The Trauma-informed Equity-minded Asset-based Model (TEAM): The six R’s for social justice-oriented educators

This paper describes the Trauma-informed Equity-minded Asset-based Model (TEAM) framework for social justice-oriented educators. We draw on trauma-informed approaches to illustrate how systemic racism as systemic trauma and normative whiteness as dominant ideology are embedded in the U.S education and media institutions. From an equity-minded perspective, we critique notions such as egalitarianism, colorblind racism, neoliberal multiculturalism, and abstract liberalism. Using an asset-based model, we urge educators to avoid deficit ideologies to frame marginalized communities. The TEAM approach offers the following “Six R’s” as strategies: (1) Realizing that dominant ideologies are embedded in educational systems, (2) Recognizing the long-term effects of systemic trauma on learners from aggrieved communities, (3) Responding to trauma by emphasizing safety, trust, collaboration, peer network, agency, and voice within learning environments, (4) Resisting retraumatization within learning environments, (5) Replacing egalitarianism with equity-mindedness and (6) Reframing deficit ideology with an asset-based lens to learners.


INTRODUCTION
Historically, mainstream scholarship on education, including within media literacy, has mostly been disconnected from social justice. Taking a social justice approach to education often means challenging and disrupting the status quo, which requires new ways of thinking about practices, policies, pedagogies, and priorities. Within the media literacy context in the United States, this often means taking an explicitly antiracist lens (Dei, 1996;Calliste et al., 2000) by addressing systemic racism, which is defined as racist framing, actions, attitudes and institutions developed over centuries (Feagin, 2013). As educators, media makers, and researchers, the practices that subtly reinforce normative whiteness 1 , a phenomenon in which whiteness is considered to be the default, need to be made explicit (Reddy, 1998). Otherwise, despite the best intentions, the taken-for-granted whiteness in (re)producing curricula, scholarship, and media content will reinforce racial hierarchies and white supremacy in educational and media contexts.
Even if educators are committed to social justice, they often do not necessarily have the tools to make their media literacy curriculum and practices more raciallyinclusive. In this essay, we share a new framework called the TEAM approach (Trauma-informed, Equityminded, Asset-based Model) based on our experiences as critical media educators within the United States, where racism is woven into the fabric of most social institutions. These principles can be adapted to other contexts beyond the U.S, other topical areas beyond media literacy, and to other dominant ideologies beyond white supremacy. Issues of generational and cultural trauma are important to consider for marginalized ethnic and indigenous groups around the world, depending on the socio-political histories of intersecting axes of oppression.
The TEAM approach helps social justice-oriented educators with central strategies and guiding principles. We approach media education from an anti-racist lens which argues for recognizing race as a category of difference within media literacy practices, policies, and priorities. Although we use racism as the preliminary lens for designing this framework, we do so from an intersectional perspective that considers the intertwined structures of oppression such as racism, sexism, classism, and ableism which shape education broadly.
Critical media literacy education should not just be inclusive of multiple cultural perspectives but should be explicitly on providing learners with the tools needed to challenge, question, and ultimately prevent oppression. That is, both educators and learners need to be intentionally anti-racist in their orientation to media literacy in order to be socially-relevant, critically conscious, and inclusive.

Whiteness as the dominant ideology within the U.S education systems
Media literacy has to first contend with the whiteness of the teaching profession and the lack of attention paid to racial literacy within the U.S. educational system. Recently, there has been greater awareness about systemic racism through social movements such as the Movement for Black Lives which have motivated teachers and educators, in general, to consider issues of racial justice, equity, and culturally-inclusive pedagogies within their classrooms.
