Target Audience: Anyone in the PK-12 educational community interested in gaining understanding of trauma and traumatic stress. Ideally teams of supervisory union/district/school leaders, educators, mental health professionals and support faculty will attend together.

In this workshop, participants will study the harmful effects of trauma on students and on the workforce, the premises for trauma-informed practices, and the core capacities necessary to successfully address post-traumatic stress. As schools reckon with the reality that trauma is a public health crisis, we begin to carefully examine the ways that our school communities are impacted by stress, adversity, and suffering. When we understand the impact of stress and traumatic stress and recognize how it affects our performance across multiple domains, we begin to transform trauma. When resilience and well-being are seen largely as relational skills and not individual enterprises, then we begin to transform trauma. And when we purpose our knowledge of equity, neurobiology, attachment and recovery for action and social justice, we transform trauma. Trauma work - whether in schools, mental health agencies or families - is relational work, which requires intensity, intimacy, and the capacity to embrace complexity thinking (e.g., the contradictions that exist in serving youth exposed to trauma). Trauma-informed school communities are at the epicenter of innovation and best practice. They strive to meet the needs of their students, families, staff, and leadership by embracing equitable, just, and trauma-informed practices. You will receive the Zoom link in a confirmation email a few days before the workshop.