Just School. Just Growth: The Path to Student Agency – Intersection of SEL & Equity: Close Opportunity Gaps; March 10, 2022 @ 9am-1pm (EST)

Just School. Just Growth: The Path to Student Agency 

Just:  /jəst/ adjective based on or behaving according to what is morally right and fair.

All  learning is social and emotional, but to truly thrive, students require  equitable and trauma-informed learning spaces.  Equity, Trauma-informed and SEL work as instrumental to reducing toxic stress and creating safe, nurturing, and stable environments for each child. It is here where we will be successful at closing the pervasive opportunity gap. 

Overarching Goals:

We are excited for you to join us on this journey! We will  use this integrated roadmap to create and maintain learning spaces where each student feels and is – safe, connected, supported and challenged.  Each session contains the recursive threads of SEL, Equity and Healing Informed practices for Trauma that encourage us to reimagine, reinvent classrooms and schools around the principles of equity, authentic learning and stronger relationships.  

Collaboratively, we will map the connections among these three driving initiatives to quell overwhelm and ensure PD is balanced and focused on our unique needs. Every session makes concrete connections between what we are doing in our daily practices and larger outcomes.

All of our Just School. Just Growth: A Path to Student Agency sessions are led by its program developer, Sharon McCarthy, popular TMI-ENVISION SEL Specialist/Lead Consultant, ENVISION President dynamic presenter and author.

Note: According to a CORE Education report (2017) the benefits of student agency are: Students take ownership of their learning; Students develop self-regulating skills; and Student voice emerges leading to empowerment.  Importantly, agentic children turn into agentic adults!

Session 3: Intersection of SEL & Equity: Close Opportunity Gaps

Why?:  SEL is only successful in systems where Equity is valued and present.  Equity is only possible when compassionate members of the system check their power, privilege and implicit bias, which is accomplished through the SEL competencies and sub-competencies.  

Solution:  The promise emerging out of the chaos is our deep understanding that All learning is social and emotional.  And, importantly, that all learning is mediated by relationships that occur in schools – which is a socio-political, racialized context for EACH child, not just those who are black and brown, of differing cultures, religions, sexual orientations or cognitive ability. SEL are cognitive skills that, in an equitable and just space, foster student agency by requiring students to make decisions in the face of perceived obstacles as well as having an understanding of oneself in terms of their wants and strengths that create optimal learning opportunities. 

Participants can expect to acquire the knowledge, skills and dispositions to:

• • reflect on Adult SEL competencies to examine one’s power/privilege and implicit biases;
  • use SEL approaches to draw out and build on student assets to facilitate understanding and learning;
  • explore the concept of culturally relevant education (CRE) by strengthening students’ sense of identity & promoting equity and inclusivity in the classroom;
  • learn about the neuroscience of learning; those signals that trigger a “threat” response as well as strategies explicitly designed to decrease stress and generate a sense of calm and well-being; and
  • make normal the practice of speaking about race and understanding events and experiences through the lens of race, culture and power.

Audience: All Grades PK-12 Educators
Presenter(s): Sharon McCarthy, TMI-ENVISION SEL Specialist/Lead Consultant, ENVISION President
Delivery Format: In-Person
Location: Ramapo College of NJ (Room Location TBD)
Date/Times:

• • Session 1 – January 13, 2022; 9am-1pm (EST); Virtual
  • Session 2 – February 10, 2022; 9am-1pm (EST); Delivery Format TBD
  • Session 3 – March 10, 2022; 9am-1pm (EST); Delivery Format TBD

Payment Methods and Cancellation/Refund Policy: Payment can be made by purchase order (PO) or check to ChangeMaker, LLC. Please mail all correspondence, including purchase orders, checks and agreements to TMI Education – ChangeMaker PLC Division at PO Box 922, Madison, NJ 07940. If you are unable to attend a program for which you have registered, email the ChangeMaker PLC at support@changemakeredu.org or call seven (7) days prior to the program to request a refund. No refunds will be granted unless notification is provided within this time frame. ChangeMaker reserves the right to cancel events for any reason, including inclement weather and instructor illness. If ChangeMaker makes the decision to cancel a workshop, we will use the EMAIL contact information you have provided to us to inform you. In addition, we will post the announcement of cancellation on the respective ChangeMaker website event page. If ChangeMaker cancels, participants will be provided a choice of:

• a full refund;
• transfer to another, upcoming workshop date and location (space permitting); or
• credit toward a future workshop. (Please note that all credits expire one (1) year from the date that they are issued.)

Video-Recorded Virtual (Zoom) Sessions and Tips to Maintain your Privacy during a Recorded Session:  As an added value, all virtually-delivered programs are video recorded and accessible to our workshop registrants and Professional Learning Consortium Members subsequent to the session. Therefore, each virtually-delivered workshop and webinar will now have Zoom’s Recording Disclaimer enabled by default. With this feature, attendees will receive a notification when a recording starts or if they join a session that is already being recorded. The participant can then consent to stay in the session and be recorded or choose to leave the session altogether.