Professional Development
Below are some sample Side by Side professional development workshops for educators and adults who work with youth. Our highly interactive workshops aim to engage participants fully, to provide for multi-layered learning and the development of applicable skills and strategies. Workshops can be customized to fit your context and professional development needs.
Re-defining Conflict
Conflict creates opportunities, even though they can be uncomfortable and stressful when we’re in the middle of them. Explore different approaches to conflict and the influence culture has in ways we experience and manage conflict. Learn new skills on how to break conflict down into simple steps for easier and more successful resolution that can be applied in the school hallway, classroom or staff meeting. Half day workshop.
Participants will:
• Explore definitions of conflict
• Further understand the nature of conflict
• Gain new skills to resolve conflict and understand how to apply them in a school setting.
Forging A New Alliance: Building Community with the Bully, the Victim, and the Bystander
Bullying can seriously impede learning efforts in our classrooms and can have negative impacts in our school communities. We need to find ways to help bullies find a productive place within our school communities and to create action plans that sustain safe learning environments for all of our children. Half day workshop.
Participants will:
- Learn to differentiate between conflict, which happens between people and bullying which happens to someone.
- Learn how students and adults together can play a major role in changing the dynamic of bullying.
- Gain new skills and tools to create actions plans to prevent bullying and to sustain respectful, safe and peaceful school environments.
Implementing Peace-Keeping Circles In Your Classroom
Building a trusting and enjoyable community in the classroom can produce profound changes among your students that will positively impact behavior and learning. Learn some basic circle facilitation tips and best practices and discover how you can simply facilitate the development of peace circles. Half day workshop.
Participants will:
• Explore how peace circles can create mutual respect and learning in a classroom setting.
• Learn how to integrate peace circles into classroom curriculum
• Gain new skills by practicing circle facilitation and understand how to apply the circle process with different groups at your school.
Building Inclusive Classroom Communities
A safe, inclusive classroom community is a key ingredient for academic success, as well as for healthy identity and social skill development. This hands-on, experiential workshop will equip you with activities and strategies to help students build relationships and mutual respect, and resources for strengthening your current and future classroom communities. Half day workshop.
Participants will:
• Learn what research and best practice have to say about the role and importance of building a safe, inclusive community in the classroom
• Experience a set of adaptable activities for classroom community building
• Receive a useful ‘toolkit’ of other strategies, activities and resources
• Share their own experience and learn from the experience of their peers
Toward Inclusive And Empowering Educational Practice
The focus in this engaging and interactive workshop is on your own continuing journey toward culturally responsive and inclusive educational practice. Diverse activities and methods offer multi-layered opportunities for learning and for collaborating with your peers. You should come prepared to work on and share your real-life challenges, strategies, and planning. You will leave with applicable strategies and resources. Full day workshop.
Participants will:
• Explore the cultural and social identities and approaches they bring to their own practice
• Unpack how experiences of dominance and marginalization impact their students and practice
• Sharpen their skills for inclusive and empowering practice
• Apply skills and strategies learned to their planning and practice
• Share their own innovations and strategies and learn from their peers
Multicultural Education: Teaching For Social Justice
Teaching for social justice is about equipping students with the skills, knowledge and inspiration to be citizens and architects of a better world. This workshop offers you the opportunity to learn about, develop and share strategies for incorporating a teaching for social justice approach in your own particular circumstances (grade level, subject area, etc.) Half day workshop.
Participants will:
• Explore the nature and importance of teaching for social justice
• Discuss models, strategies and best practices for teaching for social justice
• Identify opportunities and challenges they face
• Learn, share and discuss strategies applicable to their own practice
• Receive a summary of relevant resources
Closing the Achievement Gap: Community and Youth Development Approaches
• Define the academic achievement gap
• Share and analyze individual and group perspectives
• Examine current research and best practices
• Examine ways youth development principles and philosophy can contribute to closing the achievement gap
Comfort Zone: Expanding Our Approach to Working with Youth
• Explore notions of identity: race, culture, and ethnicity
• Identify components of a cultural responsive learning environment
• Examine relationships between learner, educator, and curriculum
• Examine and analyze race, class, culture and its impact on the learning environment
• Identify personal learning styles
• Foster learning communities and alliance building
• Connect with our own cultural stories
Exploring Cultural Difference
• Raise cultural awareness and develop skills
• Examine cultural variables
• Develop and manage cross-cultural relationships
• Examine power, privilege, and oppression
• Foster self reflection and learning communities
• Examine and analyze race, class, and culture
• Explore communication
Culture Specific Trainings
- Working with African-American Adolescent Females
- African-American Learners
• Examine and analyze race, class, and culture
• Learn about realities specific to African-American learners
• Connect with our own cultural stories
• Developing a web of support
• Explore ways in which identity and culture shapes cognition and learning
• Introduce the Holistic Solutions Framework
• Introduce racial and adolescent development theory
Nurturing Self-Discipline
• Identify behavior challenges
• Introduce/enhance your understanding of conflict resolution education.
• Examine/challenge attitudes and assumptions about behavior.
• Introduce tangible skills/strategies you can apply in your work with young people.
Youth Culture: Beyond Text Messaging
• Explore concepts of youth and youth culture
• Challenge assumptions about youth and youth culture
• Develop and manage cross-cultural/multi-generational relationships
• Introduce identity and youth development theory as a way to better understand the young people we work with
• Foster mutually respectful relationships
• Reflect on our personal experiences and understanding of youth culture
Project Based Learning: Transforming Our Learning Environments
• Explore project-based learning principles and practice
• Introduce instructional design and strategies
• Define culturally responsive curriculum
• Understand urban learners
• Identify components of a cultural responsive learning environment
Summer Staff Training
• Develop effective learning environments
• Explore adolescent and identity development theory
• Introduce basic youth needs
• Define cultural responsive learning environment
• Strategies for developing culturally responsive curriculum