No educator can ignore the effects of traumatic stressors on students. This is especially true for those in schools serving racially and ethnically marginalized or low-income children. Every day, millions of students in the United States go to school weighed down by interpersonal traumas, community traumas, and the traumatic effects of historical and contemporary race-based oppression. A wide range of adverse childhood events—including physical, verbal, emotional, and sexual abuse; chronic bullying; community or domestic violence; and food and housing insecurity—can lead to a host of negative outcomes. However, when schools provide developmentally supportive responses to these challenges, post-traumatic growth becomes possible. In Trauma Responsive Educational Practices, Micere Keels * examines the neurobiology of trauma; * presents mindfulness strategies that strengthen student self-regulation and extend professional longevity; and * demonstrates how to build pedagogically caring relationships, psychologically safe discipline, and an emotionally safe classroom learning climate. Keels also shows educators how to attend to equity and use trauma as a critical lens through which to plan instruction and respond to challenging situations with coregulation. It's important to understand that trauma is subjective and complex, treatment is not prescriptive, and recovery takes time. This book helps educators support students on that road—not merely to survive trauma but to focus on their strengths and flourish with effective coping skills.

Frustrated with the flood of news articles and opinion pieces that were skeptical of minority students' "imagined" campus microaggressions, Micere Keels, a professor of comparative human development, set out to provide a detailed account of how racial-ethnic identity structures Black and Latinx students' college transition experiences. Tracking a cohort of more than five hundred Black and Latinx students since they enrolled at five historically white colleges and universities in the fall of 2013 Campus Counterspaces finds that these students were not asking to be protected from new ideas. Instead, they relished exposure to new ideas, wanted to be intellectually challenged, and wanted to grow. However, Keels argues, they were asking for access to counterspaces—safe spaces that enable radical growth. They wanted counterspaces where they could go beyond basic conversations about whether racism and discrimination still exist. They wanted time in counterspaces with likeminded others where they could simultaneously validate and challenge stereotypical representations of their marginalized identities and develop new counter narratives of those identities. In this critique of how universities have responded to the challenges these students face, Keels offers a way forward that goes beyond making diversity statements to taking diversity actions.

Frustrated with the flood of news articles and opinion pieces that were skeptical of minority students' "imagined" campus microaggressions, Micere Keels, a professor of comparative human development, set out to provide a detailed account of how racial-ethnic identity structures Black and Latinx students' college transition experiences. Tracking a cohort of more than five hundred Black and Latinx students since they enrolled at five historically white colleges and universities in the fall of 2013 Campus Counterspaces finds that these students were not asking to be protected from new ideas. Instead, they relished exposure to new ideas, wanted to be intellectually challenged, and wanted to grow. However, Keels argues, they were asking for access to counterspaces—safe spaces that enable radical growth. They wanted counterspaces where they could go beyond basic conversations about whether racism and discrimination still exist. They wanted time in counterspaces with likeminded others where they could simultaneously validate and challenge stereotypical representations of their marginalized identities and develop new counter narratives of those identities. In this critique of how universities have responded to the challenges these students face, Keels offers a way forward that goes beyond making diversity statements to taking diversity actions.