TREE Director Brittany Ray has been spending a lot of time lately leading professional development sessions about trauma-informed education at schools. This outreach gives her the opportunity to meet and connect with a variety of people and hear their reactions to TREE’s work. While there are many examples of how TREE’s work today is rooted in folk school values, one particular shared value has stood out to Brittany recently: the importance of grassroots, responsive, cooperative learning environments that support lifelong learners.
The “figure it out together” cooperative approach has been an important part of TREE’s work. In Milbridge, for example, TREE has emphasized working with the existing assets of the community through hiring Laura Thomas, a local educator who had been working in the school district for many years prior to joining TREE as a school Resource Coach, and partnering with other local organizations like Maine Outdoor School and the Women’s Health Resource Library.
Trauma-informed education can only happen, Brittany said, “when adults come to the table with a belief that they don’t know all the answers, that they don’t have all the tools, and that there’s always room to learn more and new approaches to try.” There is no prescriptive formula for rolling out a trauma-informed learning environment in schools; it has to come from a baseline shared knowledge about what being trauma-informed means and the belief that we are all lifelong learners. Brittany said, “I like the fact that I regularly hear from participants of my professional development sessions that they do not think we’re trying to ‘fix them,’ but instead that we are figuring it out together.” Local people and resources cooperatively seeking solutions to local needs from the ground up has been core to the folk school movement since the 1800’s and remains core to TREE’s approach.
Jonesport 5th and 1st graders have been each other’s “buddies” during Forest Fridays with our partner Maine Outdoor School this fall. Social-emotional learning happens naturally when students are encouraged to work together and contribute to the learning environment.
Folk School Profile: Pine Mountain Settlement School, Kentucky
Founding Year: 1913
Mission: To enrich people and enhance lives through Appalachian place-based education for all ages.
What they do today: They have a farm, which helps them feed their community, offer environmental education programs for children to learn about stewarding natural resources, and they offer programs rooted in mountain tradition, such as pottery, weaving, storytelling, and naturalist studies.