It’s back to school season for children. In the Northwest, teachers soon return to prep their classroom. As parents rearrange their daily routines, small children nervously wonder if they and their best friend will be assigned the same classroom. While some students are excited to continue their learning journey, the new school year can also bring students back to a place where they lost hope. Schools are the singular environment where most children are socialized and graded. The lack of hope can show up in an elementary boy acting out in class when he feels utterly out of place as he watches others thrive. It can show up when a middle school girl decides that she will never become as socially acceptable as her peers, turning to virtual or pharmaceutical escapes. And it can show up when that same elementary boy who years ago gave up on school decides, as a teenager, to tie his identity to guns.
At our neighborhood Garfield High School, which two of my children enthusiastically attended, I am reminded of last school year’s close. The close was punctuated by the sorrow that accompanies a life prematurely extinguished. The death at the hands of another young person, with a gun, also shattered the community’s sense of safety, perhaps long fragile.
In this milieu, Seattle’s Mayor Harrell, who also attended Garfield High School, regularly reminds us of two important principles: 1) That it is not only physical safety, but each student’s emotional safety and sense of safety are also foundational to continuous learning; and 2) That like the continuous learning we want for our children, adult driven solutions must also continuously evolve.
Perhaps it’s back to school time for the adults too. In our data or fact driven region, adults’ commitment to reality, healing, and learning are key to student safety.
Analysis
Effective transformations first require an accurate assessment of the current state, how we got here, and a definition of the preferred future we desire.
Violence, human disconnectedness, anxiety, othering, fear, extractive practices, and the atomization of life-giving systems are not unrelated.
Searching for the nation’s roots of dissonance and violence, perhaps we can find clues in the historical trauma experienced by European settlers fleeing the Old World and the violence perpetrated “in pursuit of freedom the New World.”
Complex systems are fractal, patterns repeating at successive levels.
Closer to home, for decades Garfield has been labeled, “a building containing two schools.” One “school” is primarily comprised of well-resourced families. Many such youth matriculate to the highly desired college of their choice. The other “school” within Garfield is more so comprised of families historically rooted in Seattle’s Central District but now economically displaced and dispersed throughout King County. The latter are more likely disenfranchised from power, resources, community, and other sources of multigenerational well-being.
Across decades some have initiated efforts to build coherence among the two schools in ways that honor the human spirit, from which we can learn. A decade-and-a-half ago I was fortunate to serve with a Garfield PTSA Chair who introduced an advisory program that exists to this day – though in a somewhat altered form. Twice weekly the program brings together students with diverse academic trajectories, means and race who might otherwise not share classes. In the original configuration, students envisioned their middle-aged selves and created roadmaps towards such futures. A decade later the school was blessed with a student body leader, who for two consecutive years built bridges both informally as a matter of her being and formally through engaging student gatherings. Both the parent and the student leader, separated in time, understood well-being is a collective art - more adaptive than technical.
What if we extended such human-centered approaches to the larger systems?
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Vision - A Brighter & Safer Future Begins with the Parent-Child Bond
I envision a “world” (region and nation) where children of different means and backgrounds thrive together, from pre-school through high school. Unconcerned about safety, families of lesser and greater means know that their children’s socialization and learning will only be enriched by others with different stories. In this world all families and communities - including Pacific Islander, Black and Indigenous - are flourishing, alive with laughter, goodwill, and unlimited possibilities. This world benefits from the gifts of all.
Most brain development occurs during the first few years of life - before children ever step into a classroom (Center on the Developing Child). During this pre-verbal window, a child’s mind is vigorously wiring a foundational architecture for life. Unsurprisingly, this hyper-absorbent brain is also most vulnerable to stress. The key enablers of every child’s success are the psycho-emotional health and support of family and community. Even in the absence of science, we know this intuitively. Farmers and gardeners amend the soil before planting crops. They don’t alternatively wait for plants to begin wilting before urgently spraying them with formulated nutrients. Parents and community represent children’s soil.
Pacific Islander, Black and Indigenous communities represent an unrealized source of American strength and opportunity. In the U.S., historical practices conspire to confine a quarter-plus (23%, 34% and 34%) of PI, Black and Indigenous (PI/B/I) school children to poverty (National Center for Education Statistics). By fourth-grade, Black students score two to three years behind White students of the same age (NCES). This gap telescopes to post-secondary attainment and adulthood. Setting aside the human cost (as if we could), the national financial cost is enormous. A 2009 McKinsey & Company study found that the persistence of the Black educational achievement gap alone imposes on the US the economic equivalent of a permanent national recession.
