"Unhealed trauma acts like a rock thrown into a pond; it causes ripples that move outward, affecting many other bodies over time. After months or years, unhealed trauma can appear to become part of someone's personality. Over even longer periods of time, as it is passed on and gets compounded through other bodies in a household, it can become a family norm. And if it gets transmitted and compounded through multiple families and generations, it can start to look like culture."
- Resmaa Menakem, My Grandmother's Hands: Racialized Trauma and Pathway too Healing Our Hearts and Bodies
According to the National Task Force on Children Exposed to Violence, “of the 76 million children in the US, an estimated 46 million are exposed to violence, crime, and abuse on an annual basis."
"Recent neurobiological, epigenetics, and psychological studies have shown that traumatic experiences in childhood can diminish concentration, memory, and the organizational and language abilities children need to succeed in school."
- Trauma & Learning Policy Initiative
Why Trauma Literacy Now?
Among many things, the global pandemic exposed and amplified inequality and oppression. As many traumas of racism continue to manifest, it is crucial that we create an understanding of how we got here as well as how to respond in ways that actually promote healing in all of our communities. Additionally, we have been experiencing the loss of people and things we love, and the constant uncertainty creates high levels of stress. High levels of stress over time can heighten existing trauma and limit our ability to choose how we wish to respond to the people and world around us.
We recognize that as parents, teachers, leaders and community members, you want your children to be able to learn. You want children to succeed. You want young people to thrive.
We understand the ways in which trauma - biographical, generational, and collective - impacts our children’s ability to learn and express their full identity.
Trauma Literacy provides tools, resources and training to help parents, educators and community leaders navigate and respond compassionately and effectively to trauma so everyone has the opportunity to learn, succeed and thrive.
What is Trauma Literacy?
"Trauma literacy" is the ability to respond in healing and regenerative ways to behaviors and circumstances rooted in trauma. "Trauma literacy," much like language literacy, enables people to understand one another and themselves and take responsibility for their actions and their circumstances. We know that without trauma literacy, language literacy and learning can be limited along with the potential of individuals and the collective of humanity.
Our Promise
We provide multi-tiered consulting and training for educators and school leaders which transforms hopeless overwhelm into informed resourcefulness.
We have taken the content we've shared with schools over years and a created public course and practice groups in order to share more broadly and to support parents and community leaders who are taking an essential role in partnering with schools to educate children in these times.
We combine 15 years of classroom teaching experience with techniques based in neuroscience, somatic psychology, and coaching to help school educators and leaders identify and overcome everyday obstacles in their learning communities.
For educators, we provide training to enhance behavioral support, curriculum development with a focus on project-based, relevant learning opportunities, performance assessment, literacy, differentiated instruction, and arts integration.
For leaders, we help identify problems of practice and then facilitate a design process to refine vision, engage data-driven inquiry, cultivate the practice of listening, and engage community authentically.
Trauma Literacy builds bridges between parents and children, teachers and students, and leaders and community members so that everyone can cultivate more safety, resilience, and ability to learn.
We understand schools, organizations and communities have unique needs.
What’s the first step towards becoming more trauma literate?
Contact us for an initial phone assessment.
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