In preparing media educators to better incorporate racially-inclusive, equitable, and culture-centered teaching practices, it is first important to acknowledge the whiteness of educational and media systems. Embedded in whiteness, it is hard to notice how pervasive and ubiquitous it is across the curriculum, media texts, and pedagogical approaches (Kellner & Share, 2005). Many teachers are trained in predominantly white universities by mostly white media professors. Within this education, there is little emphasis on social justice, equity, and non-white perspectives on media literacy (Nagle, 2018). Within this framing, media literacy education has generally been understood as building digital skills and computer literacy at the individual level rather than being connected to questions of social justice, equity, or democratic practice (Druick, 2016). Within this white racial frame (Feagin, 2013), racial minority groups are either absent, invisible, or constructed in ways that preserve whiteness as "normal." Through cultural narratives, storytelling, and mediated discourses, minoritized groups too might see themselves through this biased white racial lens leading to internalized racism and unquestioning acceptance of white superiority (Feagin & Cobas, 2008). Darder & Torres (2003) discuss how even when media texts might feature communities of color, they are depicted in ways that maintain the centrality of whiteness. For instance, media narratives construct false dichotomies between the "good" and "bad" minority characters that lead to racialization, which is the use of race to construct social relations and realities. According to the communication accommodation theory (Coover, 2001) due to socialization by white-centric media discourses, actors, characters, and media personae within an Anglocentric culture, white culture, codes, language, appearance, and behaviors are more likely to be accepted, accommodated, and appreciated.
Research on media literacy has largely been informed by white researchers and by interventions among participants from Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic (WEIRD) nations (Alper et al., 2016, Henrich et al., 2010. The existing body of dominant media research typically fails to center the experiences of marginalized populations in systematic or nuanced ways (Ramasubramanian & Banjo, 2020). It is often hard for white educators and researchers from a position of privilege to recognize how their pedagogical practices and learning environments might be embedded within dominant cultures and normative whiteness.

Critical media literacy, anti-oppression, and collective healing
It is not sufficient anymore to just not be racist in learning environments. Educators should be intentional and proactive in their anti-racism efforts. This means going beyond affirmation of non-white perspectives on media literacy and inclusivity of students of color by disrupting, challenging, and interrupting the racial ideologies that sustain education and media spaces (McArthur, 2016).
A handful of scholar-activists have begun to apply a critical social justice lens to media literacy and set forth new agendas for the field of media literacy that are explicitly social justice oriented in their approach (Hobbs, 2010;Kellner & Share, 2019;Kersch & Lesley, 2017;McArthur, 2016;Mihailidis, 2014Mihailidis, , 2018Ramasubramanian, 2019;Ramasubramanian & Darzabi, 2020). For instance, Ramasubramanian & Darzabi (2020) call for the need for explicitly antioppression media literacy education that takes an intersectional approach in highlighting social justice as a key aspect of media literacy and civic engagement.
Using Baker-Bell et al's. (2017) theorization of critical media literacy as a pedagogy of healing, Kersch and Lesley (2019) propose an ethical framework of media literacy pedagogy that focuses on: "(1) multiliteracies and new technologies, (2) equity and access to technology, (3) examining multiple viewpoints and representation from the perspective of nondominant groups, (4) student-centered inquiry, (5) testimony and healing (e.g., telling one's story as part of the pedagogy), and (6) production/shared productivity and transformation (p. 40)." The framework we share through the TEAM approach incorporates explicitly anti-racist media literacy pedagogy by examining multiple viewpoints and by including trauma-informed approaches as one of the transformational tools for healing prescribed by Baker-Bell's model.
While many case studies focus on the analysis and production of counternarratives by students of color, few incorporate trauma-informed approaches. This is significant as many of these examples include awareness and analysis of potentially (re)traumatizing stereotypical media as the first step in media literacy lesson plans and projects. For example, Stanton et al. (2020) explore how Indigenous storywork is used by student researchers to communicate their culture, identity, and experiences to community members. Storywork is defined by the transfer of knowledge between knowledge carriers and other members of the community. This can be simultaneously considered a theory, methodology, and pedagogy. In this project, students are recognized as knowledge carriers. They report that student researchers felt responsible for coming to terms with societal assumptions of their identities before they could create counternarratives that defied those stereotypes. They also note the tensions between using the storywork productions as tools for collective healing and avoiding retraumatization. In another example, McArthur (2016) provides practical examples of critical media literacy practices for social activism for classroom teachers that emphasize media resistance by Black girls. They suggest including historical and potentially (re)traumatizing examples of stereotypical representations including "demeaning" images of stereotyped Blackness before the students engage in a hashtag resistance activity. While the pedagogical approaches here are explicitly anti-racist, there is a lack of trauma-informed approaches to these critical media literacy lesson plans that include potentially (re)traumatizing content.

