Afternoon Workshop Descriptions

WORKSHOP A-1

Photovoice: A tool for engaging in critical investigation
During this hands on workshop, participants will learn the fundamentals of implementing a photovoice project from beginning to end. Participants will also explore the ways in which photovoice can advance student voices and the creation of a participatory classroom environment. Workshop participants will leave with an understanding of how to adapt a photovoice approach to the population they work with.

WORKSHOP A-2

Understanding and Embracing Multicultural Parenting Practices
Participants will engage in a variety of activities that will provide them the opportunity to understand multicultural parenting. Participants will leave empowered with strategies they can incorporate in their practice to be more inclusive of diverse families.

WORKSHOP A-3

Why is My Classroom Unsafe? Addressing Strategies for Reflective Pedagogy
This workshop will explore microaggression theory, types of microaggressions and the psychological impact on immigrant youth in schools. The frameworks cultural humility and structural competency will be explored as strategies to develop reflective pedagogy and safe school climates.

WORKSHOP A-4

The Process of Solidifying Presence & Support with Students, Families, Community and Within Your School Building
This course is designed to provide you with a wealth of information on how to execute a positive existence within your school building. We will discuss ways to utilize interventions on cultivating a healthy student and staff relationship. You will be empowered to become creative in ways that you can effectively engage yours students at the same time during this process. School Social Workers will be provided with a handout that will be formalized to assist in creating their plan of action. There will be healthy dialogue centered on social worker’s strength and personal challenges. Social workers will be able to overcome these challenges by utilizing a strength-based effort by working around these potential barriers. There will be an Question and Answer at the end of the segment to provide the opportunity for social workers to be able to feel comfortable and to be able to learn ways on how to make a bigger impact within their school. This workshop will create an opportunity for social workers to be able to devise a plan of action to take back to their specific school(s). Some of the strategies in effectively working with students are being patient, welcoming and helpful. Some of the strategies in effectively working with administrators are by involving yourself within school committees and providing ways that you can help promote healthy intervention measures.

WORKSHOP A-5

Exploring the Multifaceted Reasons Contributing to School Absenteeism and Truancy
Truancy and excessive absenteeism are shared problems and concerns within our educational system and are not new in their nature. There are multiple reasons children do not attend school, and many of these factors are inter-related and include long-term issues. Social workers are trained to understand the person in their environment, and school social workers use this training to address how individual, family and community risk factors contribute to poor school attendance. School social workers have an obligation to not only understand the environments our students come from, but also to educate staff within school settings how this may affect attendance and the overall learning experience for students.

In the age of converging child mental health needs with educational needs, it is imperative that school social workers embrace cultural humility and encourage educators towards understanding and approaching the complexities of students and their families with the same humility.

WORKSHOP A-6

Mindfulness and Race: Using Mindfulness to address Implicit Bias
The Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning (CASEL) defines social and emotional learning (SEL) as “The process through which children and adults acquire and effectively apply the knowledge, attitudes, and skills necessary to understand and manage emotions, set and achieve positive goals, feel and show empathy for others, establish and maintain positive relationships, and make responsible decisions.

In a school setting SEL can be defined as teaching students how to treat themselves and others in a respectful, compassionate and supportive ways. Mindfulness as a practice encourages us to take a closer look at being human. With clear and caring vision, we look deeply into ourselves. We explore the basis of our actions, relationships, and the systems within which we live in order to learn how to make best use of our lives.

In this workshop participants will use mindfulness to explore implicit bias and the impact bias has on our students, families and communities in which they live. School Social Workers will draw on their own implicit bias as a way to inform their practice and bring awareness to privileges, and assumptions.

In order to be effective in our work we must engage in difficult conversation as a way to reflect on the various ways we identify socially, and how these identities become visible at different times. Also reflect on how these identities may impact the way our students perceive us and how we may implicitly perceive your students. As social workers, it is our expectation that every student is taught with a social equity lens. This begins with deepening our awareness of how our own bias impacts our interactions with our students and the communities in which they live.

Participants will engage in meditation, mindful listening, journal reflection writing and whole group discussion to reach the above listed learning objectives.

WORKSHOP A-7

Cultural Humility: An Opening Dialogue For Practice in the Schools
To provide context for the critical need of this approach and to increase the understanding and practice of cultural humility between faculty, staff, and students for educational equity.

