Nisha Sajnani

New York University, Music and Performing Arts Professions, Faculty Member

Harvard Medical School, Harvard Program in Refugee Trauma, Faculty Member

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Dr. Nisha Sajnani is the Director of the Drama Therapy program, Theatre & Health Lab, and faculty in the Rehabilitation Sciences PhD and Educational Theatre EdD/PhD programs at New York University Steinhardt. She is also on faculty with NYU Stern School of Business where she co-teaches an innovative course on improvisation and leadership.

As an educator, Dr. Sajnani has been an advocate of culturally responsive communities of practice and embodied epistemology. She is a co-founder of the cultural pedagogies in the arts therapies alliance and the International doctoral research alliance in the arts therapies. She is a research affiliate with the Harvard Program in Refugee Trauma and the Creative Arts Therapies Research Unit (University of Melbourne) and KenVak.

A program innovator, Dr. Sajnani led the development of an MA/ M.Ed in Global Interdisciplinary Studies at Lesley University. She co-developed Amplify, a gender sensitive, arts-based national training program in transformative pedagogy through the Girls Action Foundation and a widely implemented trauma-informed school-based program called Animating Learning by Integrating and Validating Experience (ALIVE), in New Haven, CT.

As an artist, Dr. Sajnani brings together oral history, digital arts, and performance. Recent work includes "Under Pressure," a performance collage about the Boston Marathon bombing (2014), "Lives That Matter,"a documentary play on racism, identity, and hashtag activism (2015), and "Mapping Home Amidst a Global Crisis of Place," a photography exhibit co-curated with Oscar Palacio (2016).

Dr. Sajnani' work has been published in Frontiers: Psychology, Canadian Theatre Review, Diverse Issues in Higher Education, Alt. Theatre: Cultural Diversity and the Stage, Arts in Psychotherapy, Drama Therapy Review, Applied Arts and Health, and Canadian Womens' Studies. She is the co-editor of Trauma-Informed Drama Therapy, and editor of Drama Therapy Review. She was acknowledged for her contributions to diversity, inclusion, and research by North American Drama Therapy Association and awarded the Corann Okorodudu Global Women's Advocacy Award from the American Psychological Association.

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The Miss Kendra Program: Addressing toxic stress in the school setting

by Nisha Sajnani and Christine Mayor

Current Approaches in Drama Therapy, 2020

T he Miss Kendra Program (formerly named ALIVE) is the result of over a decade of collaboration a... more T he Miss Kendra Program (formerly named ALIVE) is the result of over a decade of collaboration among a group of drama therapists, trauma therapists, school principals and teachers in creating an effective and sustainable model for addressing toxic stress among school-aged children from kindergarten through high school. Challenged by significant societal, civic, institutional, familial, and personal obstacles, the most significant of these being the desire to avoid facing the realities of abuse, neglect, violence, and loss, this model was born of the desire to directly and effective tend to experiences that no youth should have to face. These experiences cause tremendous distress and subsequent dysfunction that result in ongoing harm and prevent the development of a safe, equitable, and just society. The Miss Kendra model developed organically through trial and error and is an integration of skills and programs derived from trauma-centered psychotherapy, Developmental Transformations, and social justice pedagogy. However, at heart, the program is rooted in drama therapy because it is about stimulating our individual and social imagination to animate systems that have become rigid, frightened, and oppressive (Sajnani & Johnson, 2014). Maintaining a dynamic state of aliveness and flexibility in the face of trauma, poverty, incompetence, violence, and bureaucracy is the central aim of this work. This is sustained through the use of play, projection, and active witnessing within caring, responsive relationships in the model (Johnson, 2014; Pitre, Sajnani, & Johnson, 2014). No one aspect of the Miss Kendra model is sufficient to address toxic stress and trauma; rather the program is best conceived as a part of a larger

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