We at PACEs Connection are excited to announce our new director of communities, Mathew Portell. Portell has officially joined this week and will now be leading our Growing Resilient Communities and Cooperative of Communities programs.
Portell has dedicated a decade and a half to education in his role as a teacher, instructional coach, teacher mentor, and school administrator. Before accepting the role of director of communities, Portell was the principal of Fall-Hamilton Elementary, an internationally recognized innovative model school for trauma-informed practices in Metro Nashville Public Schools.
His work at Fall-Hamilton has been featured on National Public Radio, the local documentary Enough, PBS, and Edutopia, one of the world’s top educational practices website funded by the George Lucas Foundation which resulted in over 7,000,000 page views. In addition, in 2018, Portell was featured in a monthly blog in Education Week titled "Learning is Social and Emotional" that documented his journey of sustaining a trauma-informed school. He also founded the Trauma Informed Educators Network Group on Facebook that has connected over 26,000 educators in over 100 different countries! In September of 2019, Portell launched the Trauma Informed Educators Network Podcast which has featured some of the world's top experts in the field including Dr. Bruce Perry, Dr. Ross Greene, Dr. Mona Delahooke, and many more.
Portell holds a B.S in elementary education and a M.Ed in curriculum from Tennessee State University, and completed his administration requirements at Trevecca Nazarene University. In 2019, Portell completed the level 1 certification in Trauma and Resilience at Florida State University.
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