Alexs Pate is a Minnesota-based best-selling novelist who created The Innocent Classroom, a series of workshops that train teachers to identify and build on each child’s “good”. His goal is to free children of color from racial bias and stereotyped expectations.
While strengths-based approaches are not new in education, Mr. Pate’s curriculum focuses specifically on restoring children’s innocence by addressing the guilt that children of color feel when they experience racism in school. It also echoes a successful version of wraparound services used with youth in juvenile corrections programs, as currently practiced by Wraparound Milwaukee, where counselors are trained to build on the unique strengths of each child.
Mr. Pate’s book, also ‘The Innocent Classroom’, describes a curriculum that could work in child welfare for guardians ad litem, foster parents, and caseworkers who have longer term relationships with children.
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