Exploring Learning

Critical (Non-Fiction): Reading/Writing

As I, Jenny Horsman, will be taking the lead to introduce content about the impact of violence on learning and have written or co-written many of the materials we will use during this course, I want to introduce the materials in a personal way. I hope to give you a bit of context about the materials to pique your interest! I started my journey to learn more about the impact of violence on learning when I was leading a women's group. One of the students said, "Things happen to children that shouldn't"—and then called me the next day to apologize. That interaction began many years of tutoring together, and I have been focussing on this issue since then. It became my full time preoccupation in 1996 when I got a research grant to learn more about the issues.

As you prepare for the workshop please think about YOUR journey so far on this issue. You might want to write notes about this, free write, draw, chart or just think. We will spend some time in the workshop talking about our journeys to this point. Think carefully about what you might want to share, what you are not ready to share yet, and what influences your choices. You might think about your experiences as a teacher and a learner, your reading and the thinking you have done about the issue.

My journey continued as I travelled from coast to coast and up to the north of Canada to learn what therapists, counsellors, literacy learners and workers knew about the impact of violence on learning. I led online conversations and many faceto- face workshops, and read everything I could find. I tried to make sense of everything I learned and wrote about it in the book, Too Scared to Learn. During this course, you will be asked to read most of that book as a starting point for our work of developing our collective thinking further.

Please read Chapter 2 for the first workshop, as we will use it as the basis for a discussion about violence. You might also choose to read Chapter 3 to get you thinking about the range of violence present in the literacy classroom.

Early in 1999 I met staff from World Education, an organization based in Boston, which supports literacy work in New England. I was very pleased to learn that they wanted to design a project on violence and learning. Much to their surprise they got funding. For the next three years, I worked with Elizabeth Morrish, Judy Hofer and staff from six literacy programs in New England to explore in depth the impact of violence on learning and to look at what programs can do to support learning. We are just finishing up a source book from that project. You will be reading that manual as well so that you can build on what we learned during that project instead of reinventing the wheel! You'll get the completed book later in the course, but for now you have a photocopy. I hope you can bear with it.