Racism as systemic trauma within educational contexts
A growing body of research has found consistent links between experiences of racism and negative effects on mental and physical health (Alvarez et al., 2016;Harrell et al., 2003Kaholokula, 2016Schneider et al., 2000). Racial trauma refers to an emotional injury that results from direct, indirect, or perceived experiences of racial discrimination (Carter, 2007;Comas Diaz et al., 2019). It can be experienced directly, such as being called a racial slur, or can be experienced indirectly. Indirect experiences, such as witnessing a hate crime against another person, are known as secondary trauma. Importantly, perceptions of racial discrimination can also lead to trauma. Reactions to traumatic events often include shock, denial, guilt, changes in mood, poor relationship management, flashbacks, nightmares, memory loss, trouble concentrating, and depression (American Psychiatric Association, 2013;Carter, 2007).
While racial trauma can occur from a single, discrete event, such as being the victim of a crime, identity-based racism is often experienced repeatedly over one's lifetime. Examples include experiencing racial microaggressions, witnessing others face racial discrimination, and hearing oral histories of discrimination passed down from generation to generation. While the severity of the effects of trauma is often thought to be related to the brutality of a single traumatic event, it can also be determined by the length of exposure. Therefore, repeated exposure to traumatic experiences that are perceived to be more subtle can lead to profound and powerful negative effects. Exposure to chronic trauma, such as persistent exposure to racial stereotypes, racial slurs, lack of eye contact, dirty looks, and avoidance can be severely damaging. It is associated with poor mental and physical health such as low life satisfaction, work withdrawal, and physical health outcomes such as high blood pressure and lower overall health condition (Schneider et al., 2000;see Harrell et al., 2003, for review).
Systemic trauma refers to the emotional harm caused by structural racism that restricts Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) communities in terms of access to resources and opportunities. For example, during the COVID-19 pandemic, Asian Americans were often the victims of racial discrimination due to their perceived proximity to China which was amplified by news media and politicians use of racialized terms such as "The China Virus" (Li & Nicholson, 2021). There were over 2,800 reports of anti-Asian hate crimes between March and December of 2020 (Stop AAPI Hate, 2021). During the COVID-19 pandemic, Asian Americans were the victims of online and offline racial discrimination, which was exacerbated by media institutions. Nguyen and colleagues (2020) found that negative tweets referring to Asians increased by 68.4% during the COVID-19 pandemic. This rise in mediated negative attitudes towards Asians was well-documented and propagated by the news media leading to indirect experiences of racism and that was associated with lower reported levels of wellbeing and higher levels of loneliness (Quintero Johnson, et al., 2021).
Generational or historical trauma refers to trauma that is so widespread that entire communities across many generations experience this trauma collectively. For instance, with African Americans, there is a long history of forced migration, enslavement, torture, lynching, and mass incarceration. Similarly, with Native Americans and other Indigenous communities across the globe, their communities have experienced generations of trauma such as violence, propagation of disease, erasures of language and culture, genocide, forced removal, and forced assimilation into whiteness. Media institutions often play a role in constructing narratives that shift the responsibility from the perpetrator to the victim, by depicting the culture of the victim as responsible for the harm inflicted by the trauma. For example, Native Americans are often depicted in the media as lazy, uneducated, alcoholics and gamblers (Tan et al. 1997;Erhart & Hall, 2019). These media stereotypes perpetuate the idea that Native American culture is responsible for the greater risk of poverty, disease, violence and substance abuse disorder that they face, rather than generational trauma inflicted by European settlers and the U.S. government (Ehlers et al., 2013;Evans-Campbell, 2008). Media stereotypes of Native Americans, such as the "savage", the "squaw", and "the indian maiden" have been used to justify historic and contemporary oppression of Native Americans (Marubbio, 2006). The nuanced experiences of these different types of traumas and the role of media institutions in perpetuating trauma contribute to the need for critical media literacy approaches that are traumainformed.

