Student’s Fears, Misunderstandings and Sadness

This episode of Raíces y Resiliencia examined how Latinx students’ silence, stillness, and sadness are often misunderstood as defiance or disengagement.
Through the lenses of Trauma-Informed Care (SAMHSA, 2014) and Yosso’s Community Cultural Wealth (2005), the episode reframes silence as a form of resilience, protection, and cultural wisdom.

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 5: Student’s Fears, Misunderstandings and Sadness

Hi everyone and welcome to Raíces y Resiliencia. I'm so glad that you're here today. Hello and welcome back to Raíces y Resiliencia.

I'm your host Denise Valdez, licensed clinical social worker, school social worker, and doctoral student. I'm so glad you're here with me again, continuing to hold space for these important conversations. In our last episode, we explored how immigration experience shapes students' emotional worlds and we started to unpack how those experiences can live in the body, sometimes quietly, sometimes loudly, but always meaningfully, right? And Ms. DeLeon, Shirley DeLeon, did a great job in being able to demonstrate to us in the ways that the children, how Latinx students express some of their fears and misunderstandings.

And so if you haven't listened to that episode, please go back and listen to it. But today's episode is titled Students' Fears, Misunderstandings, and Sadness. And in this conversation, I want to talk about what we always see, or even maybe what we misunderstand in our students' behaviors.

Sometimes a child's silence, their stillness, their blank stares, or even their moments of defiance aren't about non-compliance. Their story's unspoken, but deeply alive, and I think it's important that we start to really validate that. I'd actually like to start off this episode by sharing a story.

A few years ago, I worked with another counselor, and she actually shared this story with me about a fifth grader she worked with. She reported that this fifth grade student would come into school and would put his head down on the desk and stay quiet all day. When teachers then brought up the concern, they often described them as unmotivated, disconnected, and sometimes even defiant was the words that she said they used on the referral form when they put the behaviors.

These were some of the behaviors that they listed. She mentioned that when she asked if anyone had checked in with him, the responses were polite but very predictable, right? They would say, we've tried, he just doesn't want to talk. And that was kind of the idea that they used, that he didn't want to talk.

So she then mentioned that she started meeting with him during lunch. For the first few sessions, he said almost nothing. She said that he'd sit quietly, pick out whatever food he had because they would pack lunch for him, and would just glance at the door and would just sit there.

And she mentioned that this happened for a few sessions. Then one afternoon, after about three weeks, he finally whispered something to her. He said, I just don't want to talk.

My dad didn't come home last night. And she mentioned that she sat with that and then dug further into what he meant by that. And this student shared that his father had been detained by immigration authorities.

He didn't know if he'd ever see him again. So when she mentions this story, she mentions about the importance of understanding that his silence wasn't defiance. It was grief.

It was fear. And it was very much survival. That story that she shared with me really stayed with me because it reminds me of how often we miss misread behaviors that are actually rooted in trauma.

And for many Latinx students, silence isn't just an emotional reaction. It's something they've been taught as a form of safety. So today, we're going to talk about what happens when fear, misunderstanding, and sadness take root in our students' lives and how we can respond with empathy, curiosity, and care.

And I know we've been talking about this throughout the different episodes, but today we're really going to focus on this. We'll look at the research behind silence as a survival mechanism, how schools often misinterpret these behaviors, and how frameworks like trauma-informed care, which we've been talking about, and Yozo's community cultural wealth model, which we've also really talked about throughout this podcast, can help us reframe what we see. Most importantly, though, we'll talk about how to build classrooms and counseling spaces that make it safe for students to speak, or not speak, right, in their own time and without judgment.

So let's get right to it. When we work in schools, we're often taught to look for patterns, to identify when a student withdraws, acts out, or stops engaging. That is something that we've taught as teachers, as counselors, those are the behaviors that we read, right? But for many of our Latinx students, silence is not withdrawal, it's protection.

Research shows that racialized surveillance, the constant feeling of being watched or judged through the lens of race and immigration status, contributes to post-traumatic stress disorder symptoms in Latinx youth. These are students who learn early on that being visible can be dangerous, that drawing attention to themselves might bring consequences for their families. And so what happens? Well, they learn to stay quiet.