WORKSHOP A-8

Effective and Evidence-Based Family Engagement
In this workshop, we will review the literature and discuss ways to engage families effectively. We will discuss different types of families and explore ways we can demonstrate authenticity and sensitivity when engaging with families. We aim to understand cultural humility and research-based strategies.

WORKSHOP A-9

“I’m not a problem student; this is what Black burnout looks like”: Incorporating therapeutic methods into the classroom to address racial battle/trauma fatigue with youth
In our 75 minute workshop, we will be learning about the ways that Racial Fatigue/Trauma Syndrome and Post-Traumatic Slave Syndrome shows up with the youth we work with while sensitizing our approaches to appropriately and supportively meet the needs of the students. Participants will learn together using didactic processing circles, reading through succinct material that participants will leave with and work together as a village to develop strategies to equip ourselves and our youth with restorative tools.

WORKSHOP A-10

Can Motivational Interviewing be a Tool of Cultural Humility?
Since school social workers mean the difference between vulnerable students and families receiving needed supports or falling through the cracks, they must master the competencies related to cultural humility. This workshop focuses on harnessing three central aspects of the Motivational Interviewing approach to autonomy, collaboration and evocation (ACE) to strengthen cultural humility and better serve students and their families within and across their communities.

WORKSHOP A-11

Planting Awareness: Cultivating Ourselves and our Schools
Through this SEED introductory workshop, participants will examine multicultural scholarship and personal experiences to inform and deepen their understanding of and interactions with each other and their students as well as their families. Participants will bravely examine their multiple identities through intentionally structured group conversation to create effective learning environments and facilitate thinking in a way that includes input from all voices.

WORKSHOP A-12

Embodied and Interpersonal Experiences of Gender Diverse Youth
This workshop will enable school social workers the opportunity to experience the world of students who identify on the transgender spectrum or are gender nonconforming through the lens of research, anecdotes, and practice. With varied activities and realistic suggestions, participants will gain cultural humility regarding their own and others genders.

WORKSHOP A-13

Lessons from Working with Unaccompanied Minors
Presenters will provide a definition and demographic overview of the unaccompanied minor population to include countries of origin, age ranges, cultures, and common health and mental health issues, as well as describe the four phases of the immigration journey: pre-migration, migration, detention, and post-release. Presenters will examine the challenges these children face in care as well as when they integrate into the community. We will use this discussion to help prepare school social workers, uniquely positioned to support these vulnerable children, for the common challenges of working with unaccompanied children and their sponsors as they enter the community as well as ongoing challenges this community faces from a lens of cultural humility.

WORKSHOP A-14

Supporting ELL students: The role of school social workers
The goal of school social worker is to help all students- including English language learners (ELL)-thrive. ELL students face many challenges including acculturation, language barriers, pre-immigration or immigration related trauma, separation and losses related to immigration and economic and resettlement difficulties. Furthermore, these students must contend with the social and structural inequalities, discrimination, and racism that further complicate their adjustment in the host society. In 2015-2016 school year, there were 248,284 ELL students in New York State, making up 8.8% of the student population. ELL students are a diverse group but Spanish- and Chinese-speaking students make up the largest number of ELL students in the state. The ELL students come with varied levels of needs. Based on the experiences of working with many ELL students and their families, this workshop will explore the following areas using case studies: Assessing the needs of ELL students; Building trust and connection with ELL students and their families; Culturally sensitive social work practice; Changing the culture of the school to embrace ELL and immigrant families.

WORKSHOP B-15

How to Have Courageous Conversations
In an interactive workshop, attendees will focus on the importance of utilizing Cultural Humility when engaging with students/clients. Educational settings extend learning beyond the teacher-student model. Social Workers are responsible for mutually benefitting from the learning experience. Imparting skills, and alliance with students/clients, clients are able to provide insight into their personal experiences, identities, and perspectives from a firsthand understanding. Social workers are allowed to grow in their practice and skill set by having conversation that can be sometimes difficult and prove to be a challenge in an education setting. Cultural Humility will assist in cultivating genuine therapeutic alliance, and pushing conversations forward for growth.