The Trauma-informed approach to education
While the educational system is often thought of as being founded on the values of liberation and civic engagement, it is necessary to recognize that this system has historically been and currently is an active contributor to the oppression and exclusion of marginalized groups. The educational system is built on a system of oppression and has repeatedly broken the trust of marginalized populations through forced deculturalization and segregation, inequitable access to high-quality educational resources, its role in the schoolto-prison pipeline, and inequitable discipline (Blake, 2011;Meiners, 2011;Spring, 2016).
The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Association (SAMHSA, 2014) uses the 4R's of traumainformed care to guide healthcare providers. They include: (1) Realization about trauma; (2) Recognizing the signs of trauma; (3) Responding to trauma, and (4) Resisting retraumatization. These principles have begun to be applied to educational contexts. A review of the literature from 1998-2018 found that although there has been a growth of studies on trauma-informed care in schools, there has been little consensus between researchers on theoretical frameworks, methodological approaches, and operation definitions, "Seemingly, the emergence and rapid growth of trauma-informed care into the educational realm, as evidenced by these findings, has occurred with no standard, formally agreed upon terms or framework when it comes to implementing trauma-informed practices in districts and schools specifically" (Thomas et al. 2019, p. 442). Therefore, we believe that constructing a theoretical framework that applies a trauma-informed approach to media education can provide important insights in providing supportive learning environments for all learners and educators, especially those from aggrieved communities. Later in this essay we incorporate equitymindedness and asset-based framing to create the "Six R's" of the TEAM (Trauma-informed Equity-minded Asset-based Model) approach to education.
A trauma-informed approach to education takes into consideration cultural and historical factors relating to individual and collective trauma experiences such as structural and interpersonal racism (Patton, 2020). It prompts considerations for the ways in which communities, schools, and classrooms can be sites of traumatization for students, staff, faculty, and members of the community. For example, the San Francisco Unified School District engaged in a multi-year, traumainformed plan to address the school-to-prison pipeline (Dorado et al. 2016). They focused on three levels of change a) school-wide programming to address the school climate b) professional development, and c) individual interventions for students impacted by trauma. These trauma-informed approaches led to improvements in staff knowledge of trauma-sensitive practices, student learning, attendance, and a decrease in office referrals, physical aggression, and out-of-school suspensions.

Equity-mindedness: Combatting color-blind racism, liberalism & egalitarianism
Critical race theory, which developed from legal studies and the civil rights movement, (Bonilla-Silva, 2013;Delgado & Stefancic, 2001) throws light on the pervasiveness of racism within U.S. society through policies, practices, and procedures in almost all social institutions, including education. It identifies racism as not just an individually-held interpersonal attitude or prejudicial feeling but as something that manifests systematically across multiple institutions to erase, marginalize, and devalue the Other. These systemic discriminations have symbolic as well as material consequences by privileging whiteness and marginalizing non-whiteness. When applied to education as a system, it draws attention to the ways in which mainstream English and white-centric media content, language, use, and texts are often overvalued at the expense of content created by, about, or for BIPOC.
Colorblind racism is a common form of modern racial discrimination that is subtle and difficult to detect. Rather than manifest as blatant hostility, this form of contemporary racism assumes that racism was a thing of the past and that systemic racism no longer exists. It shows up through statements such as "I don't see color" or "Our institution's processes are race-neutral." This ideology assumes that all members of society have an equal opportunity to succeed in the U.S. and that we live in a meritocracy where all those who work hard can be successful. In silencing claims of systemic discrimination and placing the burden of social inequalities on marginalized groups, colorblind racism works to further support and reproduce the status quo (Bonilla-Silva, 2015). There are three aspects to colorblind racist ideology: a) minimization of the existence of systemic racism, b) a belief in abstract liberalization, and c) cultural racism. These approaches de-emphasize the role of race in contemporary social contexts by treating it as something that happened in the past without much relevance today. A failure to acknowledge how inter-minority solidarities and interminority conflicts can undermine or preserve white supremacy is another way in which considerations of race and racism are ignored, flattened, and limited within media literacy education.
