Giving Compass' Take:

• Katrina Ballard at Urban Institute discusses how violent actions taken generations ago can still have an impact on families today, and how understanding these traumas can help students to better achieve. 

• How can funders help states to build effective trauma policies for students? What resources in your community could be better leveraged to support students in need? 

• Learn about a program designed to support traumatized students. 


For many Alaska Native families, a colonial history has created generational trauma that, until recently, has gone unrecognized by government institutions. Communities are still healing from systemic oppression, such as the removal of children from their homes for forced schooling and the use of violence to prevent children from speaking their native language.

At the US Department of Education’s Promise Neighborhoods National Network Conference last month, Lisa X'unyéil Worl, coordinator of Supporting Transitions and Educational Promise Southeast Alaska, explained that violent actions taken generations ago against families like hers, part of the Tlingit tribe, still have an impact today.

Understanding these effects can help local educators, most not native to Alaska, understand families’ continued mistrust of institutions and address adverse outcomes like high student dropout rates. And these lessons can help educators working in other areas that have experienced community-wide trauma.

Read the full article about understanding student trauma by Katrina Ballard at Urban Institute.