This training will provide an introduction to trauma-informed practices as they relate specifically to arts educators.

 

1. The training will begin with a foundation in stress, trauma, and its potential impact on individuals.

2. Then, we'll explore how stress and trauma connect to some key areas of brain theory that demonstrate when the brain is - and isn't - primed to learn, and what we can do as facilitators to help our students engage, retain, and apply learning.

3. We will connect the five basic needs often impacted by trauma to how our art form can both challenge and grow these areas for our students.

4. Finally, we will consider how social dynamics (present in both in person and remote learning) can trigger fight-flight-freeze response, and what we can do in our curriculum structures and facilitation practices to account for these dynamics and create a safe space for all.

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Time to process, question, and brainstorm using sample tools, reflective free-writes and small group discussion will be threaded throughout the presentation to help arts educators connect these behavioral theories to their arts educator practice.

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Facilitator Bio

Candy Alexandra González is a Little Havana and Philadelphia-based multidisciplinary visual artist, poet, and trauma-competent art educator Candy received their MFA in Book Arts + Printmaking from the University of the Arts in 2017. Since graduating, they have been a 40th Street Artist-in-Residence in West Philadelphia, a West Bay View Fellow at Dieu Donné in Brooklyn, NY, the 2021 Linda Lee Alter Fellow for the DaVinci Art Alliance and the 2024-2025 Leeway x Fleisher Artist in Residence. Their visual art and poetry practice is rooted in the liberation of fat, brown, immigrant, queer and trans people. Candy is currently an Art + Art Education doctoral student at Teachers College, Columbia University.