Creating Safe Spaces for Students Who Need Them Most

Every student deserves to feel like they belong.
But for too many kids, school feels like a place where they’re misunderstood, overlooked, or simply surviving. Thinkering Fellow Anna Voth is working to change that—one open door, one open heart at a time.

Anna is a gifted education specialist in Aurora Public Schools, a diverse Colorado district where many students face poverty, trauma, language barriers, or displacement. Her capstone project was not a product—it was a practice: a radical reimagining of what it means to make school a safe space.

🧠 The Problem

In schools across the country, even the youngest learners are navigating stress and instability that adults struggle to carry. Some are worried about where they’ll sleep. Some about whether their parents will still be there when they get home. Many feel completely alone.

Anna saw these realities firsthand—students sitting in hallways after being removed from class, others silently shutting down. She realized that without a foundation of emotional safety, no academic progress could happen.

💡 The Response

Anna turned her small school office into a haven—a place where students could breathe, be seen, and begin to rebuild trust. Her door was open. Her lights were dimmed. And her first question to every child wasn’t about behavior or homework—it was:
“What do you need right now?”

This one quiet room sparked something bigger:

Students self-advocating for safe space time
Teachers asking to replicate the model in their rooms
Administrators noticing reduced behavioral escalations
Students returning not just for help—but for healing

Anna’s capstone formalized this approach, combining trauma-informed care, bibliotherapy, trust-building routines, and student storytelling into a model that can scale across the district—and beyond.

📚 A Bigger Vision

What if every school had a space like this?
What if educators were trained to respond with regulation, not punishment?
What if every child knew—even on their hardest days—that there’s someone in the building who truly sees them?

Anna is now building a community-led platform to share stories, tools, book recommendations, and emotional regulation strategies that teachers and students can use daily. Not a program. Not a box to check. But a culture shift—from compliance to compassion.

🙌 How You Can Help

Your donation supports:

✅ Expansion of Anna’s safe space model to more schools in the district
✅ Development of teacher toolkits and classroom-ready bibliotherapy resources
✅ The launch of a student-led digital storytelling platform
✅ Professional learning and care strategies for school leaders and educators
✅ A growing movement to humanize education from the inside out

“When students feel like they don’t belong, everything else shuts down. But when they have even one adult who sees them—everything changes.” — Anna Voth

💥 Be That One Adult

When you donate, you’re not just giving to a project. You’re investing in students who deserve dignity. You’re backing a teacher brave enough to lead with love. And you’re helping build schools where kids don’t just survive the day—but begin to trust it again.

📥 Make your donation today!

Changing the world one classroom at a time

Our Mission

As a 501c3 Nonprofit, our mission is to elevate a child’s creativity and interests alongside traditional academic metrics, fostering passion-driven learning with real community impact.

To be a Thinkerer is to be a curious changemaker, open to solving longstanding challenges with fresh ideas.

We collaborate with leading organizations, educators, and innovators to create pathways that nurture student passions. By humanizing education, we aggregate and analyze learning experiences, building a global framework that values creativity and curiosity as essential to academic and personal growth.

Creating Safe Collaborative Spaces for Students Who Need Them Most - Anna Voth

Every student deserves to feel like they belong.

Team Members