Equity-Centered Trauma-Informed Education w/Alex Shevrin Venet

Interviews
Written By Lisa Wennerth
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We’re all experiencing trauma in some way, shape, or form, so how do we change our community to be responsive to that?

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Alex Shevrin Venet is an educator, author, and professional development facilitator based in Vermont. She teaches community college and graduate teacher education. Previously, she was a teacher and leader at an alternative therapeutic school. She is the co-founder of the Nurturing the Nurturers collective, a healing community for educators. Her first book, Equity-Centered Trauma-Informed Education, is a bestseller at W.W. Norton. She is also a long-time ungrader!

Topics include

  • How Alex’s personal background and professional experiences led to her interest in trauma-informed education

  • How Alex defines trauma in the context of her work in schools

  • How centering four “proactive priorities” can help schools move toward more equitable and trauma-informed systems and decisions

  • How the proactive priorities can be used to make ungrading more equitable, inclusive, and trauma informed

  • How teachers can collectively work to make change “at all levels of the system at the same time”

  • Why grades can be a barrier to unconditional acceptance

Other resources

Lisa Wennerth

Lisa Wennerth graduated from Kenyon College with a BA in English and Colorado State University with an MA in English Education. She has been teaching English Language Arts for 15 years at Windsor High School in Northern Colorado. She currently teaches AP Language and Composition, Ninth Grade English, AP Research, and Creative Writing. She also facilitates an online course for educators on connecting students to poetry through podcasts. She loves teaching, she loves the endless possibilities of education, and she is especially motivated by the recent shifts in education that are much more learner-centered and progress-focused. When she is not teaching, she spends time running, biking, and hiking in the Rocky Mountains with her daughter, husband, and Great Pyrenees. 

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