Building a Facilitator Community to Create a Microcredential in Trauma-Informed/Sensitive Pedagogies and Practices in Support of Educator and Student Mental Health
January 14, 2022
Project Dates: January – September 2022
Context: Saskatchewan’s Ministry of Education has named mental health and well-being as a pillar in both their interim and 10-year Education Plans. Findings from the University of Regina’s Drs. Jerome Cranston and Nathalie Reid’s research Understanding Emotional Impacts of COVID-19 on Teachers, Administrators, and Professional School Staff highlights educators’ repeated requests for support in relation to trauma-informed/sensitive ways of being in order to support themselves and their students. In an article entitled The Downstream Effects of Teacher Well-Being Programs: Improvements in Teachers’ Stress, Cognition and Well-Being Benefit Their Students, Carroll et al., (2021) found that not only did participating in the 8-week stress reduction intervention decrease the teachers’ distress and improve their self-reported well-being and commitments to their jobs, it also correlated with increases in academic self-perception in those teachers’ students, which suggests important downstream benefits for students when teachers are supported and trained. To extend these findings, the Child Trauma Research Centre and Saskatchewan Teachers’ Federation Professional Learning have partnered to create a Saskatchewan-based and delivered micro-credential in trauma-informed/sensitive pedagogies and practices through the shaping of a knowledge mobilization group which we are calling a Facilitator Community.
Project Purpose: To translate and mobilize Indigenous and non-Indigenous trauma-informed/sensitive knowledge and experience in a creative and accessible way with practical implications to support the mental health of students and educators in the province of Saskatchewan.
Partner(s): Saskatchewan Teachers’ Federation, Professional Learning
