Supporting Work at the Intersection of Arts, Education,
Healing and Social Justice
We Support Teaching Arts Organizations
Trauma-Informed Practice Training
"I recommend Bartol’s Trauma-Informed Training not only because of what you learn from the content but also from what you learn from classmates in your cohort who come from diverse disciplines. It’s been a great environment to be in that cohort and learn from each other. "
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The Bartol Foundation offers training to organizations in trauma-informed practices for teaching artists, arts education administrators, arts education university students and faculty. Workshops range from 4 hours to a full 20-hour training based on your needs and budget. Each workshop is designed to combine the theory of how trauma affects the brain, trust and behavior with specific applications for your community or art form. The team of facilitators can meet your teaching artists, administrators, staff or faculty where they are. Our workshop offerings are listed below.
We are happy to develop a workshop to suit your specific needs. Please reach out to Mae Early, Bartol Foundation Training Coordinator, for more information.
Facilitator: Bartol Team based on availability
This session will begin with a foundation in stress, trauma, and its potential impact on individuals. 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. After a short break, 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. Finally, we will consider how social dynamics (present in both in person and remote learning) can trigger fight-flight-freeze, and what we can do in our curriculum structures and facilitation practices to account for these dynamics and create a supportive space for all. Time to process, question, and brainstorm through the use of sample tools, reflective free-writes and small group discussion will be threaded throughout the presentation to help educators connect these behavioral theories to their arts educator practice.
This session for Arts Education Administrators (e.g. program directors, education directors or executive directors in that role) will begin with an examination of the intersection between stress, safety, and the brain. We’ll use this foundation to connect some key areas of brain theory that demonstrate when the brain is – and isn’t – primed to think critically and relate to others, to what we can do in our organizational structures to offer support. We will also examine the concept of novelty as it relates to job responsibilities and relationships, and how facing new things can challenge the five basic needs often impacted by stressors. Finally, we will consider how social dynamics (present in both in person and remote work) can trigger our survival response, and what we can do in our organizational structures and culture to account for these dynamics and create a supportive relational space for all. Time to process, question, and brainstorm through the use of sample tools, reflective free-writes and group discussion will be threaded throughout the presentation to help administrators connect these behavioral theories to their workplace practices.
Lead Facilitator: Bets Charmelus
As teaching artists, we often enter traditional classrooms that are steeped in traditions and power dynamics that are not trauma-informed. This workshop is designed to unpack the historical context as to why these rituals exist and explore our own experiences in classrooms, both as students and teaching artists. Together, we will investigate how we can make our spaces trauma informed, construct language for engaging with administrators/leadership as to why trauma-informed approaches are beneficial and discuss how to uproot harmful classroom practices.
This Micro-Certification Training is designed for Arts Educators required to take relevant coursework for renewal of their teaching certificate and enhance their teaching practice. Each 15-hour course. (9 hours in class matched with 6 hours of independent creative work) yields 1 Continuing Professional Development (CPD) credit.
The training will provide an introduction to trauma-informed practices as they relate specifically to arts educators, while modeling inquiry-based, experiential, and collaborative learning strategies. The training will begin with a foundation in stress, trauma, and its potential impact on individuals. Then, we will 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 they can do as facilitators to help students engage, retain, and apply learning. We will connect the five basic needs often impacted by trauma to how an art form can both challenge and grow these areas for students. Finally, we will consider how social dynamics (can trigger fight-flight-freeze response, and what participants can do in curriculum structures and facilitation practices to account for these dynamics and create a safe space for all.
This training is arts standards aligned and provides a range of modality of resources that showcase a diversity of perspectives. 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.
Lead Facilitator: Bets Charmelus
Inviting your participants to engage with your art also asks them to take risks. This workshop digs deep into vulnerability as an essential tool in your teaching artist practice – for you and your students. After providing a foundation in the brain theory of trauma and how this affects trust, beliefs and behaviors, we will explore how being vulnerable in the classroom as a teaching artist models this behavior for your students. How can we enter our learning spaces with softness and fluidity and redefine our understanding of control? How can we hold space for our own humanity and those of our students? The session will include scenarios and resources to become a vulnerability pro! critiques. Participants will learn about active listening and giving supportive feedback.
Lead Facilitator: Candy Gonzalez
Learners experiencing feelings of shame during the learning process might not have the capacity to engage critically with new art forms or take the necessary risks to grow artistically. Like trauma, feelings of shame can lead a person to shut down or experience anxiety. In this session, the facilitator will offer multiple definitions and principles of shame from leading researchers. As a group, we will consider how shame shows up in learning spaces and how it impacts learners. Additionally, the facilitator will offer tools for unlearning shame-based teaching practices and for developing supportive learning structures.
When we enter any space, we navigate, relate, and respond to what’s happening based on the sum of our previous experiences and the full of our identity and beliefs. As theatre artists and educators, understanding how and why our brains intake information and react reflexively can help us better understand the stressors and triggers that may arise when students are performing challenging material, rehearsing high-stakes relational moments, or even exploring a new method of performance or skill. In this workshop, we will examine how our brain is built to ensure our survival, how our stress response can impact our brain’s ability to learn and create, how this influences our basic needs and our ability to relate to others, and how our stress response impacts our bodies. Then, we will explore practices that can help students and ourselves regulate and process these stressors in the moment they occur, as well as broadly over time through consistent self-care.
When it comes to writing, every student will have needs, express interests, and encounter challenges that are individualized and often connected to past experiences. Together, we will examine how research from the behavioral health community about basic needs, belief systems, and shame can provide a window into how stress, fear, and anxiety can enter into the writing process. Then, through a blend of tools, free-writes, and discussion, we will create a student-centered, trauma-sensitive approach which considers questions such as: how we invite students to engage with writing, how we can offer greater student agency when we ask students to share their writing with others, and how we build a supportive, affirming environment during feedback and reflective practices.
Lead Facilitator: Candy Gonzalez
For generations, group art critiques have been regarded as a formative learning experience for art school students. How a critique is structured or how a critique is facilitated varies greatly from school to school, classroom to classroom. With such little training available for educators to learn how to facilitate a positive and transformative critique experience, it is common for students to have negative experiences in critique spaces. In this session, participants will develop an understanding of trauma and shame, how it shows up in critique spaces and how to use trauma-informed care to facilitate group art critiques. Participants will learn about active listening and giving supportive feedback.