WORKSHOPS
& INSTITUTES
Ideally, we will work together to design a consulting plan and determine professional development services that meet the unique requirements of your school community. That personalized plan could include some or all of the pre-designed workshops listed here, or it is a custom track, specific to your strategic goals and vision. All in-person workshops include consultation with key stakeholders and general content customization to address your community’s needs.
Confronting Implicit Bias:
Facilitating Difficult Conversations in the Classroom
This interactive workshop explores commonly held beliefs and biases that influence educators’ abilities to be responsive to all students. Gain resources to help educators and students talk openly about historical roots and contemporary manifestations of social inequality and discrimination.
Engage in personal reflection; explore strategies for facilitating critical conversations with students, families and colleagues; plan student-centered instruction and investigate ways to teach about implicit bias, race, racism and other critical topics.
Objectives:
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Reflect on personal assumptions and implicit bias
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Identify strategies and resources to help students explore their own identities and the identities of others
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Build and draw upon intergroup awareness, understanding and skills
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Implement anti-bias attitudes and beliefs into curriculum and school goals
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Apply instructional strategies that support diverse student groups and allow for the development of critical thinking skills
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Gain tools for teaching about race and racism
Length options: 3 hours or full day, with recommendations for on-going implementation support
Let's Talk! How to Facilitate Critical Conversations with Young People
Educators in all settings play a crucial role in helping students talk openly about the historical roots and contemporary manifestations of social inequality and discrimination, and research show us that not talking about race and racism reinforces racist systems and behaviors. Children as young as two years old use race to reason about people’s behaviors. Learning how to communicate about such topics as white privilege, police violence, economic inequality and mass incarceration requires practice, and facilitating difficult conversations with children of all ages demands courage and skill. This workshop offers methods for continual self-reflection and use-tomorrow strategies to plan discussions and to facilitate critical conversations with young people.
Length options: 1.5 hours
Speak Up! How to Respond to Everyday Bias and Stereotype
“I didn’t know what to say.” We’ve all been there. We hear a pejorative, and we fail to interrupt or speak out against its use in the moment. Speaking up means always being prepared to be an ally to all young people. Speaking up means understanding that the dynamic of the relationship (e.g. working with families) and the location (e.g. speaking up to authority in front of peers) impacts how much courage is needed and risk is involved to take stand. Speaking up means understanding that hurtful language is harmful to all of us, not just those who are the target of the offensive language. This workshop helps participants workout their Speak Up muscles in order to be best prepared for the next situation that leaves them not knowing what to say.
Length options: 1.5 hours
Family and Community Engagement: How to Build Collaborative Relationships
As children’s first teachers, parents play important roles in supporting learning at home, at school and at play. Parents and other caregivers are valuable resources and allies a we collectively help students navigate their learning and growth. Discuss how several components of successful family engagement demonstrate inviting dialogue, overcoming difference in language or cultural identity and building lasting relationships with young people and their families. Find out how to effectively and positively interact with children, their families and the community. See examples of fruitful family interactions, hear from experts on family engagement and explore approaches and resources for best practices in engaging families and the community in meaningful ways.
Length options: 1.5 hours
Anti-bias, Literacy-based Curriculum
Comprehensive, literacy-based, anti-bias curriculum provides students the opportunity to engage deeply with meaningful texts, and read, discuss, write about and critique ideas from four unique anti-bias perspectives: identity, diversity, justice and action. Texts that provide students with windows into others’ realities as well as mirrors that reflect their experiences and underscore the interconnectedness of our personal, familial and community identities increase student engagement and success.
In this workshop, participants will tour a suite of online resources within the curriculum tool; including, a multi-media, multi-genre anthology of rigorous anti-bias texts that meet the demands of text complexity. Using a flexible web-based and interactive learning plan builder, teachers will learn how to assemble lessons plans using the meaningful and rigorous texts, instructional strategies and assessment tasks that include options for differentiation and authentic assessment. Learn how to match content and strategies that empower students and teachers to engage with a new kind of literacy experience—one that includes both prejudice reduction and collective action. This interactive workshop highlights research and best practices that underscore the importance of culturally responsive content and meaningful literacy experiences for all students.
