Social Justice PD

3-4 Hours: Equity work requires building cultures of connection and care that can help us to feel supported, seen, and valued. In this workshop, we will engage in a practice developed by Relational Uprising that can be used on an ongoing basis to create more relationships, support, and possibilities for doing transformative work together. This session serves as an introduction and sets an important tone for our longer-term equity-focused partnerships with schools and districts.

3-6 Hours: In this workshop we explore some of the historical and structural forms of racism that impact our experiences around race, today. We will situate ourselves in this history to gain a deeper understanding of our own implicit bias. This awareness is a step towards empowering educators to engage more equity-focused pedagogy.

In this session participants will reflect on their own social identities, their intersections, and how they show up in their daily experiences both inside and outside the classroom. Through current scholarship and reflective practices, this workshop will explore concepts of identity, intersectionality, socialization, bias, and positionality, illustrating how our own identities impact the ways we come to our classrooms and schools. Participants will engage in reflective conversations that deepen understanding of how their identities connect to relationships with students and communities and how their own self- and social-reflection is essential to supporting more thriving classroom communities.

6 Hours or 2-3 Hour Sessions: It’s unsettling to know that our behavior may convey something that contradicts our values and beliefs. In this workshop we will explore the unconscious biases that are a part of our schema for understanding ourselves and the world. We will explore microaggressions, which come from bias and unexamined stereotypes. Microaggressions impact school culture and shape young people’s internalization of stereotypes. Stereotype threat can create serious challenges to learning. We will explore all of these concepts together and will engage in some practice for ways to intervene when microaggressions happen.

In this session, we will focus on ways to build classroom cultures that honor student identities and experiences and support critical dialogue and relational engagement. We will also explore value-based behavior management possibilities to reduce unconscious bias

5 Sessions, 3 Hours Each: This 5-day session will focus on building a foundation for educators to consider Culturally Responsive Teaching/Pedagogy (CRT/P) as an option in their work with students of all backgrounds. The course will center the building blocks of CRT/P in theory and practice; that is, we will be putting into practice CRT/P as we learn about it. This series focuses on becoming a warm demander and creating learning spaces where all students can joyfully thrive. The building blocks include: humanizing relationships, balancing cultural orientations, improving information processing, cultivating academic mindset.

3 Hours: Experience and explore facilitation techniques for holding brave conversations and dialogue in our classrooms, practice skills, and leave with tools to support classrooms where students learn to exchange ideas and listen with care to different viewpoints. This supports students and educators together to deepen understanding, authentically share experiences, and build affirming communities.

In this session, we explore the meaning of student agency and its critical role in shaping schools as places of joyful belonging and care. Based on the frameworks of Safir and Dugan’s Street Data, we will engage in conversations to deepen understanding of student agency and practices to both measure and increase it. This session will focus on ways to build classroom cultures that honor student identity and experience through critical dialogue and relational engagement. Growing student agency means that adults are supporting young people to actively experience efficacy, mastery, identity, and belonging in the classroom and beyond. These practices affirm and support students’ different ways of knowing and learning and create caring spaces where all students can thrive.