Anti-Bias Values in Action
Put Equity, Belonging, and Liberation at the Center of School Practices
You’ve had conversations about diversity and inclusion, and you want to take your work further. But what does “taking your work further” mean? These workshops will focus on how equity, belonging, and liberation are values you can enact as an educator. These workshops are designed to equip you with tools, protocols, and strategies to help you put your anti-bias values into action:
Designing Instruction with a DEI Lens
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Audience: CLASSROOM TEACHERS in all subjects, department chairs, and academic administrators
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Designing instruction is always a matter of deciding what’s most important for students to do in class, and what we consider “most important” depends on our values. After defining what it means to design instruction with a DEI lens, this workshop series explores how to bring the values of diversity, equity, and inclusion to the curriculum design process. (2 hours per session)
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Session 1: Bringing a DEI Lens to Instructional Design. Distinguish diversity, equity, and inclusion as three related yet distinct concepts. Explore how these values show up in instructional design.
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Session 2: Diverse Materials. Experience strategies that help teachers choose culturally affirming texts and resources that help students see themselves in their learning and appreciate unfamiliar perspectives.
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Session 3: Equitable Assessment. Learn how to design assessment tasks that have personal relevance, clearly define what “success” means, and set all students up for success.
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Session 4: Inclusive Learning Events. Discover how protocols structure students’ interactions such that everyone can contribute, listen, do satisfying work together, and build an authentic learning community where everyone belongs.
Values-Based Responding to Bias Incidents
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Audience: all educators
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After defining what a bias incident is and what it means to respond, we’ll discuss a three-part framework for responding to bias incidents in accordance with personal and community values:
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Part 1: Self-Awareness. Engage in a protocol that helps us notice, name, and honor our own emotions after a bias incident so we can move towards the values that will guide our community response.
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Part 2: Care. Discover a framework to guide us in creating a plan of care for the community in the short, medium, and long term after a bias incident occurs.
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Part 3: Accountability. We will explore strategies fo having conversations with people who commit acts of bias so we can evoke values-based accountability.
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(4 hours)
Embodying Our Anti-Racist Values at School
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Audience: This workshop, developed in collaboration with Taslim Tharani of Thriving Together, is designed to meet the needs of white teachers, staff members, and administrators, although all are welcome.
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You’re white, and you want to do more to be anti-racist, but you aren’t sure how. You’ve heard that you need to “do your own work,” but what exactly does that look like? This workshop focuses on how anti-racism is a value you can enact in your daily practice. Like all values-consistent action, anti-racism is sometimes difficult, uncomfortable, and even painful. We’ll use tools and strategies drawn from contextual behavioral science to develop our anti-racist values and accept the inevitable discomfort that comes along with living an anti-racist life.
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Session 1: Understanding Anti-Racism As a Value. Explore what values are and how anti-racism can be a value we can enact in our day-to-day practice. This session will also establish working definitions of anti-racism and values, as well as expectations to promote safety.​ (2 hours as part of the series or 3 hours as a standalone workshop).
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Session 2: Undermining Our Racial Biases. Learn about where racial bias comes from and how it manifests itself, and explore cognitive and pedagogical tools that undermine biases and reduce their harmful impacts. (2 hours)
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Session 3: Overcoming White Fragility. Confront some of the ways white people tend to respond when racism is pointed out. Learn tools to move past defensiveness and toward anti-racist action in these uncomfortable moments. (2 hours)
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Session 4: Taking Action from Within a Racist System. Discover how racism is embedded within our institutions’ systems and structures. Learn how we can enact anti-racist values to begin dismantling racist systems.​ (2 hours)
Emotional Equity: Empowering All Students to Honor and Learn from Their Feelings
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Audience: ADVISORS, teachers, deans, counselors, psychologists, learning specialists, and student life program administrators
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“Cheer up.” “Chill out.” “Calm down.” Everyday language is full of expressions that tell us we should control or change how we feel. Even when we say “it’s OK to be sad” or “you have every right to be angry,” we imply that these emotions are allowed but not ideal. Meanwhile, those with marginalized identifiers are often the ones most quickly and frequently told to regulate their emotions so that those with power can stay comfortable.
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Emotional equity is when all members of a group are empowered to notice, name, honor, and learn from their feelings. In this workshop, we’ll explore some of the messages we receive about emotions—and how those messages relate to sociocultural identifiers such as race and gender. Then, we’ll learn a protocol called the Emotions & Values Audit that helps students notice their own emotions, name the values those emotions are connected to, and choose actions in accordance with those values. We’ll explore how to use the protocol in academic classes, advisory groups, parent conferences, and disciplinary incidents, so that all students are empowered to connect their actions to their values, in and out of the classroom.
(90 minutes)