Recognizing the Community of Care

In this task, you will review a scenario about the social-emotional learning needs of a specific student. You will plan a culturally appropriate, trauma-informed response to meet the students needs. You will then reflect on your own cultural background and how it affects your response to the issues represented in the scenario.

Maria is a 13-year-old biracial student whose mother is Hispanic and father is African-American. Marias father transferred towns for work, which uprooted the family midyear from a large city to a small, rural town. Marias new school, much like the community, is predominately white and middle class. The move has resulted in her parents fighting a lot, making her home life very stressful.

Additionally, students at her new school dress much differently than students at her old school, which makes Maria stand out. Some of the other students make fun of the way she dresses. She just discovered a social media group called I Hate Maria composed of some of her seventh-grade classmates, who have been posting negative comments about her. Recently, students at Marias school took cell phone photographs of her buttocks while she was walking in the hall and posted them on the I Hate Maria website.

Maria has tried to tell her parents about the bullying at school, but they tell her she is being too sensitive. With all of the stress, Maria is plagued by dark thoughts of killing herself and cannot focus on the lessons being taught in her classes.

Your submission must be your original work. No more than a combined total of 30% of the submission and no more than a 10% match to any one individual source can be directly quoted or closely paraphrased from sources, even if cited correctly. The originality report that is provided when you submit your task can be used as a guide.

You must use the rubric to direct the creation of your submission because it provides detailed criteria that will be used to evaluate your work. Each requirement below may be evaluated by more than one rubric aspect. The rubric aspect titles may contain hyperlinks to relevant portions of the course.

Tasks may not be submitted as cloud links, such as links to Google Docs, Google Slides, OneDrive, etc., unless specified in the task requirements. All other submissions must be file types that are uploaded and submitted as attachments (e.g., .docx, .pdf, .ppt).

A.  Summarize the social context described in the scenario, including the following:

  Marias family

  Marias community

  Marias cultural background

B.  Discuss how you, as a teacher, would try to help Maria in a culturally responsive, trauma-informed way by doing the following:

1.  Describe a realistic action you would take to help Maria with one or more of the issues she is facing.

a.  Justify how the action from part B1 would effectively address the issue or issues from part B1 in a culturally responsive and trauma-informed way, including specific examples.

2.  Discuss how you would involve Marias family in this action.

C.  Discuss specific elements of your own cultural background.

Note: Cultural background can include relevant demographic information such as race, economic background, or religion. It can also include other defining characteristics, such as family structure, styles of communication, traditions, or family and community educational norms. You are not required to include details relating to personal experience, traumatic or otherwise.

1.  Discuss how your cultural background could affect the way you might respond to the issues Maria is facing in the scenario.

D.  Acknowledge sources, using in-text citations and references, for content that is quoted, paraphrased, or summarized.

E.  Demonstrate professional communication in the content and presentation of your submission.