No Disposability
Examine harm without reducing any person to the worst decision they made or the conditions that harmed them.
Trauma-Informed Film Education
Helping Children Understand Trauma Through Film and Storytelling
Using carefully selected films and guided conversations to build emotional intelligence, resilience, empathy, and healing.
About Us
Why We Investigate the Trauma
James Jeter started We Investigate the Trauma because he saw firsthand how unaddressed trauma silences children — especially in communities touched by incarceration, violence, and systemic neglect.
Through his work with the Full Citizens Coalition, James met countless returning citizens who struggled to reconnect with their children, not because they lacked love, but because no one had ever given those children the tools to understand what they were feeling. The hurt was passed down, generation after generation, simply because it was never named.
He built this program to break that cycle. Using film, storytelling, and guided discussion, we create safe spaces where children can explore their emotions, build resilience, and finally put words to the weight they have been carrying — before it hardens into the kind of pain that defines an adulthood.
Meet the Founder
James Jeter
Founder · Director, Full Citizens Coalition
James leads the Full Citizens Coalition, an organization built by and for formerly incarcerated people advancing the rights, dignity, and full reintegration of returning citizens.
Drawing on his own lived experience and years of advocacy, he founded We Investigate the Trauma to reach children before the cycle of hurt takes root — using film, storytelling, and guided conversation to help young people understand their emotions, build resilience, and find their voice.
Curriculum
We Investigate the Trauma
Two teachable story arcs that study how stories normalize punishment, disposability, and shame — then use art, dialogue, and community design to imagine non-punitive cultures of care, accountability, and repair.
No Spectacle of Trauma
We do not mine pain for entertainment. We track systems, choices, resources, and blocked options.
Accountability Beyond Punishment
Ask what repair, interruption, support, and changed conditions would require — not just who to punish.
Culture as Infrastructure
Treat stories, family scripts, school norms, and community myths as infrastructure that can reproduce violence or make care possible.
Discussion Norms
Every session includes opt-out choices, content warnings, non-extractive discussion norms, and creative alternatives to personal disclosure — grounded in trauma-informed practice.
- 1
Speak from the text, not from assumptions about real people.
- 2
Name systems before judging individual behavior.
- 3
Distinguish explanation from excuse — context reveals intervention points, it doesn't erase harm.
- 4
Ask “what conditions made this choice more likely?” before “why did they do that?”
- 5
Avoid forced personal sharing. Lived experience is expertise, not classroom evidence to be demanded.
Units
Two paired story arcs
Teach independently or as a paired 10-session mini-course.
Curriculum One
Smoke & Lil Smoke — Inheritance Under Pressure
Uses the father-son arc from Tyrant: Like Father Like Son to examine inherited violence, masculinity, incarceration aftermath, and the pressure to repeat a family script.
Essential Questions
- What does a parent pass down when they are absent, incarcerated, feared, loved, or mythologized?
- How does a culture of revenge disguise itself as loyalty, protection, or masculinity?
- What would accountability require from Smoke if punishment alone cannot repair what his son inherited?
- What resources would make cycle-breaking more realistic than cycle-repeating?
Session Plan
- 1
The Inherited Script
“Before Lil Smoke makes a choice, what has already been chosen for him by family history, reputation, incarceration, and neighborhood memory?”
- 2
Pulls Toward Repetition & Repair
“What does the revenge script offer emotionally, and what support would make refusal feel less isolating?”
- 3
Accountable Language
“How does Smoke take responsibility without making his son responsible for his healing?”
- 4
The Sequel Fork: Blessing or Revenge
“What makes survival become a new beginning instead of another reason to retaliate?”
- 5
Cultural Abolition Intervention
“Design a counter-script that interrupts inherited violence in the family and community culture.”
Performance Task
Cultural Abolition Intervention Map
Each unit ends with learners identifying one harmful cultural script, analyzing how it reproduces harm, and designing a counter-script or community intervention.
01
Harmful cultural script
A phrase, belief, ritual, media trope, or institutional habit that makes harm feel normal.
02
Impact
Who becomes invisible, disposable, blamed, feared, or isolated.
03
Decision pressure
The specific moment where the script narrows someone's choices.
04
Abolitionist counter-script
A new story, practice, art piece, policy demand, or relationship norm.
05
Material support
What resources would make the new choice actually possible.
06
Accountability practice
How harm is named, repaired, and prevented without relying on shame or exile.
How It Works
A simple, supportive three-step journey
- STEP 01
Watch
Children engage with carefully selected films.
- STEP 02
Reflect
Facilitated discussions help process emotions and experiences.
- STEP 03
Grow
Children develop emotional intelligence and resilience.
Resources
Tools for educators, counselors, and parents
Free and downloadable resources designed alongside clinicians and classroom educators.
Discussion Guides
Film-by-film prompts to lead emotionally safe conversations.
Classroom Activities
Hands-on exercises that extend reflection into learning.
Trauma-Informed Practices
Frameworks grounded in research and clinical guidance.
Parent Resources
Tools to continue the conversation at home with care.
The Investigation
The Investigation
Character-arc investigations across the films we study — mapping the pressures, forks, and inherited patterns that shape each story.
Tyrant: Like Father Like Son
Smoke (Bo Deal) & Lil Smoke (Kevon Gill)
Let's Create Emotionally Safe Learning Spaces Together
Partner with us to bring trauma-informed film education to your school, classroom, or organization.
Contact
Start a conversation
Whether you're an educator, counselor, or parent — we'd love to hear from you.
- Phone(475) 655-4179
- Office30 Arbor St, Unit 201
Hartford, CT 06106