The 2023 Summer Institute for Educators: Healing Through Art & Ritual to Sustain Ourselves and Each Other

August 1 – 3, 2023

9:00 a.m. – 12:30 p.m. PT / 11:00 a.m. – 2:30 p.m. CT / 12:00 p.m. – 3:30 p.m. ET

(convert to your time zone)

This event has passed and registration is closed.

Building transformative school systems, environments and learning experiences from a place of overwhelm and collective exhaustion is nearly impossible. And yet! We are often if not always in that space. To create space and place to process what we as educators have carried, are carrying and will have to carry is necessary for our renewal amidst and after crisis. 

Join the School Crisis Recovery & Renewal project for our third 2023 SCRR Summer Institute for Educators, this summer themed “Healing Through Art & Ritual to Sustain Ourselves and Each Other.” Together over the course of three days August 1st-3rd, we gather to reimagine wellness and explore practices, strategies and interventions that allow us to welcome the new school year and more deeply attune to our personal and collective needs.  Together we will honor all that we’ve been through and the infinite possibilities beyond this moment.

---

Our Agenda

Each day of our institute has its own theme and guiding question; all three days follow the same flow and are from 9:00 a.m. PT – 12:30 p.m. PT// 11:00 a.m. CT – 2:30 p.m. CT// 12:00 p.m. ET – 3:30 p.m. ET.

Summer Institute Agenda at a Glance

Day 1: August 1st – Sustaining Myself, Guiding Question: How might I renew myself as an educator?

This workshop will activate personal healing practices for educators and provide a space for them to unpack and release the stress and sadness of the past three years and the current challenges to our profession. By bearing witness to each other’s stories, reading and writing poetry, and reflecting and meditating on special moments in their lives, this workshop invites teachers to learn to make a serious commitment to finding joy and peace in teaching, and practice self-care in the moment and for the school year ahead.

• Day 1 Keynote Slide Deck

“Healing with a Broken Heart” – Candice Valenzuela

Opening Words

• Day 1 Keynote Slide Deck – Valenzuela

Jen Leland leads us through understanding our polyvagal nervous system and a self-attuning practice to attend to it.

• Day 1 Self-Attuning Slide Deck

Together we will explore the potential purpose and process of holding intentional peer-led space for colleagues to acknowledge and move through long standing grief and other strong emotions related to student loss. 

• Day 1 Collective Renewal Strategy Slide Deck
• Collective Renewal Strategy Jamboard

Dear educators: what is the status of our hearts right now? How do our hearts remind us about the truth of who we are? What can our hearts help us to (re)member about ourselves and our communities? The heart is a sanctuary, a fertile space for which to ground and deepen our connection to our whole selves. The heart is also a drum, offering us a rhythm to activate our deepest desires and operate from a place of power.

Understanding that connection to self is critical to our healing and renewal, this workshop makes intentional space for us to slow down, listen deeply and sort through our emotional landscape so that we may better understand what exists within us presently and where we must go in the new semester.

• Day 1 Art-Based Healing Handout

Oriana Ides will lead us through a guided conversation engaging with the question “Amidst crisis, loss and uncertainty; how do I care for myself through this work?”

Day 2: August 2nd – Sustaining My Community , Guiding Question: How might I experience and create collective care and renewal within my school community?

• Day 2 Keynote Slides

Candice Valenzuela introduces us to the S.O.D.A. strategy (Stop, Observe, Detach, Awaken), formulated by Zaretta Hammond in her seminal work Culturally Responsive Teaching and the Brain (2015). This self-attuning strategy is designed to address adult emotional activation in the moment, so that we continue to act in alignment with our true values and provide quality care to those we serve despite the stressors in our environment. 

• Day 2 Self-Attuning Handout

The word “crisis” is used a lot, especially in the last couple of years. What might happen if we pressed pause and unpacked what that word actually means to us as adults? To the young person we used to be? To our students? One collective renewal strategy is storytelling- the power and purpose of language inside each of us and when we share our worlds aloud help us reimagine what could be. In this session, we will unpack the story of crisis for me, crisis for you, and crisis for us so that we can be in shared language to bridge our vision for crisis aftermath. 

• Day 2 Collective Renewal Strategy Slide Deck
• Collective Renewal Strategy Jamboard

The Metamorfosis of the butterfly is utilized as a metaphor to describe the transformation that people experience as they navigate various aspects of their lives, i.e. school, work, family and friends. The presentations focus is on providing space for the creation of a Love Journal that might assist individuals on their life journey toward self-empowerment, healing and well-being. Dra. Lopez hopes to create a sacred space for participants to share; hopes, dreams, aspirations, challenges, successes and guides participants in envisioning their future through a Love Journal. The participants will walk away increasing the 3 M’s; Manifestation, Miracles, and Magick. What to bring: collage items, poems, stickers, words of affirmation, pictures (past and/or recent), magazines, old calendars, any and all art supplies and most importantly an open mind/heart for this shared experience.