Abstract liberalism refers to egalitarianism and assumptions that race is not a factor in success, or the lack thereof, in life. From this perspective, equal opportunity exists in society and all cultures and races are free to make their choices. Connecting abstract liberalism within educational contexts, it shows up as multiculturalism where the celebration or equal inclusion of all cultures is prioritized in depoliticized ways. Even while discussing issues such as critical literacy, civic participation, and community engagement, media literacy educators could perpetuate abstract liberalism and neoliberal multiculturalism. Neoliberal multiculturalism is a common approach within media education which focuses on recognizing and celebrating all cultural approaches by commodifying culture, even those that utilize white supremacist discourses (Coles, 2019;Ramasubramanian & Miles, 2018). Druick (2016) argues that the whiteness and Eurocentric focus of media literacy contributes to the neoliberal ideal of individualism, and this contributes to a "mecosystem" where citizens are encouraged to be more concerned with being individuals who contribute to the digital economy than with social justice (Mihailidis et al., 2020).

Asset-based framing: Avoiding deficit ideologies, victim blaming, & "at-risk" language
Learners from historically marginalized and stigmatized groups are often seen as personally deficient, unmotivated, underprepared, and disengaged with curricular materials. In this deficit-based approach, it is assumed that the marginalized students need to assimilate and integrate into the dominant system of education in order to succeed. Media literacy scholars have long challenged prescriptive notions of harm reduction and inoculation efforts that use deficit-based ideologies to frame learners as vulnerable and needing to be rescued from harm (Buckingham, 1998;Hobbs, 1998;Kubey, 1998). In the early 2000s, we began to see greater engagement of this body of research with students of color, immigrant children, and those from other marginalized groups (Dunlop, 2007;Scharrer & Ramasubramanian, 2015;Vargas, 2006). They called for media scholars to avoid deficit-based framing of people from marginalized groups, especially youth as "vulnerable" and "at-risk," belonging to "broken" homes, and living in "crime-infested" or "drug-infested" communities. Rather than essentializing notions of societal inequalities, they consider the ways in which marginalized students can and do resist mainstream media (Alper et al., 2016;Ramasubramanian & Banjo, 2020).
When there is a lack of support from educators and administrators, learners often experience negative stereotype threat that end up leading to self-fulfilling prophecies (Jussim & Harber, 2005). Even while recognizing systemic racism, the responsibility for addressing inequalities in the so-called "achievement gap" is placed squarely on students, their families, and their communities rather than also on the instructor, institution, or pedagogical practices. The responsibility for addressing and coping from systemic trauma is placed on marginalized communities rather than on the systems of domination. For instance, remedial measures are taken to educate marginalized students on how they can better fit into the existing educational context rather than how the educational system can do a better job of accommodating them.
Stemming from critical pedagogy, an asset-based pedagogical approach recognizes that race and culture are not "burdens" or "deficits" that need to be corrected in order to align with normative whiteness (Thomas et al. 2019). Cultural knowledge, critical analysis, and cultural content integration are strengths that are typically ignored and dismissed as deficiencies in traditional mainstream educational spaces (Lopez, 2017; Thomas et al. 2019). From this perspective, when teachers' expectations of students are improved, there is greater engagement, effort, motivation, and initiative.

A TRAUMA-INFORMED EQUITY-MINDED ASSET-BASED MODEL (TEAM) APPROACH
As we see in Figure 1, the framework for a traumainformed, equity-minded, and asset-based model (TEAM) approach to educational practice. The TEAM approach reduces the chances of (re)traumatization and maximizes the possibility of meaningful learning experiences, interventions, and social change within media literacy interventions, especially for learners from marginalized communities. By applying this model, the field of media literacy education can actively work towards healing past trauma, reducing societal inequalities, and bringing about positive transformation at the individual and societal levels. The erasures and trivialization of non-dominant perspectives can lead to avoidance, disengagement, and lack of motivation for learners from marginalized communities.

