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“Trauma is a lens, not a label.”
– Alex Shevrin Venet
What’s different about this workshop series?
It is clear that trauma-informed practices are no longer optional in education. We know that we cannot fulfill our core mission as educators without creating supportive and healing-centered learning environments for all students. Yet too often, educators receive narrow or didactic trauma training without opportunities to engage in ongoing collective inquiry about the profound implications of the research on practice, pedagogy, and policy. A peripheral commitment to trauma-informed practice is not only inadequate to address the needs of our students, it can actually cause further harm. Educators deserve opportunities to bring a trauma-informed lens to every aspect of our work and get support for systems change.
This four session interactive workshop series will position ACEs research and the neurobiology of stress as a starting point for our inquiry, not the finish line. Inquiry-based exploration, coupled with two live streamed sessions with the nation’s leading thought leaders and practitioners in the field, will help us explore the questions “What now?” and “What next?” We will identify specific ways to move our practice forward as we work to center the humanity of all and create systems that support everyone.
Workshop series forecast:
Trauma is a Lens: Key Shifts in Trauma-Informed Education
In this session, we will explore the question “Where do we go from ACEs?” We will consider key shifts in trauma-informed education that will bring our engagement and work to the next level. We will explore questions like, why is equity work central to trauma-informed education? Why is it important to avoid labels and a deficit mindset? What does it mean to shift from just an informed mindset to actual system change?
Curriculum, Instruction, and Assessment: Centering Students’ Histories, Identities, and Strengths
In this session, we will explore the ways that the inclusion (and/or exclusion) of curriculum topics can help and/or hinder our ability to create supporting learning environments for all. We will consider ways that our grading and assessment practices support or undermine our efforts.
Classroom Management and School Policies: Interrupting Cycles of Stress and Trauma
In this session, we will grapple with the questions, why is it so important to communicate “unconditional positive regard” to all students? How does this translate into concrete and actionable strategies that might transform the way we do school “discipline”?
Transforming Systems For Healing and Learning
In this session, we commit to creating supportive, healing-centered spaces for all students and staff. As we move forward in our own community and school contexts, how do we begin to make systems changes?