WORKSHOP B-16

Building Cultural Humility: Social Work in Schools
Some of the topics the course will discuss include, the importance of building cultural competency, understanding the diverse client, recognizing biases within myself & others, and building self-awareness to build the therapeutic relationship. In addition, the following topics will be highlighted in discussing the presenting problems for the majority of students working with a school social worker; trauma, absentee parents, incarcerated parents, parents struggling with substance abuse issues, bullying, self-mutilating behavior, abuse, teen pregnancy, anger issues, difficulty at home, etc.

WORKSHOP B-17

WORKSHOP B-18

Casting the “Bad Student”: Using Theatre to Understand Our Assumptions
This interactive, trauma-informed workshop will harness the power of theatre to create opportunity for increased self-awareness and empathy-based learning. Through fun theatre games and targeted role play, participants will investigate their own preconceived assumptions and how they may unconsciously be casting certain youth as the bad student.

WORKSHOP B-19

WORKSHOP B-20

Mindfulness for the School Social Worker: Acknowledging yourself
By developing self-awareness through the use of mindfulness practices, school social workers can improve their ability to manage their various roles and identities in their daily tasks. By acknowledging ourselves, our identities, and our positionality in our daily tasks and responsibilities as social workers, we are able to improve our ability to serve others with compassion while not compromising our own self-worth or boundaries. Mindfulness practices improve our self-awareness and bring us into the moment so that we can be where our feet our and be intentional in our role.

This workshop will discuss mindfulness practices that can be integrated into the social worker’s clinical role and personal practice. This workshop aims to engage participants to be intentional in their clinical practice by acknowledging the multifaceted identity of school social workers and how this intentionality can enhance our ability to support the populations we serve.

This will be an interactive seminar where we will engage in different practices.

WORKSHOP B-21

WORKSHOP B-22

School Social Work and its Ethical Challenges
This workshop will review challenges to ethical social work practice in schools and building cultural humility and social justice. Interventions, tools and decision making skills will be discussed on how to resolve such dilemmas and build cultural humility practices in schools involving students & families, teachers, and school administration.

WORKSHOP B-23

I’m not a problem student; this is what Black burnout looks like”: Incorporating therapeutic methods into the classroom to address racial battle/trauma fatigue with youth
In our 75 minute workshop, we will be learning about the ways that Racial Fatigue/Trauma Syndrome and Post-Traumatic Slave Syndrome shows up with the youth we work with while sensitizing our approaches to appropriately and supportively meet the needs of the students. Participants will learn together using didactic processing circles, reading through succinct material that participants will leave with and work together as a village to develop strategies to equip ourselves and our youth with restorative tools.

WORKSHOP B-24

WORKSHOP B-25

WORKSHOP B-26

Student Created, Student Centered: A story of LGBT student power
Students will describe QUAD and their accomplishments in shifting school culture by organizing a Gender and Sexuality Alliance. QUAD organized the first and largest school-wide, student-led, all day event- the Day of Silence. Over 150 students pledged to be silent to raise awareness for LGBT silencing. QUAD students will discuss the impact the group has had on them personally and school-wide.

WORKSHOP B-27

A Lesson on Cultural Humility: Learning With and From Students in Temporary Housing
New York City middle school students living in temporary housing will co-present a video they created about the struggles they face and the educational rights they have under the McKinny Vento Act. The documentary co-facilitators and executive director of the office serving students in temporary housing will give an overview of the services offered and background on the goals and process of the project.

WORKSHOP B-28

“Is this job really for me?” – Racial Trauma and social workers of color in educational settings
Social workers of color often times experience racial trauma in educational settings, which impact their work with the population that they work with, which include other staff, parents, but most of all the students. This trauma goes beyond being just vicarious/secondary, which they may develop with their students, but deeper in regards to varying forms of racism that they may experience in the educational setting. Often times, social workers of color experience moments that not only provoke rage within them, but leave them feeling powerless and voiceless to impact the change they truly want to see within the systems that they conduct their work. Consequently, this may disempower them in feeling adequate to perform their roles to their full capabilities. The purpose of this workshop will be tiered into three parts: 1) provide a brave space for social workers of color to share their experiences, 2) to assist in building true allyship with white counterparts within their individual education settings through strategies that promote safe and brave spaces for continued conversations around racism within educational settings and last 3) to empower social workers of color to continue their work and bring awareness to white social workers and equip them with the tools to utilize their privilege in support and strengthen racial equity for their POC counterparts.