Objectives:
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Describe the goals of anti-bias education and apply them to your practice.
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Explore the anti-bias texts and practice diverse text selection.
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Explore literacy-based instructional strategies and assessment tasks and explain their alignment with content standards and critical literacy.
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Integrate the Social Justice Standards and Perspectives texts into your own authentic planning and practice.
Length options: 3 hours, full day, 2-day, with recommendations for on-going implementation support
Using an Equity Literacy Framework to Disrupt School-based Inequities
Strategies for reaching marginalized students that rely solely on individual interventions give educators permission to ignore systems of inequality, rely on stereotypes and focus on deficits. This professional development addresses how to move from a deficit-based approach to an equity and racial literacy framework for meeting the needs of marginalized students and families. Using a common definition of equity, participants will work together as professional learning communities to define a shared vision of equity in their practice and school, uncover existing inequities, devise a plan to disrupt those current inequitable policies and practices and draft a plan to create and sustain equitable policies and practices for all students and their families that move from mitigative short-term changes to transformative long-term solutions.
Objectives:
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Describe equitable approaches to reaching and teaching all students, especially those most marginalized
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Apply equity literacy principles to practice
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Commit to disrupting systems of inequity
Length options: vary, with recommendations for on-going implementation support
Social Justice Education 101
This interactive professional development takes the big picture work in anti-bias education and offers a set of critical practices to help teachers effectively implement culturally responsive components in their own practice. Learn practical strategies for creating space where academic and social-emotional goals are accomplished side by side.
Explore the first of its kind Social Justice Standards: The Teaching Tolerance Anti-bias Framework® to infuse anti-bias attitudes and beliefs into academic content and school policy, and create the conditions that reflect diversity, equity and justice as part of larger individual, school and community action. Areas of focus could include but not be limited to understanding the similarities and differences within dimensions of equity in education. Examine how multicultural education seeks social harmony, social justice education seeks critical consciousness and culturally responsive pedagogy seeks independent learning. Explore how these three dimensions are simultaneously necessary to teaching and learning.
Participants will continue the ongoing, self-reflection work essential to equity and inclusion practice and receive use-tomorrow strategies and resources for classroom lessons and building-level strategic planning.
Objectives:
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Describe the goals of anti-bias education.
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Understand the importance of diverse experiences as well as the importance of shared experiences and solidarity.
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Integrate identity, diversity, justice and action into classroom lessons.
Length options: vary, with recommendations for on-going implementation support
Culturally Responsive Pedagogy
This professional development takes the big picture work in culturally responsive pedagogy and offers a set of critical practices to help educators effectively implement culturally responsive components in their own practice. This workshop is designed to help classroom teachers and building-level administrators take action and create the conditions that bring the seven main components of Culturally Responsive Pedagogy to life:
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Building and drawing upon intergroup awareness, understanding and skills
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Creating classroom environments that reflect diversity, equity and justice
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Engaging families and communities in ways that are meaningful and culturally competent
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Encouraging students to speak out against bias and injustice
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Making the implementation of anti-bias curriculum part of larger individual, school and community action
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Supporting students’ identities and making it safe for them to fully be themselves
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Using instructional strategies that support diverse learning styles and allow for the development of critical thinking skills.
Objectives:
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Support students’ identities and make it safe for them to be their full selves.
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Build and draw upon intergroup awareness, understanding and skills.
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Create classroom environments that reflect diversity equity and justice.
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Engage families and communities in meaningful, culturally competent ways.
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Encourage students to stand up against bias and injustice.
Length options: 3 hours and full day, with recommendations for on-going implementation support
Additional Workshop Topics
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Religious Diversity in Schools
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Teaching Hard History: American Slavery
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Explore Identity and Build Understanding to Facilitate Conversations About Race
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Lesson Planning to Content Standards
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Interdisciplinary Planning: What is up with these themes?
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Responsive Discipline
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Intercultural Development Inventory Assessment and Coaching
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