Figure 1. Key points of each of the three areas of the TEAM approach (Trauma-Informed, Equity-minded Asset-Based Model)
Therefore, educators have a responsibility to design trauma-informed media educational spaces that are inclusive, supportive, and safe for students to express their perspectives and voices. At the least, educators should avoid retraumatizing learners from marginalized groups. From an equity-minded perspective, educators should let go of notions of egalitarianism and neutrality within their classrooms by recognizing that learning environments are already political and not race-neutral. Equity-mindedness means that the educator and institution take responsibility for addressing historical inequalities in access, advancement, and outcomes for marginalized groups.
Finally, an asset-based approach recognizes that students of color are much more than their traumas. They are not deficits who need to be assimilated or "fixed." Instead, their lived experiences, cultural knowledge, critical awareness about race, and ability to synthesize lived experiences with educational materials are all assets that enrich learning for everyone. Below we discuss specific strategies from the TEAM approach that are relevant to pedagogical practices, curricular materials, and other choices.

The Six R's of the TEAM model
In the rest of this section, we integrate principles from a trauma-informed approach with insights from equity-mindedness and asset-based approaches to describe the "Six R's" of the TEAM approach": 1. Realizing that dominant ideologies are embedded in educational systems 2. Recognizing the long-term effects of systemic trauma on learners from aggrieved communities 3. Responding to trauma by emphasizing safety, trust, collaboration, peer network, agency, and voice within learning environments 4. Resisting retraumatization within learning environments 5. Replacing egalitarianism with equitymindedness. 6. Reframing deficit ideology with an asset-based lens to learners. Below, in Figure 2, we elaborate on each of the six specific strategies and recommendations that can help media literacy educators to incorporate the principles of the TEAM approach into their pedagogy and curriculum.
(1) Realizing that dominant ideologies are embedded in educational systems. The first step in this approach is to acknowledge that the media play a role in not just reflecting or mirroring the racism in society but actively constructing it. Technology and media are often assumed to be unbiased, apolitical, or neutral spaces for accessing information for all learners to express and flourish as individuals (Wajcman, 2004). However, the underlying omissions and coded ways of presenting whiteness as "natural" and "normative" make such media literacy curricula an integral part of systemic racism. We need to understand that even in racially diverse classrooms, whiteness might still be the dominant ideology in terms of curriculum, examples, case studies, and emphasis of white ways of knowing, learning, and being. There is no way to be race-neutral or to make the study of race and racism optional within media literacy education. Anti-racist approaches challenge, question, and disrupt the whiteness of media literacy education. This means asking ourselves as educators about which aspects of racial history, culture, or society are overrepresented and which are underrepresented within dominant media narratives and within media literacy curricula.
(2) Recognizing the long-term effects of systemic trauma on learners from aggrieved communities. Youth with adverse childhood experiences, burnt-out teachers, administration with inadequate resources, and staff with past traumas all interact in the educational environment which can lead to exacerbation of trauma symptoms and cycles of retraumatization. It is important for educators to be trained to identify signs of trauma within themselves and among learners. While researchers have yet to develop causal research that ties societal ills directly to historical trauma, many scholars have argued that historical trauma is one of the many factors that can be used to explain the high rates of substance abuse, violence, disease, and poverty among minoritized groups. For instance, Ehlers and colleagues (2013) found that 94% of Native American participants reported at least one of seven traumas: unexpected death, injury or assault, crime, witnessing trauma, natural disaster with loss, sexual abuse, and military combat. Historical trauma is related to substance abuse disorder, internalized racism, and severe distress (Clark et al, 1999;Duran et al., 1998;Evans-Campbell, 2008;Walls & Whitbeck, 2011). (3) Responding to trauma by emphasizing safety, trust, collaboration, peer network, agency, and voice within learning environments. Media literacy practitioners should interrogate their role in maintaining the status quo of white supremacy. They should value, affirm, and validate the experiences and voices of people of color in the classroom as well as within media texts, content creators, and audiences. They should weave racially and culturally diverse perspectives into media literacy curricula and integrate them throughout the full length of the course rather than isolate them within a single unit of study. Media literacy can be used to cope with trauma, for self-expression, building community, preserving cultural memory, raising awareness, and creating safe and brave spaces.
