Teachers of all shapes and sizes are welcome at Jenny Horseman’s professional development workshop on Wednesday, March 18 in Jasper, which will discuss the impact of violence on a person’s ability to learn.

Horseman, who is author of the book Too Scared To Learn, said she hopes to get a range of practitioners to her workshops that aim to demonstrate what people can do “to support other people’s learning and our own learning.”

“Violence can have a very profound affect on people’s abilities to learn,” she said adding that it doesn’t have to get in the way of a person’s learning if practitioners are given the right tools with which to teach.

Violence takes on a plethora of definitions and levels, according to Horseman, who said she doesn’t teach people how to single out who has experienced violence but instead set up the learning process to overcome any possible impacts.

“If you think about the statistics about violence, even one or two forms of violence, it’s pretty clear that you can’t run a class and not have plenty of people who’ve been through pretty major violence,” she said.

“Rather than waiting for problems, part of what I do is teach about how we can do everything teach, run the institution, everything in a way that acknowledges that violence affects learning.”

“What I’ve really come to see is that in every aspect, how we design programs as well as how we teach in the classroom, how we assess, every aspect of the education endeavour, if we take account of how violence affects learning and run things differently then we support everyone to learn,” she said.

Horseman prides herself on the practical and fun nature of her workshops that draw on a little research to “support the argument” but her main focus is on “how do we make a difference? how do we support learning?” by giving participants “lots of practical tools about what we can do.”

For more information or to register, call 780-852-4418.