About 135 teachers, professors and partners from the University of California, Los Angeles community and tie-in schools gathered this week at UCLA to exchange strategies and best practices at the first “Learning Together: Practitioners and Scholars in Partnership” conference.
The idea of partnerships was the theme of the conference, whether between practitioners and scholars, or between schools and the communities they serve, said conference organizers.
“Other than education there aren’t a lot of ways to move the needle of equality,” said Dr. Marcelo Suarez-Orozco the dean of the Graduate School of Education and Information Studies at UCLA. “At a time of growing inequality, education is the tool to bring more equity and democracy.”
Dr. Tyrone Howard, a professor at the university as well as the associate dean for equity and inclusion kicked off the conference with a keynote titled “Understanding Student Trauma in the Learning Process.” Throughout his address, Howard discussed why trauma matters, explaining that it typically has a significant and long lasting impact on cognitive and socio-economic development as well as on overall learning.
“It is lazy analysis to not understand the real effect trauma has on our students,” said Howard.
His message resonated with Cicely Bingener, a kindergarten teacher at Payne Elementary School in nearby Inglewood.
“True ADHD and trauma symptoms are similar,” said Bingener. “Are they [students] actually receiving the right services that will help them in the long haul? It makes me very hopeful that the science of brain trauma is being studied; it’s not just anecdotal. It’s a real thing.”
