Chapter 8: The Heart of Our Community: Developing University–Assisted Community Schools in Rural Places

The foundation of any school improvement endeavor is the commitment to holistic, not incremental, change. There is a wealth of literature on culturally responsive pedagogy that seeks to inform school change to incorporate teaching and learning activities that affirm and value the culture of people who are less represented and celebrated in traditional teaching. There is also a growing body of work on trauma-informed approaches for schools that seeks to understand the impact of trauma and toxic stress on a child’s developing brain to inform classroom management, instructional approaches, and discipline strategies. Both culturally responsive pedagogy and trauma-informed approaches offer guidance for change. To date, however, these two concepts exist in parallel with few studies or conceptual papers tying them together, yet neither can be fully realized outside the context of the other. A school cannot be culturally responsive without acknowledging historical traumas, nor can a school be trauma-informed without validating cultural strengths and responding to ongoing injuries and structural oppression. In this chapter, we describe our model of culturally responsive, trauma-informed approaches for schools that adapts the Sanctuary Model (Bloom, 1997) and draws attention to the domains of family, resiliency, education, and empowerment. We provide examples from our work developing university-assisted community schools in two rural places in the southern tier of New York State, outline some of our initiatives, and include lessons learned.