Trauma and Learning: What do we know? What can we learn?

1. Trauma and Learning: What do we know? What can we learn? on the screen: women, learning and violence NIFL fellowship, 1999-2000 Janet Isserlis

2. goals of this workshop: • to share knowledge, experience, and understandings of effective ways of working with adults with limited literacy • to explore classroom approaches designed to accommodate a range of learning needs,strengths, and circumstances, with a particular focus on immigrants and refugees with low literacy. • review research on and strategies for ensuring the development of safe spaces for learning • move our practice forward to support teaching and learning for all

3. Who’s here? What do we know? • Who we are, experience with/interest in trauma and learning • Questions/issues to raise • Rationale: why consider impacts of violence and trauma? • Cautions/considerations for the group

4. brief background - initial thinking/learning Jenny Horsman, Something in my Mind Besides the Everyday http://www.jennyhorsman.com CCLOW - Making Connections: Literacy and EAL from a Feminist Perspective http://www.nald.ca/fulltext/ Making_C/Cover.htm

5. Why ask the question? -- Goals of On the Screen:To increase awareness in order to make lasting impact[s] on teaching and learning To examine impacts of trauma and violence on adult learning To strengthen practice, including: - material development; - teaching/learning approaches; - program design and policy

6. What did we do? 10 practitioners, 10 months Application process - to clarify expectations Monthly meetings Ongoing reflection/correspondence Workshops for participants, including : - DV providers - Richard Hoffman, Half the House - Jenny Horsman, Too Scared To Learn: Women, Violence and Education

7. additional activities and resources - trauma counselor on call - collective learning, face-to-face, online and through ongoing research - workshops facilitated for learners and adult literacy workers beyond participant cohort - intergenerational literacy project at shelter - ongoing reflection, journal writing, list serv

8. So what? - work/collaboration/thinking across disciplines • child protective workers, case managers (within and beyond adult education) • awareness of shared constituency - increased awareness system-wide - policy shifts, especially recently - (e.g. through persistence studies)

9. and then? 8 years later Where are we now?

10. what gets in the way of learning and teaching? - violence - poverty - racism - dis/abilities - immigration status/history - health and mental health - gender - sexual orientation - un/employment - housing/food security - religion - economic status

11. Ongoing steps • Infusing/integrating awareness into all aspects of adult literacy work • Recognizing ‘school privilege’ with adult learners, practitioners and policy makers • other ideas: • ________________________________ • ________________________________ • ________________________________

12. To learn more: theory, life practice Inger Agger, The Blue Room: Trauma and Testimony Among Refugee Women: A Psycho- Social Exploration Tanya Lewis, Living Beside: Performing Normal After Incest Memories Return http://www.brown.edu/lrri/screenref.html

13. To learn more: classroom practice On the Screen: http://www.brown.edu/lrri/screen.html Learning and Violence Dreams of a different world: towards ending violence and inequalityhttp://www.learningandviolence.net/dreams.htm World Education, Women, Violence, and Adult Education Project http://www.worlded.org/docs/TakeOnTheChallenge.pdf   contact: janet_isserlis@brown.edu