Ayon 2016 describes how families, especially in anti-immigrant environments, teach their children the importance of silence. No digas nada, don't say too much, is what we're taught. Not because they don't value their children's voices, or because they don't want them to express their feelings, but rather it is because they know the world can punish those who speak.

And they have seen this throughout, especially in today's political climate, where even when we are taught to speak out on our rights, and we're taught to, you know, that we have rights and to speak on those, we're still silenced. When you grow up with that message, your silence really does become your safety. You learn to read the room before you speak, you learn to monitor tone, expression, movement, because your survival depends on it.

So if you're listening right now, I want you to think about one student you've worked with. Maybe a student who rarely speaks, who always looks down, or who avoids eye contact. What might their silence be protecting them from? It's easy to label silence as disengagement, but for many of our students, silence is an act of wisdom, a learned skill that has helped them navigate systems not built for safety.

Research reminds us that forced migration creates layered fears. Even after physical relocation, the body carries a memory of uncertainty, right? The fear of separation, the fear of exposure, the fear that safety is temporary. And when those fears intersect with poverty, racism, or language barriers, silence can feel like the only safe response.

And we talked about the intersections and how they impact our students in the previous episodes, right? And we will continue to talk about intersectionality as we continue with this podcast. So when a child lowers their head on the desk, it's not always resistance. Sometimes it's vigilance.

Sometimes it's grief. Sometimes it's the only thing that feels that they are in control of. As social workers, counselors, and educators, we must learn to see beyond the behavior.

We have to slow down and ask, what might the silence be saying? And more importantly, am I creating a space where the students feel safe enough to speak when they are ready? Not when I feel they need to, but rather when they are ready. Now, I want you all to take a moment to reflect on this. If you're driving, just think about it silently.

If you're sitting at your desk, maybe grab your journal or notes. Write down one example of a student whose behavior you initially misunderstood. Maybe you labeled them as resistant or unmotivated.

What did you later learn about their story? Now, think about what could have changed in that situation. What might have happened if someone had paused to ask, what's this behavior protecting instead of why won't this student cooperate? That small shift from judgment to curiosity is where trauma-informed care begins and where trauma-informed care uses culturally responsive practices as well. Now, let's talk about how schools often misinterpret silence and sadness.

In classrooms across the country, especially in communities with large immigrant populations or large Latinx students, teachers are trained to notice behavior, as I mentioned earlier. But what they're often not trained to do is interpret behavior through a trauma-informed, culturally responsive lens. A study by Guevara, et al 2021, found that Latinx students who experienced racial or ethnic discrimination in schools often show increased rule-breaking or avoidance behavior, not because they're oppositional, like they're often pathologized to be, but because those environments trigger their trauma responses.

Withdrawal, selective mutism, or even acting out, in quotation marks, are often seen as discipline problems. But these are symptoms of survival. When a child has lived with instability, you know, maybe hiding from immigration rates, and even if it's not directly them hiding, but like their parents, hearing family members talk about deportation or the fear, or witnessing violence, you know, even like on the news or seeing people like them, physically, that look like them being detained or being harassed, the nervous system becomes wired to respond to danger, even when danger is invisible.

When a teacher raises their voice, or when a school security police officer patrols the hallways, that student's body might go into fight, flight, or freeze mode. So what does freeze look like in a classroom? It looks like a quiet child, a blank stare, a still body, a head resting on a desk. And yet, how often do those same students get written up for refusal to participate, quotation marks, or non-compliance, quotation marks? That's the misunderstanding we need to challenge.

Let's pause here. Ask yourself, when you see a student go quiet, what's your first reaction? Do you take it personally, as defiance, or disrespect? Or do you pause to wonder what the silence might mean? This question is hard, because it asks us to hold our own discomfort, and holding our own discomfort is very hard. It asks us to recognize that maybe we've misread students before, not out of malice, right, or like out of exclusion, but out of habit, out of the things that we've been taught.

But growth begins there. If we want to be trauma informed, and we want to be culturally responsive, we have to be interpretation aware. We have to ask not just what the behavior is, but what it represents in the context of safety and culture, and what it means to the populations we are serving, in this case, the Latinx population, and really looking at the context of like, where is the Latinx population? Where do they stand now in society? And currently, with all these anti-immigrant policies and xenophobic climate, there is definitely an increase in some of the behaviors that we often feel are wrong or non-compliant.