(a) Safety. Safety and stability are important aspects of trauma-informed approaches to learning. Beyond physical safety, emotional and social safety are also important so that learners can make mistakes without retraumatization. Creating a safe environment centers support and healing in order to foster individual and collective growth (Blitz et al., 2020). Having repetitive elements, shared rituals, and templates can provide a sense of stability, structure, and psychological safety for learners. Providing clear expectations, a structured environment and a relational approach can help educators serve as a safety net for learners from aggrieved groups. When there is a lack of a sense of safety in a learning space, there can be considerable anxiety and stress experienced by learners. Techniques such as meditation, mindfulness, grounding techniques, and sensory activities such as movement, music, and arts can help learners relax, calm themselves down, and create a psychologically healthy learning environment.
(b) Trust. Trust-building is a complex process that requires long-term solidarity, support, and collaboration. Both individual educators and educational institutions can play an active role in trustbuilding through positive reinforcement and empathetic listening. A safe, consistent, predictable, and stable learning environment lays the foundation to build trusting relationships among learners and educators. For example, instead of relying on personal experiences to design a supplemental assignment to an American history lesson that focuses on Native American perspectives, consider reaching out to local tribal educators and educational institutions to identify gaps in the current curriculum, learn more about the resources they are using, and identify opportunities to build more inclusive and trauma-informed curriculums. Building collaborative networks are the first step to long-term change and provide incredibly rich opportunities to address historical trauma, oppressive systems, and build trust.
(c) Collaboration. Collaborative learning helps build trust, create new opportunities, and place value on lived experiences. Educators can communicate to students that they are also learners, make mistakes, and are also constantly growing. When developing a curriculum, it is incredibly important to be aware of the ways that personal experiences create a frame of view or lens. By prioritizing collaboration, active listening, and dialogues in the choices that are made within the learning environment, learners with different perspectives, backgrounds, and experiences can come together to make the best use of shared resources.
(d) Peer support. Peer support consists of uniting people on equal footing who share values and work to uplift one another. The core principles of peer support are that participants choose to participate freely, the space is non-judgmental, and the values of perspectivetaking, respect, equal power, and responsibility are centered (Blanch et al., 2012). In educational settings, it can take the form of formal support groups through school counseling centers, group activities in the classroom, digital peer groups, or community-based programs. Given the rise in mediated communication, digital platforms build community online. For example, group texting platforms like Groupme enable students to form close learning communities, develop deeper peer relationships, and enhance social support (Apgar, 2020). Peer interaction and support can also be fostered through learning management systems, e.g., Canvas, by designing activities that require digital interaction such as group presentations and discussion boards. Creating ways for peers to build community with one another is especially important when students have little opportunity to build community due to large class sizes, distance learning, or lecture-based course models.
(e) Agency. Creating options and choices for learners often provides a sense of agency. Providing options for learners is especially critical if educational materials such as video clips, news stories or other media discuss materials that could trigger trauma or lead to retraumatization. Exercising choices in how, when, and with whom one participates in learning activities, assignments, and materials can help learners experience a sense of control, self-efficacy, and self-determination. These experiences are especially healing and reparative for those who have experienced long-term cultural or generational trauma. They help to strengthen trust and safety in the learning environment.
(f) Voice. Often survivors of trauma are given little opportunity to voice their own perspectives, identify concerns, and suggest solutions. In order to build a foundation for a trauma-sensitive community, educators can empower those from marginalized communities by centering their voices. For example, West and colleagues (2014) centered the voices of court-involved youth, a population that is often neglected, to further understand how to create a trauma-informed intervention for educators that led to improvements in students' learning environments. In this case, empowerment led to improvements in educator training programming, but in other settings it can also lead to increased social development, confidence, and decisionmaking (Checkoway & Richards-Schuster, 2003).
