Join me! Trauma-Informed Care: An Introduction for Libraries

UPDATE 9/25/2020: The class is now full! Here goes nothing...

Trauma-Informed Care: An Introduction for Libraries, Oct 5-Nov 15 through UW-Madison iSchool.

 So. Things are interesting, to say the least.

For instance, Larry attends Zoom meetings.

When I last taught "Trauma-Informed Care: An Introduction for Libraries," one of my main objectives was to build empathy for people with backgrounds in trauma through sharing real-life experiences as myself, a person with a brain rewired to expect stress due to trauma. The course was approached with the assumption that there would be a mix of people who would see themselves in the content, people who had some familiarity with the content, and people who possibly needed some convincing that trauma isn't just some buzzword or excuse.

Well, times have changed since *checks post date* last September. My April 30 webinar on trauma responses during a pandemic has been viewed over THREE THOUSAND times. Only like 5 of those were my parents (Twenty, tops). Every day there's new evidence of a population whose brains are overflowing with stress and are acting on ill-planned, counter-intuitive, and counterproductive attempts at self-preservation (to be clear, I'm talking about people who ignore reasonable health guidelines and/or are violent about their need for a haircut, for instance; and not people protesting police brutality). Amid this backdrop public-facing service workers are being met with vitriol for trying to keep themselves and the community safe.

The need for a commitment to trauma-informed principles is, I'd say, pretty clear.

My course on this topic is not the do-all-end-all in healing the world, but it can help you and your colleagues approach work in a way that is helpful for everyone (including yourselves).

Topics I'll cover include:

-What “trauma-informed” means in a library context

-Toxic stress and the brain, and what that means for our work interactions  

-Applying trauma-informed principles to library work

-The importance of workforce wellness in a Trauma-Informed approach

-An introduction to the concepts of historical trauma and institutional oppression 

The class runs October 5-November 15. Sign up by September 21 for a 10% discount!

Like my past, well-reviewed courses, this course is designed to have an extremely reasonable workload and will be a mix of reflection, action, and tips you can use right away. The class is asynchronous, which means we won't be meeting live and you can engage with each week's content when you can. Each week there will be one or two discussion questions. There will be final project that will consist of anything that will help you going forward (a presentation to your board, a letter to your director, a blue print, something else? It's up to you!).

As always with my courses, you're welcome to download all the material to share among others in your library, so I hope you will see this as a good investment. Trauma-Informed Care: An Introduction for Libraries is steeped in my lived experience and so may be different from other training you may have gotten about these concepts.

NOTE: While this course has been well-reviewed by students who have backgrounds in trauma, I'm in the process of updating the content some to reflect the collective trauma of the pandemic. While I do have some tips that work for me peppered in the content, this course is not a therapy support group and I am not a medical professional. This course can give you some insight into what might be going on with your brain/central nervous system right now, but it is not a cure for your stress. I say this not to be mean but to manage expectations. If you are looking for more things like mindfulness practices, I'd like to suggest you look into activities related to dialectical behavioral therapy. It covers mindfulness as well as interpersonal effectiveness, distress tolerance, and emotional regulation.

Ready to register? Sign up here.

Want to read more about my take on trauma-informed care? Click here to check out the "trauma" tag.