I want to share something that has stayed with me since my early years as a school social worker. I used to volunteer for a program here called the Migrant Program in California, and this program really focused on helping migrant families be able to obtain additional resources like education, academic resources for students, and this was like a Saturday program. And I was a part of this kind of giving counseling to these students, and a lot of these students were, actually, 100% of them were Latinx students whose parents were immigrants at that, you know, and that time.

And I once had a student who rarely spoke. She was super quiet. She often sat in the back of the room, hair covering her face, but she always carried like a notebook with her, and we did have like art time, and she was, she used to always color.

And normally, you know, people in the program, because we had different, like, curricular activities that they were able to do and academic engagement opportunities, and the teachers who taught during this program usually labeled her as lazy or not wanting to do any of the work. But I remember one day during a school counseling group, she drew a picture of a girl standing at a border fence, what would appear to be a border fence, and she was holding hands with another girl on the other side, and it looked like they were kind of having a conversation. And when I asked her, I mentioned how beautiful that drawing was, and mind you, she, like, rarely spoke.

She didn't have any friends. She said, that's me and my sister. And what I later learned from asking this question was that her sister had stayed behind in Guatemala.

She hadn't seen her in two years when she first moved here with her family, and that moment really changed everything for me. Her silence, obviously, wasn't laziness. It was grief.

It was her way of holding that grief in a world that didn't make space for it, and that judged her instead of really taking the time to find the means, for example, her art work to be able to express this. Moments like these remind me why trauma-informed, culturally grounded practice is not just optional. It is something that is necessary in order to serve our Latinx students.

Our students' silence is not the absence of story. It is the story itself, and we need to be more mindful in the way that we are really taking the time to understand that in a school setting. In the next half of this episode, we'll move from understanding what it means, what we just shared, the behaviors that we see.

We'll move from really understanding what those mean to action. We'll talk about how trauma-informed care and Yoso's community cultural world model can guide us in responding to silence, not with punishment, but with actual presence and actual understanding. We'll explore practical tools for building relational trust, creating nonverbal pathways for expression, like the story that I just shared about the girl who used to love to draw, and framing silence as a form of cultural resilience.

So take a moment to stretch, grab some water, or step outside for a break. When we come back, we'll dive deeper into what it means to listen beyond the actual words we hear. Before the break, we talked about how silence and sadness in Latinx students often mask deeper fears, right? Fears connected to migration, lost, and racialized experiences within school systems.

Now, we'll focus on what we can do. How do we move from awareness of knowing that, you know, some of the behaviors we see are misunderstood to action? How do we show up for our students in ways that honor their stories, even when their stories are told in silence? This next section will connect what we've learned to two guiding frameworks that have shaped much of this series, right? Which are trauma-informed care and community cultural wealth. These frameworks remind us that healing doesn't come from fixing students, and we don't aim to, right? It comes from transforming systems, relationships, and mindsets.

Trauma-informed care begins with a simple shift in language. Instead of asking, what's wrong with this child? We asked, what happened to this child? But honestly, I would add one more layer to that question. What strength is this behavior showing me if we're using Yosa's cultural wealth model? Because for Latinx students, trauma and resilience often coexist.

A child may be fearful, but will still show up to school every day. And that is the reality that I'm seeing every single day. Kids are scared to come to school.

Parents are scared to bring their kids to school because of the detention and the ICE raids, but they're still showing up. A student may be quiet, but still protective of their peers. That's resilience.

It just doesn't always look like what school's expected to look like. According to the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Administration, there are six key principles of trauma-informed care. We've talked about those in the past episodes, but I want to take a moment to walk through how each one might look, what each one might look like when applied in a culturally responsive school-based setting.

Safety means more than just physical safety. When we think of safety as one of the trauma-informed care principles, it's emotional, linguistic, and cultural safety. For many immigrant origin students, or even Latinx students who come from mixed status families, safety begins with knowing they won't be punished for showing emotion or speaking their native language, which is Spanish in this case, or even any other language.

We create safety when we slow down, lower our voices, offer consistent routines, and communicate through warmth rather than compliance. I remember a teacher who used to start every day, their class every day, by saying you're safe here. It might sound really simple, right? But for many of her students, those three words were grounding ritual, a space of protection, a space where they felt that they really genuinely belong there and that they can be their true selves.

