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Trauma and Sanctuary

7/4/2012

6 Comments

 
Yesterday I was very fortunate to have been with a group of graduate students from the University of Pennsylvania's Graduate School of Education as they visited Arise Academy Charter High School. During an engaging hour and a half conversation I learned more about this school and its philosophy and how (I hope) what it does can transfer back to the traditional public school system.

During the conversation the CEO as well as other members of the leadership and related parties (including students) it became obvious that the philosophy of the school includes teachers as more than just masters of contact; they are the first responders to the individual and unique needs of children. Since their students often come from the foster care system or homelessness, or have been removed from other schools, teachers need to constantly understand and interact with the trauma in their backgrounds.

In their student handbook it says, "Our culture system is predicated on 'fair isn't always equal...'" (p. 15) - a policy many across the District might not want to repeat, yet is more honest than anything else. Every student has a unique background and needs to be treated based on what is happening in their lives. Teaching the exact same thing to each student in the exact same method is the antithesis of differentiation. 

The same concept brought up the name Sandra Bloom and the "Sanctuary Model," something Arise Academy is building towards as their focus over the next number of years. By dealing with an individual's trauma instead of ignoring it they have found success in retaining students that would normally leave the system and most likely never return. One major support for this has been their emphasis on counseling as a preferred resource. The CEO said their student-to-counselor ratio was something like 1:26. This ratio is unheard of in the regular public school system (where they might be lucky with 1:200) and should be changed.

Overall it was a very intriguing conversation and I was happy to take part in it to learn how to promote the idea that Maslow's hierarchy of needs has a lot of legitimacy and we need to take student's home lives into account when educating them. I was also happy to see that this charter school could be a model to follow in the School District. I just hope people in administration are paying attention.
6 Comments
Sunny Bavaro
7/3/2012 10:42:30 pm

Yes! There is a great class at St. Joes all about this. You can even get a cert. in Trauma Awareness. Read Bloom's book. It has informed much of my practice. My wife took the classes and talking with her has given a name to lots of what I have felt during teaching.

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Tom Bishop
7/4/2012 09:33:28 pm

Hasn't Arises' charter been revoked by the SRC because they didn't make AYP?

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Tom Bishop
7/4/2012 10:56:00 pm

Answering my own question:


SRC votes not to renew three charters
http://thenotebook.org/blog/124733/src-decide-fate-three-charters-today

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Brian Cohen
7/4/2012 11:02:31 pm

It seems the SRC is giving them some time to make a case for themselves, then. I would imagine this situation is similar to what I experienced at West Philly HS in 2009-20010: the environment of the school was vastly improved but the test scores had not as of yet. So, they transferred a large number of teachers and moved the principal. Since they can't do that with a charter school, they will simply not renew the contract. Based on the little I saw, I would think that's a shame for Arise.

Tom Bishop
7/4/2012 11:32:21 pm

This shows the bogus nature of high stakes testing as the basis for rating schools. The people who are implementing this misguided reform are from the business world, not education. They deal with commodity production, not developing empowered citizens.

Not everything in education can be quantified. Teaching is an art and a science. The school reformers are taking the science to an extreme until it is setting us up for a major crisis in U.S. education.

The ART of teaching is being totally discounted and ignored which is warping teaching. This can only lead to students who are turned off to learning and not capable of critical thinking.

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Rosalie Friend link
7/5/2012 01:22:46 am

Treating every child as an individual and meeting their personal needs, so they are free to learn academics, is essential, though Maslow's hierarchy of needs has not been supported by subsequent research. Here in New York City the South Brooklyn Community High School, a public school, opened to serve students with histories of truancy. There is a very high ratio of counselors to students, and 100 of the students entering the school graduated on time, during the period that I was involved.
W. Edwards Deming, statistican and management consultant, demonstrated that not everything can be quantified. One pertinent quotation is, "Measuring or counting data depends on the instrument or method used. Changing the method changes the results."

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    I am a math teacher in the New York Department of Education. I infuse technology and real-world problems into my curriculum in order to prepare my students for the future. I would love for people across the country to recognize we teachers can't do it alone. If you don't believe me, come visit my classroom!

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