Transforming Trauma: The School as a Healing Community
Date:
August 20 @ 8:30 am – 3:30 pm
Price:
Instructor(s):
Dave Melnick, LICSW
Event Type:
Virtual
Professional Learning Hours:
6.5
Intended Audience:
All PK-12 educators, SU/school leaders, mental health professionals, and support faculty.
Participants must attend all events:
- Event Date
- Event Date
Vermont schools have long been a hub of educational and civic activity. Yet complexities like funding concerns, racial bias, the impact of childhood trauma, and social and economic disparities – have made the work of educating our youth more challenging. In addition, our perception and understanding of some of these challenges are often antiquated and harmful. To be part of a healing community, educators today must challenge longstanding pedagogies, practices, and belief systems.
In this workshop we will begin to study the harmful effects of trauma on students, their families, and the workforce, as well as the unique, adaptive capacities people form under conditions of pain and adversity. People in pain often emerge with unrecognized skills and abilities that trauma-informed professionals must learn to see and translate.
Participants will:
- Understand the impact of trauma on students, families, and educators, with attention to both harm and adaptive survival strategies.
- Recognize the strengths, capacities, and resilience that can emerge in individuals who have experienced adversity.
- Apply trauma-informed and healing-centered frameworks to reframe student and family behaviors as forms of communication and adaptation.
- Develop new perspectives and concrete strategies for responding to challenges in ways that promote equity, empathy, and transformation.