For good reason, two factors significantly influence current models aimed at bolstering children’s educational performance and parent (/guardian) engagement:
The Western scientific approach to problem solving focuses on variables and metrics it can most control.
Evidence of both institutional bias and racism in school remains broadly visible across the nation (W.K. Kellogg Foundation, 2014).
The resulting models then generally focus on the role of school programs and social services. But doing so unfortunately overlooks the core role of parents and healing multi-generational trauma.
The Role of Intergenerational Trauma
Many factors undermine PI/B/I parents’ ability to provide a rich learning foundation for our children. The most negative catalytic factor, at scale, is intergenerational trauma. The impacts can continue to multiply long after the traumatic events (Njaka & Peacock, 2021).
For example, trauma mediated parent-child attachment undermines a child’s sense of safety. A parent’s fear of academic inadequacy and parental paralysis can amplify hostility toward formal learning environments and block parents’ abilities to advocate for the young. Seeding the transmission of trauma to the next generation, the cycle persists uninterrupted.
NYU economist William Easterly’s research demonstrates that existing crisis-centered models to counter marginalization lack durability. Such models address immediate problems without solving for root causes embedded in systems. Even investments offering proven lifetime returns such as early childhood education do not carry over to following generations (The High Scope Perry Preschool Study, 2004). By contrast, with healing comes freedom to choose who one wants to be and an increased capacity to care about others.
Opportunity
The Aspen Institute’s “Two-Generation” models show that a child with committed emotional support and educational advocacy at home can often surmount incredible internal and external challenges. Conversely, without supportive, dedicated, consistently engaged adult(s) at home, a child’s chances of overcoming the effects of inherited trauma plus ongoing social biases are nearly nil.
Interrupting the transfer of multi-generational trauma promises to catalyze compounding shared outcomes that other approaches have missed.
Solution - The Long Game
Healing, equipping, empowering, and connecting transform vicious cycles to virtuous cycles.
Healing multi-generational trauma revives the human spirit to dream and execute on their vision.
Equipping two generations with habits and resources to join in the pursuit of success liberates both parent and child. Healing and equipping parents empowers them to skillfully advocate for their children.
Such principles transcend sector and geography. In Nicaragua, Guatemala, and Honduras Agros International has supported countless families to thrive across seven dozen communities, through:
Recovery (years 1-2): Families focus on healing and building essential infrastructure such as housing, water, sanitation systems, and subsistence farming.
Asset Building (years 3-4): Families build material, social, and civic assets; including seed capital and training to become farm owners, empowering women, children, and the broader community.
By year seven, the community and families are healthy, economically secure, and resilient. If there’s a minor setback—like a family illness or a water shortage—they have the skills and resources needed to overcome it.
(To be clear, like the sun needs the moon, these approaches represent only one side of the coin. Despite which end of a continuum each of us maps on any single reductive dimension, we are all knitted together as part of one whole fabric. Furthermore, how we come together across the economic spectrum to keep each other safe will also require consideration of the strengths and needs of those possessing greater resources. But this piece is already too long.)
Conclusion - Safe & Thriving Children
Tragedy has presented us with a transformative opportunity.
Just as a bud needs the right conditions to bloom into a magnificent flower, children require nurturing and support to become their full selves. This strategic shift will require courage. But the region and nation have repeatedly shown itself to be innovative and adaptive.
Collectively, we want a less violent world and one in which all children live fulfilled lives. Growing collective efficacy (shared power + social cohesion) can build a society where more children are hopeful, emotionally and physically safe.
In this world, parents can say goodbye to their children each morning confident they will safely return home - enriched.
I think the garden metaphor makes the case so effectively I wonder why in the world we don’t adopt it across the board and fertilize the ‘soil’ from the beginning. Alas. Maybe not enough of us are getting our hands in the dirt on a regular basis? Thank you Dave for all you do.
I think the garden metaphor makes the case so effectively I wonder why in the world we don’t adopt it across the board and fertilize the ‘soil’ from the beginning. Alas. Maybe not enough of us are getting our hands in the dirt on a regular basis? Thank you Dave for all you do.