Real-Time Conversations on Zoom

Guiding Question: What does it mean to build a culture of care and support?  
Format: Virtual panel and small group community circles 

Zoom Recording (Presentations and Fireside Chat shared with permission from speakers; breakout conversations
are not shared publicly) 

Slides for September 21, 2026

Practicing What We Teach: Building a Culture of Well-Being

In this session, we’ll battle burnout together by exploring what it means to build a culture of care, connection, and support. Expert panelists Shelley Wolfe, Tim Molina, Hayley Lochotzki, and Angie Hartley will share approaches to well-being for students and educators across elementary through post-secondary settings. They hope to spark conversations about setting healthy boundaries, cultivating human-centered connections, and processing vicarious trauma. Then, participants will have time to reflect, exchange experiences, and learn together in small groups.

This session is for educators and community leaders ready to put on their own oxygen masks first so they can better support others.

About this session's panelists

A few inspiring resources that illustrate the power of setting healthy boundaries, cultivating human-centered connections, and processing vicarious trauma.  Perhaps you have other examples to share at our next session? 

Action for Happiness (2026) 

Action for Happiness brings people together and provides practical resources such as the downloadable monthly calendar (in 22 languages) with daily tips and strategies. The community is designed to help us support each other in learning evidence-based skills for happier living, feeling a sense of belonging, and committing to personal action to create more happiness, for ourselves and others. There are currently more than 817,000 members from 193 countries. 

Focus 5: Focus Strategies and Activities for Students (2026) 

Focus 5 is a research-supported set of exercises that provides students and teachers with skills to minimize distraction and develop a greater sense of focus and awareness. The exercises range in length from one to five minutes and were derived from a collaborative partnership between the Strategic Education Research Partnership (SERP), Baltimore City Schools in Baltimore, Maryland, and the Baltimore Education Research Consortium (BERC).  The website provides access to free materials including slides, cards, and videos to share with students, colleagues, or parents.  

National Child Traumatic Stress Network (NCTSN, 2026) 

NCTSN is devoted to raising the standard of care and improving access to services for traumatized children, their families and communities throughout the United States. Their website features many resources organized by audience (e.g., families and caregivers, school personnel, youth, child welfare professionals, etc.) One example explores "Building relationships as a foundation of trauma-informed practices in schools" and shares both a framework and strategies to guide school personnel in creating sustainable trauma-informed changes in school. 

Resilient Futures (2026)

Resilient Futures is a non-profit organization that creates and guides the implementation of Trauma-Informed Programming for Schools and Youth-Serving Organizations. Their resource hub helps think about adversity and trauma through the lens of resilience, empowering educators and youth-serving professionals with knowledge of how trauma presents in children and adults, and healing-centric strategies that intercept trauma with empathy and understanding.

Role-Clarity and Boundaries for Trauma-Informed Teachers (2019) 

Findings from this study published by Alex Shevrin Venet helps teachers identify the "messy middle" between emotional detachment and over-involvement, ensuring teachers act as bridges to school counselors rather than attempting to fill the therapist role. The author, Alex Shevrin Venet (alex.venet@ccv.edu), is a faculty member at the Community College of Vermont and Antioch University New England. 

A Pedagogy of Wonder: A Spoken Word Poetic Inquiry Into the Complexities of Trauma and Teaching in TESOL (2026)

Drawing on personal and professional experiences of trauma, this spoken word poetic inquiry examines how educators navigate their own histories of pain while supporting students whose learning is shaped by diverse, often invisible, traumatic experiences. The spoken word poem titled A Pedagogy of Wonder, as performed by the author Jennifer Burton, explores the intersections of trauma, language teaching, and creative inquiry. This inquiry highlights the ethical dimensions of trauma-aware teaching, foregrounding care and the cultivation of spaces where students' agency and experiences of struggle are acknowledged. It further illuminates the often-unspoken power dynamics that structure educational practice and sustain forms of oppression within it. Ultimately, this work argues that language teaching can be a transformative practice: a landscape where trauma, creativity, and human connection meet, and where wonder guides the experiences of educators and learners.

Offline Thinking for an Online World (Free Digital Literacy and Well-Being Curriculum (2026) 

Common Sense Media developed this free, easy-to-use Digital Literacy & Well-Being Curriculum to help educators build essential critical thinking skills in their students—no technology expertise required. The curriculum is designed to focus on the topics most important for kids, tweens, and teens. It teaches them crucial skills for navigating both online and offline environments, and doesn't shy away from tough conversations—like deepfakes, AI chatbots and friendship, and cyberbullying. All with a focus on developing the critical thinking, creativity, connection, and curiosity that kids need to thrive in an increasingly digital world.