About TIPOH

The Institute for the Pedagogy of Humanity is an IRS recognized tax-exempt 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization.

This is a love story.

TIPOH exists because of love; love as an act that sees a person just as they are. Love that does the work of witnessing the truest form of humanity inside a person. Love from a parent to a child and from a child to a parent. Love from a teacher to their classroom and from a student to their teacher. Love in all the forms it can take, to really, truly, see the core of who and what a person is.

TIPOH was formally incorporated in 2025, but was built from years of research and insight from the lived experience of founder Brittany L. Stratton.

Brittany grew up in West Virginia, spending her childhood at the mercy of violent men and systemic failures. Each chapter left a scar, and the nature of trauma is that these scars accumulate. At seventeen, Brittany ran for her life, a pregnant teenage runaway.

But according to the research, a child raised in violence, removed for abuse, bought by their abuser and that leaves high school as a pregnant teenage runaway does not also become a Magna cum Laude Outstanding Student Teacher of the Year, earn a masters degree, or pursue a doctorate. Brittany asked why.

Why didn’t she become a statistic? What was the difference? And how could it be done at scale?

That was the spark that led to a lightning bolt. In a child’s life, who is best positioned to make a difference? What space in the community is most likely to touch the life of every family in it?

The school. The teacher. The education workforce. The mandated reporter. But are they able to take up that mantle? Right now, the data says no. But they could be. And TIPOH is here to help them get there. From a combination of lived experience and research found nowhere else, The Institute for the Pedagogy of Humanity is the only organization in West Virginia dedicated to the study of trauma’s impact on learning and the workforce development to address it.

The Institute for the Pedagogy of Humanity is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization based in Cabell County, WV. It addresses the impact of trauma on learning and developing programs designed to increase resilience and protective factors for safer, healthier communities.