E4:2 Building Healthy Learning Communities

Honoring Stories and Integrating Curriculum®: How to Build and Sustain Communities
Episode 4, Part 2: Carol Schumer, Parenting Specialist, Fathers and Families Support Center

Teacher Learning Stances that Build Trust and Healthy Learning Communities
•Carol describes how the morning meeting works for men to help build trust, community and support
•Carol describes the kind of parenting trauma men often experienced as youth and how she reframes “discipline” – a form of top-down punishment that removes youth agency and ownership over their decisions – as “disciple” – clearly teaching children in ways that align with their developmental age how to respect themselves and others
•Sarah explains what children who are punished harshly internalize about themselves and what supporting children and their unique forms of expression entails – starting with our own self-acceptance, understanding of our unique gifts, self-possession, and modeling of what being a part of the world in positive ways entails
•Carol shares some of the parenting scenarios she poses to the men who are navigating some of the most challenging moral complexities with their youth and what parenting action supports youth empowerment to make good decisions
•Sarah describes the many places where youth are at risk for internalizing that they don’t matter to the world. She speaks to some of the pressures on families across our region that are impacting youth and the moral complexities they are navigating as a result
•Carol names how children spell love, TIME and encourages parents to make family time with their youth because their youth do want that time with them even if they act like they don’t
•Carol describes why, even as a Daughter of Charity, the men are so willing to share and discuss violence, gang violence, sexuality, and so much more of what they are navigating with her. She takes on a learning stance – learning with them. She shares her failures and is comfortably vulnerable with them. She helps them find their unique gifts. She helps them hear their truths – no matter what belief systems they are faced with. She welcomes the messiness of the world we all have inherited and the ways that mess shows up in all of us.
•Carol explains how parenting skills translate to relationship skills, especially with life partners and commitment to employers.

Honoring Stories and Integrating Curriculum®: How to Build and Sustain Communities
Honoring Stories and Integrating Curriculum® methods this podcast features
•Embodying and inspiring personal power
•Doing real life together
•Servant leadership through authenticity, transparency, and vulnerability
•Learning how to find our gifts and how to recognize our expertise
•Learning how to hear and live from our truths
•Transforming harmful narratives in ourselves