SCENARIO
Maria is a 13-year-old biracial student whose mother identifies as Hispanic and whose father identifies as African-American. Maria’s father transferred towns for work, which uprooted the family midyear from a large city to a small, rural town. Maria’s new school (a public K-12 setting), much like the community, is predominately white and middle class. The move has resulted in Maria feeling high levels of stress and anxiety.
Additionally, students at her new school dress much differently than students at her old school, which makes Maria stand out. Some of the other students make fun of the way she dresses. She just discovered a social media group called “I Hate Maria” composed of some of her seventh-grade classmates, who have been posting negative comments about her. Recently, students at Maria’s school took cell phone photographs of her buttocks while she was walking in the hall and posted them on the “I Hate Maria” website.
Maria knows that she can talk to her parents, but she doesn’t want to worry them. With all of the stress, Maria is plagued by dark thoughts of killing herself and cannot focus on the lessons being taught in her classes.
REQUIREMENTS
Your submission must be your original work. No more than a combined total of 30% of the submission and no more than a 10% match to any one individual source can be directly quoted or closely paraphrased from sources, even if cited correctly. The originality report that is provided when you submit your task can be used as a guide.
You must use the rubric to direct the creation of your submission because it provides detailed criteria that will be used to evaluate your work. Each requirement below may be evaluated by more than one rubric aspect. The rubric aspect titles may contain hyperlinks to relevant portions of the course.
Tasks may not be submitted as cloud links, such as links to Google Docs, Google Slides, OneDrive, etc., unless specified in the task requirements. All other submissions must be file types that are uploaded and submitted as attachments (e.g., .docx, .pdf, .ppt).
A. Identify each of the following elements described in the scenario:
• Maria’s family
• Maria’s community
• Maria’s cultural background
Note: Do not make assumptions, just state the facts.
B. Discuss how you, as a public K-12 teacher, would try to help Maria in a culturally responsive, trauma-informed way by doing the following:
1. Describe one realistic action you would take to help Maria with one of the issues she is facing.
a. Justify how the one action from part B1 would effectively address the issue from part B1 in a culturally responsive and trauma-informed way, including two specific examples.
2. Discuss two ways you would involve Maria’s family in this action.
C. Discuss two specific elements of your own cultural background.
1. Discuss two examples of how your cultural background could affect the way you might respond to the issues Maria is facing in the scenario.
Note: Cultural background can include relevant demographic information such as race, or economic background. . It can also include other defining characteristics, such as family structure, styles of communication, traditions, or family and community educational norms. You are not required to include details relating to personal experience, traumatic or otherwise. Remember to use language that is not biased or makes assumptions.
D. Acknowledge sources, using in-text citations and references, for content that is quoted, paraphrased, or summarized.
E. Demonstrate professional communication in the content and presentation of your submission.