• Day 2 Art-Based Healing Handout

Oriana Ides will lead us through a guided conversation engaging with the question “Insighting and sustaining hope; how do I prioritize vibrant humanity within my school community?”

Day 3: August 3rd – Sustaining our Structures, Guiding Question: How might we create structural change to support authentic healing and renewal?

In this keynote, Michelle will share practices that will support with metabolizing the residual energy from trauma in our bodies so that we might be better equipped to further work toward structural renewal.

Structural harm is an ever present condition in the soil of our school ecosystems. This harm escalates conflict and can move us further away from one another. As individual educators and leaders, we must meet these ever present conditions by cultivating ever present opportunities for healing and repair. This means practicing more life giving ways to move through the everyday reality of interpersonal conflict. In this workshop, participants will be introduced to these practices and engage in a brief visualization to tap into their own relationship to conflict. 

• Day 3 Self-Attuning Slide Deck

Reflecting on learnings from SCRR’s School-Based Suicice Postvention from a Liberated Lens Community of Practice, Zeruiah will highlight and uplift strategies toward our collective renewal as we navigate student loss.

• Day 3 Collective Renewal Strategy Slide Deck

Join us as we explore tangible ways we might reconnect with and restore our clear vision, values and purpose in this work as to influence and transform the systems we uphold.

• Day 3 Art-Based Healing Slide Deck

---

Institute Goals

1. Create a safe, generative, and regulating experience for educators, school-based mental health providers, and people who tend to the emotional well-being of youth.
2. Engage participants in evidence-based, art centered, ritual activities that positively impact the process of recovery and renewal after a crisis.
3. Provide an opportunity for educators and other school professionals to learn new ways in which they can utilize ritual to recover and renew to support their community after a big thing (crisis event). 
4. Support participants in imagining new ways to incorporate ritual and art into their personal practice in crisis recovery.

---

Intended Audience

 Any school staff or partner that tends to the well-being of young people in school settings (school leaders, educators, community service providers, guidance counselors in higher education, social workers, etc.)

---

Suggested Materials

For our Art Based Healing Intervention sessions: Journals, pens, markers, paper, collage materials, glue, scissors, magazines, photos, elements from nature – or perhaps a digital space for you to capture your thoughts – a document, a slide deck, etc.

---

Frequently Asked Questions

• Is this program eligible for Continuing Education Hours (CEH)? Yes, 3 hours of Continuing Education is provided for attendance for all three days.
• Will this offering be recorded? Yes
• Can I get a certificate of attendance? Yes
• Do I have to go to all three days? No, but we hope you do!

Resources

Our resource page “Mending our Wounds” – Educator and School Leader Recovery & Renewal includes guides, articles, scholarship, archived learning from past Summer and Winter Institutes and other SCRR related programming, and more!

Who can I contact if I have additional questions? Email us at scrr@cars-rp.org

---

Faculty

Lead Faculty

Oriana Ides (she/hers), MA, LPCCI, PPS

SCRR Field Coach at Center for Applied Research Solutions (CARS)

Oriana Ides is the School Mental Health Training Specialist at CARS, who approaches healing the wounds of trauma and oppression as core elements of social justice.  She has worked with young people across life course from elementary school to college, and has served as teacher-leader, school counselor, classroom educator and program director. She is committed to generating equity within school structures and policies by focusing on evidence-based mental health techniques and institutional design. Her work to forge a more just world is motivated by and dedicated to Amilca Ysabel Mouton Fuentes.

---

Guest Faculty

Candice Rose Valenzuela (they/them/she/her)

Candice believes that ancestral, community and ecological healing are the most urgent issues of our time. They coach systems leaders, offer 1:1 counseling and facilitate healing experiences at justice-oriented institutions throughout the nation. In her free time, Candice enjoys writing, painting and sharing their enthusiasm for nature with their 7-year child.

---

Dulce Lopez, Psy.D. (she/her)

Dulce, a first generation Mexican-American, is a Licensed Psychologist whose life’s purpose has been to empower individuals to transform thru Love. Often referred to as Doctora Corazon (Doctor of the Heart), Dr. Lopez has been a practicing clinician for over 17 years in California. She is a motivational speaker and facilitator, speaking regularly on the subjects of Love and Transformation. METAMORFOSIS and Dra. Dulce’s Love Journal Series are her two core programs designed for individuals as tools of self-discovery toward harnessing their inner Love and personal Power.

---

Jen Leland (she/hers)

MFT SCRR Field Director Trauma Transformed 

Jen is a licensed MFT with an extensive background in community mental health and education programs, including leading trauma-informed special education and residential treatment and youth justice programs and directing multiple non-profit and county public health programs. In 2015, Jen had great honor to become founding Director of Trauma Transformed Center. Having her own lived experiences in systems and more than 15 years in the public health field, she is humbled and driven by the vision that school communities can recover from crisis, structural and collective trauma in ways that lead to even more healing, loving, and just school communities for all students.

