Burlington School District to host racial trauma webinar

BURLINGTON, Vt. (WCAX) - The Burlington School District continues its web series on racial equity with a panel discussion on racial trauma on Wednesday.

Racial Equity Director Henri Sparks says teachers and faculty want to give students of color the floor and hear their personal stories of experiencing racial trauma in the classroom.

“Give them an opportunity to really tell us how they experience it and it gives us an opportunity of really addressing it,” said Sparks.

Mental Health America defines racial trauma as the “mental and emotional injury caused by encounters with racial bias and ethnic discrimination.” Several studies show students who are BIPOC-- meaning Black, indigenous and People of Color-- are disciplined 3.5 times more often than their white classmates for similar infractions.

Sparks says that has devastating and lasting impacts on students of color.

“It makes them not want to be in school. It makes them not want to be in particular classes. And it definitely has an impact on their social-emotional wellbeing and if their social-emotional well-being is impacted, learning becomes irrelevant because they’re not connected to the classroom in the first place,” Sparks explained.

Zachary Key, a mental health clinician and one of the facilitators of Wednesday’s webinar, says students experiencing racial trauma often internalized a negative narrative.

“The impact of racial trauma often shifts their internal narrative about what they can expect and that leads them to be more or less engaged in school systems, more or less engaged in positive choices and in social development,” Key said.

Training Psychotherapist Courtney Casper, who will also facilitate the webinar conversation, says educators need to treat racial trauma as a mental health issue, not a troublemaking behavior worthy of discipline.

“We talk about PTSD and how similar some of the symptoms are from war veterans with people of color and yet we still haven’t made the leap in terms of our systems in how we’re addressing that and the impacts that have on our system,” Casper said.

The webinar is set to take place from 6 p.m. until 7:30 p.m. Parents and students of all races are invited to attend. To tune in, click here.

The district started hosting monthly online discussions in December in an effort to root out systemic racism and other forms of discrimination in schools. Their upcoming talks include “Combating Ableism” on April 8 and “Supporting LGBTQ+ Youth” in May.

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