Hope and Healing in Urban Education

How Urban Activists and Teachers are Reclaiming Matters of the Heart

Shawn Ginwright

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN: 9781138797567
• eBook ISBN: 9781317631927
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

Hope and Healing in Urban Education proposes a new movement of healing justice to repair the damage done by the erosion of hope resulting from structural violence in urban communities. Drawing on ethnographic case studies from around the country, this book chronicles how teacher activists employ healing strategies in stressed schools and community organizations, and work to reverse negative impacts on academic achievement and civic engagement, supporting their students to become powerful civic actors. The book argues that healing a community is a form of political action, and emphasizes the need to place healing and hope at the center of our educational and political strategies. At once a bold, revealing, and nuanced look at troubled urban communities as well as the teacher activists and community members working to reverse the damage done by generations of oppression, Hope and Healing in Urban Education examines how social change can be enacted from within to restore a sense of hope to besieged communities and counteract the effects of poverty, violence, and hopelessness.

1 Introduction

DOI: 10.4324/9781315757025-1

The precise role of the artist, then, is to illuminate that darkness, blaze roads through the vast forest, so that we will not, in all our doing, lose site of its purpose, which is after all, to make the world a more human dwelling place.

(Baldwin 1985)

My mother would often share warm, wonderful stories with my brothers and me about her own childhood growing up in Trenton, Florida, a small town near Gainesville. Her stories were so vivid that we could easily transport ourselves into the wonders of playing hide-and-go-seek at dawn, eating mangos off of the neighbor’s tree, and spending lazy hot afternoons on the porch. She only needed to utter a few words to invoke our imagination about her safe magical world she simply called “home”.

Her stories allowed my brothers and me to imagine a world different from our own working-class neighborhood, where growing up in the 1970s, the sounds of police sirens were as common as hearing the familiar tune of the ice-cream truck making its way down our streets. Her stories about growing up in the rural South stood in contrast to urban violence, despair, and poverty that had consumed our neighborhood.

When she would describe her house, I imagined a small cozy house, with bright yellow flowers in front, lining the walkway to the porch. She would smile with nostalgic pleasure as she described to us every detail of this small house. Not too long ago, I traveled to Trenton with my mother. To be honest, I was excited to see the place that had only existed in my imagination. We visited with her old friends, and relatives. As we walked through the small town, we approached the old home she had described for years, and I was shocked. The small house was not what I had imagined. The old rickety, shotgun style dwelling had been vacant for years, and should have been demolished because weeds had overtaken it, the wood was deteriorating, and the tin roof had rusted throughout. Seeing the house humbled me, because only then did I realize how poor she had been as a child.

But my mother saw something entirely different. Standing there in the hot, humid Florida sun, she smiled with the excitement of a child. It was as if being there had transported her back to her childhood. For her, the house was the birthplace of her hopes and dreams. As we walked slowly through the house, she retold each story and painstakingly walked me to every corner, pointing out all the little things that she remembered from her childhood. Standing there, in this beloved, ramshackle little house, I realized that she had been raised to imagine a world beyond the present. This sense of hope in those four walls nurtured in my mother the capacity to understand oppression, but not to be defined by it.

***

I suspect that hope and the capacity to dream of a world beyond the present has always been at the heart of social justice movements. Hope, in and of itself, is an important form of resistance, both political and personal, and reaffirms what is possible, and worth fighting for. However, unlike the mass Civil Rights movement of the 1960s that ushered in groundbreaking legislation, today requires a new movement that is both inwardly focused on healing from the wounds inflicted from structural oppression, and outwardly focused on social change. This dual focus represents a new way of movement building by engaging a collective conversation about the power of hope and the meaning it holds for each of us.

This book is about hope, and how teachers, community activists, and youth development professionals are responding to the crisis of hopelessness among youth of color in urban American. The central premise of this book is that both organizing and healing are required for lasting community change. Both strategies, braided together, make a more complete and durable fabric in our efforts to transform oppression, and hold the power to restore a more humane and redemptive process toward community change. I advance three ideas in this regard:

1. Structural oppression harms hope.
2. Healing is a critical component in building hope.
3. Building hope is important political activity.

