June 6 @ 12:00 pm - 1:30 pm
A humanizing approach to educating youth considers opportunities for students to process and heal from individual and collective traumas by telling their story. Research suggests that expressive writing has demonstrated benefits such as decreased stress and depression as well as an increase in resilience. When given multiple entry points to discussing and processing mentally and physically painful events, young people can turn their pain into power, shining light toward a healed future where they use their ways of knowing to be agents of change in their community. The 2023 Illinois Teacher of the Year will share her experience working with young people in an alternative school setting to help them process their lived experiences through poetry of witness and oral storytelling methods in the classroom.
 Funded by the AREA 3 SEL Hub Grant
