Learningandviolence.net was Jenny Horsman’s dream child (with encouragement from Judy Hofer and Elizabeth Morrish). The idea of a site to bring together everyone thinking about or struggling with the ways violence affected learning, was born from Jenny’s insistence no one should feel stupid as they tried to learn, and no educator add to feelings of shame as they become frustrated as they teach.
To bring the website into being, Jenny drew in a glorious array of partners to work from 2006 to 2011. Parkdale Project Read, Springtide Resources, and George Brown College managed grants (mostly from the Canadian Government). The National Adult Literacy Database hosted the site. These collaborators and many others gave time, energy, and developed nuance and complexity as they crafted content and created interactive, multi-media tools. In those first years Elaine Gaber-Katz sparked ideas, while Mike Kelly and Elaine Sayoko Yoneoka grew creations in Flash. In the later years Heather Lash joined Jenny, talking and writing up a storm. Together with the work and inspiration of all those named below, the site grew.
But funding became impossible to find, and the Internet and how we used it moved on. Those virtual creations of classrooms, quilts, and drawers of files that flew to meet you, though much-loved, became outdated, and too hard to search. A new site was needed. This new incarnation was re-envisaged in 2018 by Jenny Horsman and Heather Lash, with help from Kate Nonesuch and Susan Tiihonen, input from Sheri Cohen, Nadine Sookermany, and Kim Brodey, and thoughtful advice and technical expertise from Yaa Otchere.