(4) Resisting retraumatization in learning environments. Educators and scholars should recognize that talking about race and racism can be challenging personally and professionally for students and teachers of media literacy, especially without adequate support, training, and tools. Educators should be aware of contemporary forms of subtle racism such as colorblind racism and abstract idealism that place the emphasis on individual rather than societal factors. Examples of this include (re)producing affirmative action versus equal opportunity narratives and asserting notions of meritocracy, individual effort, or the American Dream that subtly reinforce beliefs that if people just work hard, they can succeed in the U.S. With an understanding that technology itself does not necessarily improve educational experiences and that counter-spaces are not enough to address the trauma inflicted by mainstream media culture, scholars have begun to advocate for critical media literacy approaches and pedagogies that prioritize healing for BIPOC students in order to combat the whiteness embedded in previous media literacy practices and scholarship (Baker-Bell et al., 2017;Kersch & Lesley, 2019).
(5) Replacing egalitarianism with equitymindedness. The TEAM framework takes an equityminded perspective rather than an egalitarian approach. It is committed to un-doing historic and systemic inequalities, traumas, and exclusions by being contextsensitive, flexible, and intentional. It actively includes, listens to, and amplifies the voices and perspectives of historically marginalized and underrepresented groups. Often media literacy education, even when it engages with issues of difference, especially ethnic and racial differences, does so through the lens of multiculturalism where such difference is commodified, depoliticized, and white-washed (Ramasubramanian & Miles, 2018). Therefore, media literacy education is typically divorced from critical anti-oppression literacies. At times it unintentionally reinforces neoliberal multiculturalism, colorblind racism, and egalitarianism.
(6) Reframing deficit ideology with an asset-based lens for learners: The responsibility for trauma prevention and healing is on the systems within society that perpetuate the trauma. It is important to emphasize that learners, especially those from communities of color, are not to be viewed as personally deficient learners because of their trauma but rather as assets to the learning community as a whole. An asset-based approach to education does not consider assimilation into the mainstream white culture as the goal of education but appreciates the diversity in learning and lived experiences of all its students. It does not place the responsibility for "failures" of students of color within the white educational system such as lack of motivation, preparation, or family support on the students themselves. Instead, it considers how the systems in place might be alienating, erasing, disciplining, and silencing the voices of students of color. An asset-based approach is intentional in making space for counternarratives that challenge mainstream learning environments where the notions of an "ideal" student and teacher are static. It affirms and validates differences through inclusive practices, policies, and processes rather than using a "one-size-fits-all" approach.

CONCLUSIONS
In this paper we present the Trauma-informed Equity-minded Asset-based Model (TEAM) for social justice-oriented educators. We apply an intersectional approach to anti-racism to elaborate upon the key principles and strategies of this model. We begin by recognizing that racism as a complex, generational, and systemic trauma experienced by communities of color, including within educational and mediated spaces that needs to be reckoned with. The role of educational environments in perpetuating systemic racism, interpersonal racial microaggressions, and normative whiteness is acknowledged. Within the U.S. context in which we situate our own media literacy praxis, such anti-racism work seeks to consciously amplify the voices, perspectives, and experiences of Black, Latino/a/x, Asian, Native American, and multiracial perspectives. In doing so, it is important to avoid colorblind racism, egalitarianism, and neoliberal multiculturalism, which can end up commodifying ethnic cultures in depoliticized ways without addressing structural inequalities. Additionally, it is important to be intentional about avoiding deficit ideologies that frame learners as vulnerable and at-risk without recognizing their lived experiences as cultural knowledge. Furthermore, an asset-based approach places the responsibility for racial gaps in literacy, skills, and competencies on the system and educators rather than only on individual learners, their families, or their culture. We present the "Six R's" as strategies with concrete recommendations and practical tools for media literacy educators and practitioners committed to inclusive, just, and equitable futures. Future research could elaborate on these strategies by applying them to educators of color in historically and predominantly white spaces. We also believe that this framework has the potential to be adapted and incorporated into other contexts around the world beyond the U.S using other lenses beyond racial justice within media literacy education.