About the Teaching Forward Fellowship
Today’s students face rising levels of chronic stress, making classrooms more difficult to manage and leading to lasting academic and emotional challenges. Furthermore, Wisconsin has seen a growing diversity in student populations, including an increase in refugee and immigrant arrivals (Refugee Processing Center, 2024). While educators require specialized training to support students experiencing displacement, trauma, and educational gaps, they also need broader frameworks that enhance teaching practices for all learners. The Teaching Forward Fellowship equips middle school educators in Wisconsin with tools to foster inclusive, trauma-informed classrooms that benefit students of all backgrounds, ensuring they feel valued, supported, and engaged in their education.
This fellowship connects teachers with experts in international studies, educational policy, community leadership, and trauma-informed pedagogy, strengthening their ability to create welcoming and effective learning environments for every student. This project leverages the existing outreach work of the Institute for Regional and International Studies National Resource Center (IRIS NRC) and the Center for South Asia (CSA), as well as strong relationships between project directors and educators across the state, and long-running partnerships with the WI Department of Public Instruction, the WI Council for Social Studies, the WI Association for Foreign Language Teachers.
Participants will gain deeper knowledge of their students’ personal experiences and cultural histories, and the tools to build capacity and resilience in addressing trauma. Moving beyond culturally responsive teaching, this fellowship will also incorporate culturally resilient pedagogy frameworks, focusing on empowering all students to leverage their cultural identities as a source of strength, laying a foundation for long-term academic success and personal growth.
The Teaching Forward Fellowship enables educators to:
● Foster Cultural Knowledge for All Students: Using proven frameworks like Cultivating Genius, fellows will learn how to recognize, affirm, and integrate students’ personal identities into their teaching, making learning more relevant and empowering. These approaches directly align with Wisconsin’s Act 266 (teaching Hmong American & Asian American histories), Act 30 (genocide education), and Act 31 (teaching American Indian, Black, and Hispanic histories), while deepening student connection to the curriculum.
● Promote Culturally Resilient Pedagogy Across Disciplines: Moving beyond culturally responsive pedagogy, this fellowship will shift educators’ focus towards culturally resilient teaching. This concept, as outlined by Panter-Brick (2015), emphasizes how cultural strengths can support student success. By connecting academic content to students’ cultural contexts, culturally responsive pedagogy makes learning more relevant and engaging, thereby improving overall academic outcomes for the whole student body.
● Develop Trauma-Informed Practices That Benefit Every Student: Educators will gain tools to create trauma-informed, safe, and supportive learning environments. This includes integrating strategies from mental health professionals working with traumatized communities. This approach is learner-centered, emphasizing the needs of all students, not just those who have experienced trauma.
● Enhance Inclusive Curriculum Development for Greater Engagement: Educators will develop lesson plans that reflect the lived experiences of their students, incorporating the enhanced pedagogical methods learned through the fellowship. These curricula will move from a culturally responsive approach — affirming and celebrating cultural identities — to a culturally resilient framework that empowers students to leverage their strengths.
● Strengthen Educator Well-Being and Leadership for Sustainable Growth: The fellowship provides structured communities of practice where teachers exchange strategies to improve classroom management, address student needs, and mitigate burnout. These networks support long-term educator success while enhancing school-wide learning environments.