Book Review: Becoming an Everyday Changemaker: Healing and Justice at School

I’m so grateful for the work Alex Shevrin Venet has done and the positive impact it has had on my teaching and my life. I read and loved Equity Centered Trauma Informed Instruction, and was fortunate to be part of her Nurturing the Nurturers online space. I’m extremely aware of how trauma impacts how I move through the world, and I’ve read extensively to both understand trauma and work toward healing. In Becoming an Everyday Changemaker, Venet gives one of the best explanations of trauma I’ve ever read and provides methods for and examples of how to make positive changes in educational systems in trauma informed ways. It has always been obvious to me that my own trauma shows up in how I navigate situations in my classroom and at school in general, and now I have a deeper understanding of how I can approach those situations in ways that are healthier for myself and those around me. There are also valuable ideas I can incorporate into my teaching and classroom management, especially when I address binary thinking and introduce both/and. Most importantly, I value any text that encourages slowing down. This is something I’m working on in every aspect of my life, and I need to practice it more in my classroom. I’ll be sitting with this book as I begin to envision what I want my classroom environment to look like, and remembering what I’ve learned as I navigate a school year that’s sure to be full of changes.

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