? What privilege might make it easy for you to move through schools and how does that contrast with your students' realities? How might students and families perceive you? And it could be both positively and with skepticism. And I really want to emphasize that this isn't about guilt. It's about awareness and awareness is the first step to change, right? And finally, I want us to think about families.

How are families engaged in your school? Do you think they feel like equal partners or do they feel like they are just there when some like they are their student or their child needs to be disciplined and they're just part of the conversation without really being able to be a collaborator? What would it look like to not just invite them to meetings but to honor them as co-educators, co-partners in their child's journey? Now I want you to try something. Imagine you're walking into school tomorrow. A student like Marisol, Jose, or Ana is in your class or your caseload or your hallway in your school, right? Pause and picture this.

Instead of asking what's wrong with this student, you asked what happened around the student and what strings are they using to survive? Instead of labeling, you interpret. Instead of silencing, you listen. Instead of punishing, you connect.

What would it feel like for you and for the student if every adult in the building took this approach? Sit with that for a minute because that's the vision of trauma-sensitive schools. So here's the invitation for you all. Don't just carry these stories, Marisol's, Jose's, and Ana's as examples.

Carry them as challenges. Which students in your school need you to see them differently? Which families need you to hear them more deeply and what families need to feel more incorporated? And what steps, small steps, can you take this week to move closer to a school where trauma-informed care is not just race-neutral but really pushed towards justice-oriented and towards breaking those anti-racist approaches and systemic oppressions that exist? That's how we honor our students. That's how we turn principles into practice.

We've covered a lot today. We've unpacked what trauma-informed care means. We walked through its six principles using the experiences of Latinx students, examined the dangers of race-neutral trauma-informed care through research and through our own experiences, and explored what it looks like to truly build trauma-sensitive schools.

Then we grounded it all in real-life stories. Students like Marisol, Jose, and Ana who show us the difference between being labeled and being understood. Here's what I want you to take away.

Trauma-informed care isn't just about brain science or calming strategies. It's about systems. It's about culture.

It's about creating schools where students and families, especially those who have been marginalized, feel seen, safe, and respected. For Latinx students, that means naming the trauma of immigration, racism, and language discrimination. But it also means honoring the resilience and resistance they carry.

For example, their bilingualism, their familial support networks, their persistence, their creativity. When we shift from race-neutral trauma-informed care to culturally grounded trauma-informed care, we stop asking students to adjust to the broken systems that exist. We start asking schools to change, and that's where the healing happens, and that's where the inclusion happens.

Thank you for joining me for this second episode of Raíces y Resiliencia. It means a lot. In our next episode, we'll take a deeper dive into Yoso's community cultural wealth model, which I briefly mentioned in this episode, we'll talk about the forms of capital that Latinx students already bring with them into schools, from aspirational capital to resistant capital, and how educators, social workers, and school-based professionals can use this framework to build on strengths instead of focusing only on the deficits.

Before you go, I have a couple of reminders. All the references I mentioned in this episode are listed in the show notes, so you can dig deeper into the research. There's also a link to reflection prompts in the show notes, a tool you can use for your own journaling or in team discussions, or if you just like to dig deeper into the episode that we spoke about today and do some more self-exploration.

And if you missed episode one, you'll find a direct link to that episode in the notes as well, so you can go back and listen. Finally, if this episode resonated with you, please subscribe to the podcast so you don't miss what's next. Listen to it and share with a colleague, a fellow educator, or a friend who you think would benefit from these conversations.

That's how we are going to grow this community, together, through the discussion of the episodes, through the discussion of the themes, and through really the sharing. I am your host, Denise. Thank you for listening, for reflecting, and for doing this work alongside me.

I know this work is not easy, and I know there are definitely a lot of systemic challenges and sometimes things that feel out of our control, but there are definitely ways in which we can be more inclusive, and in which we can be more intentional with the way that we service our Latinx communities. Thank you, and I will see you next week.

Outro music