Abstract:
There is a fast-growing population of students experiencing trauma. As a result, school leaders need to improve individual and collective awareness as trauma-informed educators who are privy to how different social and emotional stressors impact student identities. Therefore, this qualitative phenomenological study aims to describe how minority high school graduates with incarcerated parents perceived themselves as public-school students in Southeast Texas. Findings revealed the following essence across this subgroup: students concluded that their educators' perception of them impacted their overall educational experience in one primary way—it influenced their perception of decision making. Thus, because children conformed to the idea that whatever educators believe of them is what represented them—an integrated experience—they either were nourished or admonished as students in public school systems. Implications for practice were significant to the dense study, but the direct implications are for educational leaders and other non-profit youth organizations.
