Talking about social justice is not the same as doing it. No one can simply negotiate stressful diversity encounters by reading a lot. Navigating the stress of racial conflict or conversation is not easy. This workshop will demonstrate ways administrators, teachers, parents and students can manage racial stress in conversations through racial socialization and literacy. We will practice mindfulness approaches to identify and notice reactions to stressful racial and other diversity encounters that may interfere with learning and teaching. Participants will: 1. Learn the research support and health benefits for engaging racial encounters directly. 2. Increase engagement rather than avoidant-racial coping thoughts, emotions, and behaviors during racially stressful moments within schooling relationships. 3. Improve participant understanding of in-the-moment racial stress reduction strategies. 4. Practice (in pairs) racial literacy strategies of storytelling and emotional regulation as introduction to how it is possible to increase skill usage and competency by mimicking real life encounters. 5. Increase awareness of how thoughts, body reactions, and feelings influence racial decision-making. 6. Observe and practice the CLCBE (calculate, locate, communicate, breath, and exhale) racial literacy mindfulness strategy for use in stressful schooling relationships. 7. Ignite discussion in how racial literacy strategies taught can be applied to other identity and intersectional diversity encounters that are proximal and systemic.
Constance E. Clayton Professor of Urban Education and Professor of Africana Studies, University of Pennsylvania
Dr. Howard Stevenson is the Constance Clayton Professor of Urban Education, Professor of Africana Studies, in the Human Development & Quantitative Methods Division of the Graduate School of Education at the University of Pennsylvania. He is the Executive Director of the Racial Em... Read More →