Trustworthiness and transparency is the second trauma-informed care principle, and trust takes time. I know in the past episodes what our guests spoke about, that the importance of trust and how trust takes time to build. When students have lived through instability, whether that's from migration, deportation fears, or family separation, they've learned that promises don't always hold.

So when we say things like you can talk to me anytime, we have to really mean it, that that is really what we're going to provide for these students. Following through on small commitments, such as keeping appointments consistent if they're part of your caseload, showing up consistently, that's how trust is built. Not through perfection, but through the presence of and actually committing to what we say we will.

So I want you to take a time to reflect. Think of a student you're trying to reach right now. How do you show up for them consistently, even when the progress feels really slow? Now let's move on to peer support and mutuality, which is another trauma-informed care principle.

One of the most powerful trauma-informed interventions isn't a formal therapy session, right? It's that connection. Students heal in relationship with each other. When we create peer support programs, like newcomers groups, something that I do every single year, or peer mentoring circles, we're saying you're not alone.

That sense of belonging can lower anxiety and build confidence faster than any structured curriculum that exists out there that is designed for newcomers or Latinx students navigating anti-immigrant political climates. Giving students that space to really be able to connect with others and share their experiences is huge. And this is actually part of the Latinx community, the platicas.

That is their way of healing through narrative and storytelling. The next principle is empowerment, voice, and choice. This principle is very important.

Empowerment means we don't speak for the student. We create spaces where they can speak for themselves. For students who've experienced fear, especially fear tied to authority figures, in this case, you know, policies and ICE agents or surveillance, having choice is everything.

Choice restores that power. I often, you know, in my sessions, give students nonverbal options, kind of like the story I shared earlier of the girl who was able to express her drawing. I provide writing for them as an option, drawing, music, instead of direct narrative therapy or just a traditional therapy.

When students can choose how they express themselves, that autonomy itself becomes healing. One of the things that I also do in this case, and I try to think outside the box, is that I've noticed a lot of my newcomer boys actually really enjoy sports. And so I create a lot of my sessions around that and how I can incorporate the movement with the way that they can express themselves and their feelings and what the challenges that they're navigating.

Then we have collaboration and mutual respect. And this is really where trauma-informed care framework kind of overlaps really nicely with Yozo's community cultural wealth model. When we see families as partners, not as clients, right, not as outsiders, but actual partners that we can collaborate with, we create space for shared leadership.

Instead of parent-teacher meetings focused on discipline or grades, which is what often happens in our schools when we start to notice some of the behaviors, once again in quotation marks, that are deemed as non-compliant or defiant, instead of focusing just on those parent meetings, what if schools hosted cafecito conversations? So actual, you know, meeting with parents and getting to hear their stories about hopes, goals, and community values. That's collaboration, right? That's trauma-informed care and practice. And then we have the cultural, historical, and gender responsiveness aspect or principle of trauma-informed care.

This principle reminds us that trauma doesn't exist in isolation. It's shaped by systems of oppression, right? We can't be trauma-informed without being culturally responsive, which is why this podcast really focused on meshing these two together. For Latinx students, that means naming the impact of racism, anti-immigrant policies, and linguistic bias and affirming pride and cultural identity as part of that healing.

When we ignore those realities, we unintentionally reinforce the very conditions that cause harm and we become part of the systems. When we name them, we help students make sense of their feelings and find strength in their own stories. Now, let's connect all of this to Yoso's community cultural wealth model.

If trauma-informed care helps us understand how students survive, community cultural wealth model helps us see what they carry, the forms of knowledge and strength that sustain them. We often talk about Yoso's six capitals, right, which are aspirational, linguistic, familial, social, navigational, and resistant. And we talked about those in the episode three where we specifically talked about Yoso's community cultural wealth model.

In this episode, I want to really focus on how silence fits into those capitals specifically. Silence, when seen through a deficit lens, looks like disengagement, right, looks like non-compliance, look like defiant behaviors. But when we look through the lens of community cultural wealth model, silence means a lot more than those things that are often shared or are often interpreted in school settings.

So we'll start off with aspirational capital. Students dream quietly but powerfully. Their hope lives in action, showing up, trying again, caring for their siblings.

