It’s one thing to tell tell them a bunch of stuff, but then it’s another thing for them to be able to digest it, which means not only can I understand the context behind it, but I can also apply it and not apply it in multiple situations. That’s when you know that kids have learned, and for me, that’s what master teachers do in the classroom every day, formative assessment. I watch, I observe, I see where my kids are at and then I know where to take them and where to push each one of them based off their feedback that they’re giving me.

The work that we do when we work directly with communities is about consistency. In the past a lot of times in native communities/res communities we just want you to come in and pump them up like a one-time thing. But now when they ask for that, I tell them to stop and listen to me, pay attention. I really want change & you want change but it’s going to take consistency, so if you want us, we’re going to commit to months’ worth of various places. When you’re working with a consistent group of people you have an ability to kind of begin to gauge their progress and where their status is, we see those lights that are ready to lead and focus on them so that it becomes pure leadership.

Several years back I got an opportunity to pilot this educational program and originally, they asked me to come in and get these kids ready for graduation. I was working with was a group of IEP students whose educational career was labeled learning disabled. The concern was that some of them we’re not going to graduate. They weren’t set to graduate because they were falling behind, failing, & struggling. The other question was “how do we prepare them for something better than failure once they graduate? How do we prepare them for work or the potential of going to college? They wanted us to focus on “life skills” and in in terms of “hard life skills” it was what they were asking for. I did what they asked, but I did it in a way where I used that objective conversation to be able to bring cultural accountability to them, but also take them through trauma processing.

I told them “We’re going to work all the **** out here.” Most of them I had for two years; some of them I only had for one because they graduated out of the program. It was so powerful! Within just that that first cohort of students that I had, it was it was even more than I expected. All of the students may not even necessarily like one another and they didn’t come from the same group, but through that process we created a family and they did that collective human part where they begin to share experiences and healing/learning from one another, being able to look at one another and say “Holy ****, you and I are almost identical in our experiences – I had no idea you went through the same trauma all this time, alone.” They would bond and they would support one another. By the end of that first year, they determined that most of those students were not disabled, they were traumatized. They were never able to process it and that was the reason for any perceived learning disability.

The program director asked “When the hell did you do this? You’re doing what the parents should have done; you’re doing what culture should have done.” In the end, students got better results in the quarter; the counselors were monitoring their behavior & mood and noticed a 180 degree change from the beginning of that program to the end of the year. Those that were in that senior class graduated and their grades were up. Some of them directly went on to college. There was this one young dude headed for prison for sure, just based on his behavior. In the process of being in the program we showed him something different, and he ended up trying out for the baseball team! He had never played baseball in his life, and he was a natural.

What we do is to create a family and social community environment built around positive communication. So many of those kids want to disrupt themselves from their day because it’s a negative thing in terms of self-context. I grew up like that – I was crazy and I remember feeling like I had no tools. I didn’t know who I was, and when I went to college that first year it was a scary time because that was some of the worst racism I ever endured. That’s when I felt my father’s spirit telling me to take different classes that gave me historical armor. Now I’m more secure, stable & grounded because of that information – it was a powerful thing.

That’s the nature of relationship healing, and we’re bringing culture back into it. One of the interesting things is that all the students I worked with, had come from abusive and neglectful homes. Even in the immediate space of where we were working with them, they were returning home every day. But even though they were going back to that adverse environment where there was abuse and violence and alcoholism, they could come back to us, and they had foundation for resiliency.

Learn more about Thrive UNLTD –> https://thriveunltd.com/

PART 3 COMING SOON!!!