WORKSHOPS

Menu of Workshops

Contact Naledi to discuss a series or individual workshop, or to plan a keynote address, school assembly, faculty meeting, or for custom solutions for your school or organization.

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Workshop 1: Modeling and Teaching Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Skills

Students today deal with a lot of pressure. More and more, they are able to recognize inequity and discrimination in schools, despite the progress being made in diversifying student populations. This workshop helps educators to recognize systems of inequity that go beyond any one individual’s biases and understand that we are all in the struggle together, while providing a framework for analyzing diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts in our schools. The goal is equity, and it will take all of us gaining awareness and learning together to overcome the obstacles that stand between our students and success.

Workshop 2: The Culturally Responsive Classroom: An Introduction

As difficult as progress is, the cacophony around Critical Race Theory in the media has muddied the waters for people who simply want to create fair, equitable and just learning communities for their students. Despite our best intentions, the achievement gap for minoritized students persists, so how do we respond? In this workshop, we will explore what it means to teach children through a culturally responsive practice that truly liberates all students to learn. We will cut through the noise and return students to the center of our teaching, and we will discuss how to assess our progress along the way.

Workshop 3: Staying Engaged: The Courageous, Anti-bias, Multiculturalist, Culturally Responsive Educator

There is a toxic cycle of DEIB work in schools: crisis, followed by a public commitment to equity, followed by challenges that derail those efforts and leave us with the inevitable status quo. Wash, rinse, repeat. What do school leaders and educators need to do in order to break that cycle and stay on the path toward equity for our students? This workshop promotes equity competencies that are built to persist through challenges and support the vigilant advocate-educator. The moral arc of the education universe is long, and it bends toward justice, led by skilled and dedicated teachers who commit for the long haul. 

Workshop 4: Responding Restoratively to Everyday Moments of Bias and Insensitivity

Bias and insensitivity are frequently embedded in everyday language quietly degrading people on the basis of their perceived or actual identities. Language is often where dehumanization begins and harmful dynamics are normalized. Yet naming and interrupting bias and insensitivity can be very challenging. We are usually more afraid of the consequences of our speaking out than the outcomes if we do not––and perhaps with good reason. When we speak out we risk alienating and shaming others and conversely ourselves. Particularly when dealing with students across the child developmental sequence, shaming in response to misbehavior, insensitive comments, or uninformed questions can shut down learning and fracture community. Furthermore, we ourselves are not always aware of the common mistakes people tend to make when navigating cross-identity relationships with students as well as colleagues. Being more aware would enable us to better serve our students and colleagues. In this highly interactive and dynamic workshop, educators will explore:

• Various examples of everyday bias that take place in schools,

• How to prevent common biased remarks and acts,

• How to own when we have made mistakes and seek repair,

• Strategies we can deploy to address bias––with students and colleagues––head-on in a restorative fashion.

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Workshop 5: E(race)ure: The experience of Multiracial and Multiethnic Students, Families, and Educators in Schools

Where are you from? Might be a simple question for some to answer. For others, it requires a story, a history lesson, and a relationship of trust. With the increasing acknowledgement and visibility of people of multiracial backgrounds, our tools for checking a box and counting diversity statistics are inadequate. How do we grapple with the history, the presence, and the complicated experiences of our community members with mixed heritage? This workshop deals with history, strategies, and radical expressions of love and inclusion. 

Workshop 6: The Total Package

In the social contract of schooling, the approach of educators is appropriately student-centered. Still, families are an important part of any learning community, and the best schools count on a partnership with families. This workshop focuses on equitably building and sustaining parent and guardian relationships in order to best support students and strengthen schools. 

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Workshop 7: Heads on a Swivel

A well-funded conservative assault on diversity work in schools is underway, and independent school families are taking to social media to voice their dissent about programs that would have hardly been controversial in the pre-pandemic era. It is more important than ever for diversity directors to understand the threat posed by the media amplification of this dissent, and to work together with their comms team to neutralize knee-jerk reactions to inclusive education within their schools before it has a chance to upend crucial programs that students need and deserve. We discuss how school professionals can work together to communicate with families about diversity initiatives, how to overcome objections through coalition building, and how to ensure that you are keeping ahead of the ever-changing landscape within our schools.

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Workshop 8: Beyond the Token Trustee

In the wake of the black@ movement as many schools recognized that their boards of trustees don't always reflect the racial and ethnic demographics of their student population, the push to diversify boards has become more pronounced. But as boards, particularly at day schools, are often compromised of parents of current students or alumni of the institution recruited for their financial capacity as well as specific skill sets, these groups may face challenges integrating a wider variety of individuals. This can lead to tokenization of the newer trustees when it is assumed that the expertise they will provide will also include offering the perspective of their entire identity group. Board leadership may try to funnel these trustees into DEIB or other committees or task forces where these trustees' identity is the main reason they are being asked to serve. Meanwhile, committees seen as holding greater power on boards, such as the governance, development or finance committee may continue to lack representation and input from diverse voices. In this workshop, conducted by two independent school administrators who are also current and former board members of other independent day schools, attendees will learn how to outsmart their own biases and see trustees in a more holistic manner. They will learn how to ensure that trustees of color are not tokenized by their peers once they join the board and why the burden should not be on these trustees to know more about to advance the DEIB work of the institution.