Description: Paraprofessionals and support staff are essential partners in creating safe, inclusive school environments. This hands-on session affirms their unique strengths and equips them with practical tools to build meaningful relationships, support student regulation, and navigate challenging moments with empathy and understanding. Participants will explore real-life scenarios and gain strategies that affirm both student dignity and staff well-being.
Participants will walk away with:
Understanding of how trauma and stress impact student behavior and relationships
Responsive strategies to support students with consistency, care, and cultural awareness
Restorative tools to build trust, repair harm, and promote mutual respect
Techniques to sustain personal well-being and cultivate emotional resilience in their roles
Students and educators alike hold powerful stories of resilience. This session guides participants in advancing from trauma-aware practices to healing-centered engagement that celebrates strength and community. Through reflective inquiry and actionable tools, participants will learn how to co-create learning environments that are emotionally safe, culturally grounded, and driven by collective well-being.
Participants will walk away with:
Clarity on the continuum of trauma-informed, trauma-invested, and healing-centered practices
Tools to create predictable, caring environments that support regulation and connection
Strategies to recognize and elevate the strengths of students and their communities
Action steps to embed healing-centered practices into daily routines and schoolwide systems
Description: Too often, SEL is applied without recognizing students' cultural assets and lived experiences. This session reclaims SEL as a vehicle for equity by centering identity, agency, and authenticity. Educators will explore the foundations of Transformative SEL (tSEL), reflect on how their own identities influence relationships, and develop strategies to honor the cultural wisdom and emotional strengths students bring to school.
Participants will walk away with:
A clear understanding of Transformative SEL and its equity-centered foundations
Insight into how students’ cultural identities enrich SEL practices
Reflective tools to explore educator identity and relational dynamics
Practices that foster inclusive, identity-affirming SEL rooted in community and connection
Belonging is foundational to meaningful learning. This session invites educators to reimagine classrooms as inclusive communities of care where every learner’s identity is recognized as a source of strength. Grounded in Transformative Social-Emotional Learning (tSEL), trauma-informed practices, and healing-centered engagement, participants will explore the relationship between identity, well-being, and academic success, with a focus on dismantling barriers and affirming student voice.