And I can specifically think of an example for this, and that is the fact that like aspirational capital really means that students dream and want better for themselves and their parents. And part of that is really, you know, having the hopes that one day they will have a legal status. And I hear that often, that they just hope that they will be accepted into this country and that they will have a legal status.

And they often feel like they need to prove that by doing well academically and pushing themselves and their parents and their relatives and their siblings to do better so that they could be accepted. For linguistic capital, for bilingual or bicultural students, silence is often code switching. It's a moment of translation, right, not necessarily being absent from maybe the lesson or from what is being discussed, but rather the processing of it.

And so, you know, being bilingual definitely takes a lot of that extra work of code switching, right. And so sometimes that silence can be a way for us to think instead of saying they're silent because they, you know, refuse to speak, thinking of how are they navigating this code switching and how is it different in the school setting than it is at home and how might that be making an impact on the student and on their behaviors that they demonstrate. Then we have familial capital.

Silence may be how students honor their family's teachings, right. Lessons like, ten cuidado con lo que dices or be careful what you say. That's not necessarily fear.

That's protection learned through love from parents and from relatives, right. And I see this all the time. I actually see this, actually, interestingly, I saw this today with one of my students who she, you know, just, she's a Latinx student and she just learned the English language and so she prefers to speak in Spanish, but she brought something she shouldn't have brought to school today without being aware that that was, that could be used as, I guess, a weapon.

And what she kept telling me when I asked where this thing was, was that she kept saying, like, I don't trust anyone, I don't trust anyone, I'm afraid, I can't trust anyone and so that then allowed, and she did say, like, my mom has taught me that I shouldn't trust anyone and that then allowed me to see that this is familial capital rather than her being defiant. Then we have social capital. Sometimes students share through peer connection instead of adult conversation, right.

Through maybe a look, a gesture, a text. That's still communication and I think that that's sometimes hard for us to understand as adults, but really taking the time to see where this is demonstrated, right, and that's through the communication that is shared, whether that's verbal or non-verbal. That's still social capital and the need to connect with others to be able to share some of the challenges and experiences that they face and navigate.

And then we have navigational capital. Choosing when and where to speak is a survival skill. It shows awareness of power and safety and so it's really important that when students choose to be quiet or when they choose not to tell their story, even when we might already know it because maybe a parent disclosed the story, it's important to know that that is power and that is their autonomy and that gives them that navigational capital.

And then resistant capital. For some, silence itself is resistance. It's saying, I will not give you all of me until I know it's safe and it's kind of like the story I just shared earlier where eventually I was able to get the weapon that the school was calling a weapon.

It wasn't a weapon. It was more of like a lighter, but she didn't want to talk to me or tell me the truth until she felt safe enough to be able to do so and eventually she was able to and I also have built a relationship with her so she just, you know, had to process what she was navigating and the fear behind getting in trouble. So when we honor silence as resilience, we move away from trying to fix students and instead we begin to listen differently and really listen to them, to their stories, to what it is that their needs are, not what we feel they need.

So you might be asking, how do we apply all of this, all the trauma-informed care principles, all of community cultural wealth model in real schools? So let's go through a few examples together. They're imaginary examples, but really being able to discuss them. The first one, the first example we'll talk about is restorative dialogue versus punishment.

So let's say a teacher refers a student for refusal to participate and I know some of us might have navigated this before. Instead of giving them detention or maybe whatever punishment we have in our schools, the school counselor meets with the student and asks, what does silence feel like for you at school? That single question opens the door for healing. It shifts the focus from behavior to experience.

So why do you choose to be silent? What does that mean for you? And you might be surprised that you might get a response that you weren't even thinking you would be able to get. That's example number one, going from restorative dialogue versus punishment. Example number two focuses on creative expression spaces.

And I talked a little bit about this as I was sharing my story of the student with her artwork, but one of the things that really comes to mind is the way that schools can offer creative expression for students to really be able to verbalize what they feel. Schools can offer journaling, maybe art corners, or music reflection time, maybe even during lunch, bringing out a table and having an art corner. Not every student can put feelings into words.

Not even us as adults can we do that sometimes. Giving them nonverbal tools honors multiple forms of communication and really allows us to once again be able to hear their story the way that they want us to be able to understand the way they want their story to be interpreted. And then the third example that I have is family storytelling nights.

