Education is common thread that's run through Victoria Brackins' life

Aug. 9—ALBANY — She's an author, a businesswoman, a minister, a facilitator, a teacher and a survivor. There's one thing Victoria Brackins is not, though.

"I've been through too much in my life to be average," said Brackins, who heads up the Trauma Training University series of roundtables that helps young adults learn to deal with Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) so that their futures are not overwhelmed by their pasts.

"I grew up in trauma," the Albany native said. "I grew up in the age of crack cocaine, saw my mother succumb to it, and my siblings and I spent a lot of our childhood homeless. We'd often go days with no food.

"But I was too strong an individual to let those ACEs determine who and what I could become. I felt, and I have shown, that I can overcome any test that confronts me."

With no father around and a mother strung out much of her life on crack, Brackins found a safe haven in the schools she attended and received the necessities of life from an aunt who "used money she didn't have to make sure I looked the best I could."

"From that," Brackins said, "I gained a measure of self-respect."

Brackins was attracted to business as a young adult, and she studied economics at Spellman College before discovering, in the midst of her junior year, that she had a desire to teach.

"I was told I couldn't change my major that late in the game, so I started taking education classes in addition to my business classes," she said.

Brackins worked for a year at a bank before the urge to teach got too strong to ignore. She sought a position as a long-term substitute in the Dougherty County School System, but after interviewing with the system, administrators encouraged to apply for a full-time job. She did and soon found herself teaching at Albany High School.

"It was there I saw so much of the poverty I grew up in," Brackins said. "I saw kids who were hungry, so I incorporated food into my lessons. It was a way I could help meet needs without making anyone feel bad about it."

Brackins taught at Albany High for 13 years, until the school system decided to shut AHS down and incorporate its students and faculty into other schools within the system. Brackins, whose first child was due at the time, decided not to go back to the school system, but they encouraged her to stay on for another half-year, assuring her they would create a permanent position for her.

Brackins eventually left the local system, and after a period of raising her child, "grew a little stir crazy." She eventually took a position with Turner Job Corps Center as evening studies coordinator, but after a brief period she "decided to put my energy into a greater calling."

The author of seven books decided to take what she'd experienced and written to the public, and she teamed with the Georgia Center for Child Advocacy to use her Trauma Training University to help individuals traumatized early in their lives by violence, hunger, abuse and other calamities start their path toward overcoming such adversity.

"Trauma-informed and trauma-responsive schools can, and do, experience achievement and social well-being increasing substantially in their schools and communities," Brackins said. "It is being done in high-poverty districts and in the light of pandemic fears and woes. I know because I've helped hundreds of people and many counties make it happen."

Brackins is teaming with such community organizations as United Way, Boys and Girls Clubs, Head Start, child development centers, Aspire and the Albany Housing Authority to bring her Trauma Training University to young adults, and she is enlisting such local businesses as Harvest Moon and Q's Cakes to enhance the experience.

The first of several planned TTU series will kick off this month.

"There's a common thread that runs through everything I do," Brackins said. "No matter where I've been or where I'm going, teaching — education — has been a part of it. I'm a minister, but I'm a teacher. I'll always be a teacher.

"I'm where I am now because I felt a greater calling, an opportunity to make a greater impact. This is dear to my heart. Everything I've done in my life has led me to this."

For more information about Brackins' Trauma Training University of Trauma Talks, contact her at vip@playyourace.org or call (404) 698-1317.