SETTING THE FOUNDATION FOR AN EMOTIONALLY LITERATE, JUST AND CONSCIOUS FUTURE
Traditional curricula, including Benchmark and Writing and Reading Workshops, do not scaffold strategies for emotional regulation or conflict resolution skills. My pedagogical approach integrates state academic standards with social and emotional learning to set the foundation for an emotionally literate, just and conscious society.
In Hope and Healing in Urban Education: How Activists and Teachers are Reclaiming Matters of the Heart, Shawn Ginwright (2015) discusses his vision of a new movement in urban education centered around healing justice to address and repair the damage caused by structural violence and systematic oppression in urban communities.
This vision is rooted in building community and collective hope, in which teachers play an important role beyond traditional standards-based instruction. Ginwright proposes a framework of healing strategies teacher/activists and educators can utilize in schools. Two key pieces of this framework are Mindfulness and Restorative Justice. It is through this lens of healing justice that I see healing practices and this kind of social and emotional learning as essential to the classroom: it is a social justice issue.