Maybe something that can be done, and this is not something that I've done, but as I, you know, thought of examples and really being creative is inviting families to share some of their migration or resilience stories in any language. And I know that right now currently with the political climate, it's really hard to be able to do that without feeling any form of danger, but it can even be like in the way of like a gallery walk where it's anonymous and you, you know, host this event where families kind of share their story and their navigate the way that they've navigated, you know, coming here from their country of origin and what that has, you know, felt for them. This space, having those spaces will reaffirm students' identities, and it'll also be a really great opportunity to teach the whole school community that knowledge doesn't only live in textbooks, right? Once again, if you are from like a state, if you're listening from a state where like there are a lot of bans on just diversity, equity, and inclusion, then there is the information or the knowledge that they're hearing about migration and the importance of this is very limited.

And so thinking creatively on ways to incorporate this in the school setting is definitely something that is very important and needed. Another example that I can think of in regards to applying, you know, trauma-informed care and Yosso's community cultural wealth model is definitely morning check-ins as cultural and emotional safety. Many schools start the day with attendance, but very few start with that connection with our students, right? And sometimes in that early morning connection, we're able to really see if there's any other deeper issues that our student might be navigating and really get to connect with them on a deeper level here as well.

Creating a short morning check-in routine, whether that's like through journaling, through drawing, or a simple feelings chart, can become a trauma-informed care principle or ritual that communicates you matter before your grades do, right? Like you are important right now in this space, in this morning, and that is important. For bilingual or newcomer students, allowing responses in Spanish and even Spanglish, or even through like emojis or colors honoring linguistic and navigational capital can be really helpful here. These small practices help students regulate, build trust, and express emotions in culturally and developmentally appropriate ways.

It's not about perfection or, you know, forced participation. It's about offering that safety and choice from the moment the day begins. And the last example that I have to share is example really thinking of cultural celebration as collective healing.

One powerful way that schools can apply trauma-informed and culturally responsive frameworks is by transforming cultural celebration into opportunities for collective healing. At my middle school, instead of treating Dia de los Muertos or Latinx Heritage Month as, you know, just a one-day event, staff collaborate with students and families to co-create a month- to be able to just target different Latinx cultures, communities, and traditions, and also just really honoring the importance of what this means for the culture and that empowerment. Students, you know, build altars honoring their loved ones during Dia de los Muertos throughout the month.

They also interview family members about their migration stories, and they're able to display their projects in the hallway, which makes it very nice for families to be able to see that. Parents then are able to bring food, look at the, you know, projects that have been creating, and just have a space to be able to talk and connect with each other and with other families who are also navigating some of those same experiences. From a community cultural wealth lens, this practice uplifts familial, linguistic, and aspirational capital, right? Centering Latinx traditions as sources of strength rather than just a, you know, curriculum or part of a curriculum to be inclusive, that is just like a one-day thing.

From a trauma-informed care perspective, it cultivates safety, empowerment, and collaboration by creating a space where students could grieve, celebrate, and connect their cultural identity to their learning, right? So, you know, what really just begins as a cultural event then in my school has become a shared act of just remembrance, belonging, and hope. And I think that, you know, I can think of a specific example of a student who in, you know, their altar, in their altar card for their loved one, they wrote, this isn't just for my abuela, it's for me too, you know, to remember where I come from and thanking her abuela, which is her grandma, for her roots. So, this moment, you know, moments like these remind us that trauma-informed care isn't always quiet.

It can also sound like, you know, laughter, music, and the power of community coming together. Now, let's pause here for a reflective moment. Take a deep breath with me.

Inhale. Exhale. Think of one student whose silence you've misinterpreted in the past.

What might you see differently now after we've reviewed a lot of the behavior misunderstandings, the trauma-informed care principle application, and community culture wealth model? What might you see differently now? Now, think of one thing you can do tomorrow to make your school or counseling space feel safe for quiet students. It could be changing your tone in the classroom, if you're a teacher, adjusting your body language, if you're just a staff member who's outside monitoring, or adding a creative outlet if you're a counselor or social worker. Healing happens through small, intentional acts of awareness.

