Introduction

For three years, I worked with the Write to Learn and Writenet projects¹⁴ in Camrose, Alberta. Our mandate was to promote the use of personal writing in literacy programming. An important part of the work we did was traveling around Alberta and delivering Writing Out Loud (Morgan, 1999) workshops to literacy programs, education conferences and colleges. During these workshops, we used various prompts to invite participants to write personal stories and to share them, safely, with the group. As a new facilitator, I was surprised that many of the stories were about sadness, insecurity and fear. People would write about their complicated and stressful lives. It also became clear that many of our participants, whether Adult Basic Education (ABE) students or college professors, had experiences of violence.

In these workshops, I acted as a co-facilitator to Deborah Morgan, who coordinated the Write to Learn and Writenet Projects. Deborah is an experienced facilitator who handled emotional participants and disclosures of abuse gently and constructively. I was thankful for her skill and happy to have someone else deal with these uncomfortable situations.

Through my work with these writing projects, I was introduced to Jenny Horsman's work about the importance of recognizing and discussing that violence can affect the way people learn and participate in society. While attending one of Jenny's workshops in Edmonton, I became aware of the Violence and Learning: Taking Action (VALTA) Project and decided to become involved.

The VALTA Project offered me a unique opportunity. I would have the chance to learn about the issues surrounding violence and learning along with a group of other interested people. This learning would be both academic (which I was comfortable with) and holistic (which I was curious about). After we had learned about some of the impacts that violence has on learning and some alternative ways to approach learning and teaching, we would have a chance to step out of our comfort zone and apply our learning to our practice.

This learning opportunity attracted me not only because it was applicable to my work, but because it felt safe. I was always afraid that someone would disclose issues of violence or become very emotional during our writing workshops. What would I do? What would the participants want me to do? I was a good fair-weather facilitator. What would I do in a storm? The VALTA Project would help me learn more and the Changing Practices project would help me apply it. Most importantly, this would all be accomplished in the safety of a group of like-minded practitioners.