---

Jo Brownson (she/her) 

Co-Founder and Member, Radicle Root Collective

Jo is a White, queer, educator, healer, facilitator, coach and systems thinker. For over 15 years, her area of practice and purpose has been to support individuals and organizations to surface how Whiteness is operating inside their context, recognize the way it intersects and reinforces other systems of oppression, and to take action to mitigate and transform its impacts. Jo is rooted in Oakland on unceded Chochenyo Ohlone land. She loves laughing and communing with her human, dog and plant kin.

---

Karla Broady (she/her)

Karla Broady is a New York City native, transplanted on the West Coast.   Karla Broady has over 20 years of experience doing conflict resolution, mediation, training and family support work locally and internationally.  She is currently the Program Manager for the Restorative Justice Program in Schools at the National Conflict Resolution Center in San Diego, where she supports a staff of Specialists to provide teacher training and coaching in schools throughout San Diego County.  She has been instrumental in designing curriculum and systems that help strengthen relationships, build positive classrooms, and work cultures and center harm repair in schools.  Karla is passionate about using circles as a container for storytelling, self-reflection and connection and is committed to helping others to use this process to increase understanding and resolve conflict.  Additionally, Karla holds a Master’s degree in International Educational Development, with a concentration in Peace Education from Teachers College, Columbia University. She is restorative justice and trauma certified, is a mother to two beautiful young souls, is fluent in Spanish and loves nature, African dance and DJing. 

---

Michelle Seijas (she/her)

Michelle Seijas, Ed.D. is a Latina leader on a mission to support people in living purpose-driven lives. She believes when we are in purpose we find joy, abundance, and connection. Those are the conditions necessary for innovation and social change. As a trauma-informed certified coach, experienced consultant, education leader, and former nonprofit executive, she has learned to be her authentic self in various contexts. She partners with individuals to help them envision how they want to show up in the world and assists organizations with being mission-driven spaces for staff and those they serve to have a healthy environment to be in relationship. She has a special gift of facilitating engaging experiences for people to step into their power and identify how they will live in purpose.

---

Noor Jones-Bey (she/her)

Program Director, EXCEL Academy, Educational Consultant

Dr. Noor Jones-Bey is a transdisciplinary educator, researcher and artist from the Bay Area, CA. She currently lives in Brooklyn, NY, where she is pursuing a Ph.D. in Urban Education at the Steinhardt School and holds fellowships from the Ford Foundation and the Urban Doctoral Research Initiative at New York University. Jones-Bey is program director of EXCEL at NYU, a critical literacy and college access program for youth in the South Bronx housed at the Metropolitan Center for Research on Equity and the Transformation of Schools. 

---

Patrick Camangian (he/him)

Dr. Patrick Camangian is a former English teacher in Los Angeles and Oakland and a professor of Teacher Education at the University of San Francisco. Patrick’s interdisciplinary research on humanizing education intersects radical democratic analysis, critical pedagogy, and health science research. Patrick pursues these areas of research to improve teacher quality, capacity, and retention, as well as to inform policies and practices impacting urban schools and communities.

---

Yolanda Sealey-Ruiz (she/her)

Dr. Yolanda Sealey-Ruiz is an award-winning Professor at Teachers College, Columbia University. Her research focuses on racial literacy in teacher education, Black girl literacies, and Black and Latinx male high school students. A sought-after speaker on issues of race, culturally responsive pedagogy, and diversity, Sealey-Ruiz works with K-12 and higher education school communities to increase their racial literacy knowledge and move toward more equitable school experiences for their Black and Latinx students.

---

Zeruiah Buchanan (she/her) 

Zeruiah is a doctoral student in the Epidemiology Department at University of Washington. She began her journey in this work during her prior position as a suicide prevention epidemiologist. Her former education includes psychology, Africana studies, community health education, epidemiology, and biostatistics. Her experience as a Black Queer Hard of Hearing Woman in America and educational background has moved her to be an activist and advocate for marginalized communities that are often made invisible. It is a personal and professional goal for her to promote work surrounding mental health, health equity, cultural humility and liberation.

---

Previous SCRR Institutes

Archived Materials from Our Past Institutes

• Materials from our 2021-2022 Institutes can be found on our “Mending our Wounds” resource page.
• Winter 2023 Institute Materials

In the words of the participants from previous SCRR Winter and Summer Institutes

“This SCRR program allowed me to reconnect with myself, identify and take time for my own self-care, and be reinforced that it is necessary for personal reflection and care in order to care for others.”

“I feel as if something has been poured into my spirit; restored…”

“Excellent speakers and day.”