There is no doubt that poverty, increasing gun violence, and lack of employment have taken a toll on those who live and work in urban neighborhoods. We all shudder at the statistics: from 2006 to 2010, homicide was the leading cause of death for African Americans males between the ages of 10 and 24, and for Latinos of the same age, it was the second cause of death (Bryant and Phillips 2013). As many as one third of children in urban neighborhoods have witnessed a homicide (Buka et al. 2001). Many Black and Hispanic students in urban schools fear for their safety in school and choose to simply stay away (Roberts et al. 2013). Notably, emerging research shows that after African American children have been exposed to violence, their achievement tests scores drop significantly below scores of other children (Sharkey 2010).

On a broader canvas, violence can also be understood as actions from systems that injure young people (Farmer 2004). For example, police departments’ stop-and-frisk practices, and zero tolerance policies in schools disproportionally criminalize young men of color for “willful defiance” and all have negative impact on young people’s social emotional health (Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice [CJCJ] 1999). Young people in urban settings who have fallen prey to these discriminatory practices often have few opportunities to address the psychosocial harm resulting from persistent exposure to an ‘ecosystem of violence’. Their experiences are not only traumatizing, but often have a profound negative impact on their sense of efficacy and agency. In most cases of post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), among youth of color are actually ongoing, and persistent. Trauma for these young people, therefore, needs to be diagnosed within a Persistent Traumatic Stress Environment (PTSE), which more accurately focuses on both the individual and the environmental context in which trauma occurs.

This means that we have to view structural issues such as poverty, unemployment, underfunded schools, incarceration, lack of access to quality health care, and poor quality housing as the root causes of violence and causes of trauma. Violence, and its root causes, are not simply experienced as individual phenomenon, but rather they represent collective experience shared by young people and their families. These structural issues contribute to socially toxic environments (Garbarino 1995). Socially toxic environments are environments like neighborhoods and schools where lack of opportunities, blocked access, constrained resources, unclear pathways to a better life can erode trusting relationships and severely constrain collective action and agency (Ginwright 2010a, 2010b). Similarly, Paul Farmer (2004) uses the term structural violence to describe how structural oppression destroys and harms communities. He accurately highlights the ways in which racism, homophobia, classism, sexism, and other forms of systemic exclusion are embedded in social institutions and structures, and harm communities and groups in our society.

If unaddressed, exposure to an ecosystem of socially toxic environments can have a debilitating impact on young people’s healthy development. For example, youth who have been exposed to trauma from violence have displayed mental health symptoms ranging from emotional numbing, to difficulties with sleep or concentration (Rich 2009). Researchers have found that untreated trauma can predict lower total verbal and IQ scores on standardized achievement tests (Sharkey 2010) and impede brain development.

However, the most significant impact of structural violence is how it erodes young people’s sense of hope (Bolland et al. 2001). One important study conducted by Alvin Poussaint (Poussaint and Alexander 2000) found that poverty, community violence, racial discrimination in employment, and unreported police brutality often result in unresolved rage, aggression, depression, and fatalism. He pointed out that among black youth, suicides increased 114 percent. Other studies have shown that youth in urban environments, structural violence not only impedes productive development, but also poses serious threats to their social, emotional, and psychological well-being (Garbarino 1995; Furstenberg and Hughes 1997; Hart and Atkins 2002)

Young people who witness or experience violence often experience stress, depression, and anxiety, all of which severely impacts academic achievement and healthy development. These dire social conditions also breed a sense of meaninglessness and hopelessness, which also impact academic achievement and civic engagement. As a result of these seemingly intractable problems, young people and those who support them, including teachers, their families, and community organizations, struggle to engage young people in meaningful ways.

In light of these bleak realities, youth development and civic engagement strategies designed to engage America’s most disconnected young people will only be successful to the extent that they address hopelessness (Wilson et al. 2005). Unfortunately, these challenges are exacerbated by the fact that teachers and youth development professionals have few options available to support young people in ways that restore hope and well-being. Simply put, traditional youth development and civic engagement approaches to supporting youth of color from stressed urban schools and neighborhoods have been ineffective in combatting the deep and multilayered level of stress and trauma many young people bring to school. While the impact of these conditions on education and mental and physical health is well documented (Aneshensel and Sucoff 1996; Stern et al. 1999; Mazza and Overstreet 2000; Xanthos 2008), we understand very little about how teachers and activists can effectively support young people of color in such dire social conditions. For those who seek effective strategies to combat these conditions, we are compelled to ask important questions: (1) How do teachers and activists effectively respond to hopelessness in ways that restore human dignity, meaning, and possibility? (2) How can these responses inform broader structural changes in civic engagement, education, and public safety? (3) What are the ingredients to transformative school and community change?

