Saturday October 7th: Professional Development Series Kick-Off!

This dynamic Saturday session is the official kick-off to Urban Word NYC's monthly #UWPPD professional development series. The #UWPPD series showcases cutting edge practices in critical literacy, culturally responsive pedagogy and arts education, and we're honored to open this season spotlighting Geoff Kagan-Trenchard and Caroline Harvey's powerful work around trauma-response in classroom spaces, and what it means to holistically support students as they write into painful places.

Session Description: Trauma In The Classroom

While creative writing has the potential to help students understand and work with the traumas they’ve experienced, it also has the potential to open old wounds, and sometimes create new ones. We will be examining the external sources of trauma and its pervasive effect on young people. We’ll look at the neurological and psychological effects of trauma, and how writing and performing work factors into those systems.

Driven both by the dissemination of vital information and classroom exercises, the goal of this session is to begin a discussion on how teachers, artists and youth-workers can better support young people as they speak their truths, and to connect those professionals to appropriate resources. Further, this session will work to problemetize and personalize the notion of "safer spaces" for students before, during, and after they share their stories in classrooms, and will also introduce a collection of restorative practices for educators themselves to integrate into their own teaching and working lives.

Learn more about lawyer, educator and writer Geoff Kagan-Trenchard. Learn more about poet and activist, Caroline Harvey.