From Punk Love to Compa Love: A Pedagogical Paradigm to Intervene on Trauma

Emerging research shows that the number of young people experiencing trauma is alarmingly high and continuously increasing. In the midst of such pervasive trauma, teachers generally—and particularly in urban schools—must be equipped with a language and paradigm that prepares them to intervene in the traumatic stressors impacting the lives of students. Recent educational and trauma—informed scholarship suggest that in order for young people to heal from trauma and develop higher levels of resiliency, they must be around loving adults. By drawing from research that spans the fields of public health, psychiatry, psychotherapy, and education, as well as literature about love, critical pedagogy, and culturally sustaining pedagogies, I theorize and illustrate how Compa Love is a framework that enables us to practice love as an intervention to trauma within the context of urban classrooms.