Two of the great loves of my life are teaching, and working with teachers. I am fascinated by how people, especially teachers, find their way through their own internal labyrinths of trauma and wounding, and emerge into a more loving and creative self.
I love to watch people surprise themselves and discover capacity for caring they didn’t know they had.
I love being surprised by people rediscovering something precious about themselves. I love witnessing that moment of remembering, of reconnecting with joy and wonder.
Trauma responsive teaching is a point of intervention, a way to interrupt cycles of educational harm. When combined with a philosophy, such as Emergent Strategy, it expands to offer us pathways into complexity, into closer relationship with change – tools and ways of thinking we need to create the future we want to inhabit.
If you are interested in learning more about my thinking on this, here is where I’m sharing my public work:
Writing
The book! Building a Trauma-Responsive Educational Practice: Lessons from a Corrections Classroom
Trauma Responsive Education Substack, current thinking, in public
The Galactic Cow, a podcast about visioning the future of education
Google group for people interested in occasional emails and interesting things
Media (recorded talks and interviews)
- YouTube channel (a work in process bc content creation is a *lot* of work!)
- My good friend Dr. Gerry Ebolaroza-Tunnell interviewed me for the Evolution of Aloha podcast and we had a blast!
- I gave a two-part interview on the Tea for Teaching podcast. The first session (Trauma-Responsive Practice) focused on trauma and adult learning. The second session, which includes my colleague and dear friend Bill Keizer features a discussion of teaching and learning in prison.
- Here is my interview with The Learning Project Network.
- I was invited to give a talk for the Maggie Garb inaugural lecture series titled “Trauma, Incarceration, and Ability to Learn: Rediscovering Learning as Adults“
- Here’s a conversation with a panel on youth organizing with C4Innovates