There is growing recognition among teachers and activists that hope and healing are critical to academic achievement and civic engagement (Duncan-Andrade 2009). Duncan-Andrade (2009) accurately points to various forms of hope that build the political consciousness among young people that is necessary to address material conditions of their lives. He offers three forms of hope among teachers. Material Hope—Quality teaching that connects the harsh reality of community conditions with new possibilities. Socratic Hope—Requires educators and students to painfully examine their own live and actions to discover new ways of living. Audacious Hope—Healing from oppression in order to transform it.

Increasingly, teachers and activists have come to recognize the profound impact that trauma has had on their students’ capacity to hope, and see the world beyond the present, something my mother was able to do even when all the evidence suggested otherwise. They share a common vision that so many young people in urban communities who have been physically, emotionally, psychologically, and spiritually harmed must receive support from their schools and communities so that they can heal from trauma. I call these teachers and activists “soul rebels”, because they are challenging conventional educational and political strategies and embarking on their own journeys that allow them to discover practices that heal and transform their classrooms, organizations, and communities. In doing so, these rebels are seeking out an alternative vision for their communities—one based on healing and love rather than hopelessness and fatalism.

An important parallel can be made here. Just as health and well-being are not defined solely by the absence of disease, justice is more that the absence of oppression. Similarly, creating hope in schools and neighborhoods involves more than violence-reduction tactics, such as cease-fires and gang truces. These strategies create temporary reductions in violence at best, but these are not characteristics of hope and peace itself. Building hope among youth of color in urban schools requires that educators rethink what is most important and come to recognize that healing and well-being are critical social justice ingredients.

Tanya's Turmoil

“There has to be another way, Shawn”, she said over the phone. I was silent simply because I didn’t know what to say. But the silence was not uncomfortable. It just gave me the space to reflect on what she had just shared with me. Tanya was a former student whom I had mentored and worked closely with in the Bayview Hunters Point community. She is perhaps one of my brightest students, not because of her profound knowledge of social theory, nor expansive understanding of public policy. She is brilliant because she challenges social theory and public policy, and she’s well aware of the problems and challenges of our society because she grew up in San Francisco’s gritty Bayview Hunters Point community. Tanya is rough around the edges, yet never apologizes for her fluent and unrefined urban swagger. At 25 years old, she has seen more than her share of trauma and violence. In the past, she has organized teen girls and worked closely with them to build their leadership skills and prepare them for college. She is passionate and committed to creating educational opportunities, building leadership pathways, and training “her girls” for political organizing in San Francisco.

Tanya often spoke with pride about her younger brother, whom she helped raise, and when he went to college, she acted like a proud parent. This week’s update on her brother, however, was different from all the others. Her brother had returned home for spring break when he was shot and killed near their home in Bayview Hunters Point. The pain of losing her brother forced her to question everything she had been working for. “Why should I continue this work, if I cannot even save my own brother?” she lamented. “I’m done! I’m leaving this neighborhood, and never returning! I’m also done with this nonprofit, social justice bullshit! I just don’t know if I can work with youth anymore!” Tanya’s next few months were spent in deep depression, sleeping most of the day, neglecting to clean her small apartment, and failing to pay rent which nearly ended with her being evicted.

Unfortunately, Tanya’s story is not uncommon for those of us who work in communities ravaged by violence and loss. It’s difficult sometimes to understand the psycho-spiritual costs of working in highly distressed communities. Researchers have mounted considerable evidence about the toll of environmental stressors on mental and physical health, optimism and hope among communities of color (Smit...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half-Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table Of Contents
• Acknowledgments
• 1 Introduction
• 2 Transforming Trauma into Hope and Power
• 3 Building the Courage to Hope Among Young Men
• 4 Creating a Healing Zone in San Francisco
• 5 Radically Healing Schools and Communities: Healing-Centered Pedagogy and Forgiveness
• 6 Healing with Street Love
• 7 La Cutura Cura: How Culture Cures and Builds Activism
• 8 Ubuntuism: Concluding Notes on Recreating Self, Society, and Change
• Index