Now, I know that this episode and a lot of our episodes have focused on really being able to better serve the Latinx communities, but I think it's also really important to name something here, and that is that doing this work is emotional, and it's so important to validate that. Bearing witness to students' pain, especially when it, you know, can echo our own pain or, you know, where we, for example, me, I connect with the Latinx community because I identify as a Latina. That can be very heavy, and even if you don't identify with the populations that you work with, it's still hearing that pain.

That can be heavy. As Latinx practitioners or allies, as I mentioned, we sometimes carry our students' fear home with us, and I think that that is why self-reflection, supervision, or collaboration, consultations, and collective care is really crucial. Creating healing spaces for others requires that we ourselves, you know, nurture healing spaces and can have that both in our school setting with maybe like our co-workers or like I mentioned during maybe interdisciplinary meetings.

That is so important, but also maybe at home, you know, creating those, finding a support person or people outside of our school setting as well. If we're overwhelmed, our nervous systems can't model calm for our students. I once saw a saying, I think it was like on social media, where it said like a dysregulated adult cannot and will not ever be able to regulate a dysregulated child, and I think that that's so important to keep in mind as we continue to practice this work.

So please make space for rest. Remember that your presence, your consistency, your care, and even like the willingness to learn more as you engage throughout these episodes and in this podcast, they matter more than, you know, having perfect words for our students. It's so important that you take care of yourself so that we can continue to be able to better serve the Latinx community.

Before we close, I want to leave you with the reflection prompt. If you, you know, once again are in the car, just maybe answer this in your mind, in your head, and then when you get to a space where you can take notes, maybe jot down your response and just, you know, be able to see the progress maybe when you reflect back on this prompt. So I want you to think of a student you've seen shut down in class.

What story might their silence be holding? How can you hold that story with compassion instead of correction? As you reflect, remember that trauma-informed care and community cultural wealth model are not separate frameworks, at least not in the way that we are speaking about them, right? They're partners. One helps us see the wounds, which is trauma, right? It helps us be able to better understand the trauma that impacts our Latinx community, and the other helps us see the knowledge that these bring, the lived experiences, and together they help us better become better service providers and better allies and better partners to our Latinx students and to our Latinx families and overall to our Latinx community. In today's episode, we explored how Latinx children may show trauma through silence, withdraw, or acting out, and how these behaviors are often misread as defiant, non-compliant, and looked through in a really deficit-based manner, right? We learned that trauma-informed care invites us to build trust, safety, and empowerment through consistency and compassion, and we also talked about community cultural wealth model, which reminds us that silence itself can be a form of navigational, familial, and resistant capital.

Together, these frameworks teach us to look deeper, to listen with empathy, and to hold space for what isn't said out loud. So here's my call to action. Tomorrow, when you step into your school, your office, or your classroom, slow down.

Listen beyond the behavior that you are physically seeing, and I really want you to be mindful and ask yourself, what story might this silence be telling me? Because when we shift how we listen, we begin to transform how our students can heal, and we really begin to be really mindful and culturally responsive in the way that we are serving our Latinx students. Thank you so much for joining me today for this episode of Raíces y Resilencia. If today's conversation and episode resonated with you, I invite you to share this episode with a colleague or friend who also believes in creating compassionate, equity-driven schools.

I also want to remind you all to remember to check out the reflection worksheet in the show notes that is attached to the show notes, and I really like to use these reflection worksheets because I think it's the perfect space to process your thoughts and apply today's discussions to your practice. I also think that these reflection worksheets really give you the opportunity to be able to dig deeper. The questions are very intentional and are very based on the material that we discussed, and so having that space and that time to process is going to be really helpful.

I also want to remind you all that the references for this episode are also on the show notes, and that the transcript is also attached to the episode in case that is also needed. I am so grateful to have you as part of this growing community of practitioners who lead with heart, culture, resilience, and most importantly, who is willing and open to have these uncomfortable discussions. In our next episode, we're really going to be digging deeper into the fact that even with the best intentions, even when we are trying to gain more knowledge and are trying to be able to become more culturally inclusive, there are still systemic and institutional barriers that can keep us from offering culturally responsive support to Latinx students, and so our next episode will really explore those barriers and how they show up in schools, and what are some things that we can do to maybe continue to challenge those.

Thank you all so much. I will see you all next time.

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