6th Annual Conference - Creating a Peaceful School
was held on Saturday, February 4, 2017
at Northgate High School in Walnut Creek
This year's Topic: Alternatives to Suspension and Expulsion
We shared ways that we can use our school and
classroom practices to support students and their needs,
rather than send them home or expel them from our schools
KEYNOTE SPEAKER:
|
BREAKOUT SESSION PRESENTERS INCLUDED:
Arash Daneshzadeh, Ed.D., Lecturer, University of San Francisco
Associate Director-Urban Strategies Council
“The Healing Component”: What do Hip Hop Education, Linked Learning, and Restorative Justice have in common?
This session uprooted deficit-based practices that plague standard forms of school climate reform and other alternatives to draconian discipline. As well, participants engaged in an interactive reflection on best practices and curriculum-- that distinguish hip hop pedagogy, indigenous incarnations of (Tier 1) restorative justice, and community based learning projects that reorient school norms towards equity, student culture, and healing. Participants reviewed a case study from a local public Bay Area school that has successfully integrated community action projects and music theory, with restorative healing components.
About the presenter: See above, Keynote Speaker
John S. Marvin
Former teacher with Mount Diablo Unified School District
The Emotional Brain
Much of what we ask students to do in any regular classroom - sit still, be quiet, do fine motor stuff - goes against the nature of most young humans. Result? Frustration, impatience, misbehavior. This workshop centered on the emotional parts of the brain and how they affect our thinking and behavioral processes without our knowledge, and how we can adjust the classroom environment to better serve all students. Handouts and reading lists were provided.
About the presenter: John Marvin became interested in the workings of the human brain a few years ago when he was diagnosed with Adult ADHD and Anxiety Disorder in his late fifties. As a result, he researched the brain and neuroscience, and began teaching middle school students, parents, and faculty about the brain’s direct and mostly unknown impact on our everyday lives. Mr. Marvin taught middle school, high school, college and adult education classes. He has been awarded Outstanding Educator awards in Columbia, Missouri, and Pleasant Hill, California.
Marvin has presented at several of the Creating a Peaceful School Conferences to rave reviews and has presented to faculties, staffs, students, and parents on the topic of Brain Science. We are thrilled to welcome him back!
Marcia Rayene, M.A., Principal at Mindful Business,
and Inner Ally Breakthrough Coaching, affiliated with Inner Explorer
Mindfulness ~ cultivating focus, calmness, and learning readiness to support healthy students and teachers.
Participants learned how neuroscience explains what happens during reactivity and the benefits of mindfulness in helping us reintegrate the triune brain. We will experience a few mindfulness practices, which offer examples of how to cultivate self-management and resiliency. Mindfulness in schools results in better grades, fewer discipline issues, and less stress for educators and their students. It prepares students to learn and creates transformational energy within the educational system and beyond.
About the presenter: Rayene crafted her current coaching and educational work to leverage her deep knowledge of communication, neuroscience, organization development and psychology, neuro-linguistics, and mindfulness. She is a transformational coach with a proven track record of supporting her clients to upgrade their thinking and behavior, cultivate better relationship capacity, and take inspired congruent action from the inside out. She has worked with children and teens, as well as in the corporate and non-profit sectors and has co-authored mindfulness curricula for K-5 students and for adults. She has presented to many hundreds of educators on the topics of applied neuroscience and mindfulness practices, plus communication, conflict resolution, and mediation practices.
Affiliated with http://innerexplorer.org
Alexander Lim, Program Coordinator, joined by two staff and three youth presenters/leaders -
Teens on Target, Youth Alive - Oakland
The Root Causes of Violence
This session introduced TNT, the concept of violence prevention, and how youth can become advocates for preventing violence. It was facilitated by 3 TNT youth leaders accompanied by 1-2 staff. They explored the root causes of violence and the concept that violence is preventable. With the help of crowd participants, they collaboratively share ways to help prevent violence within our own communities and how to identify different forms of violence.
About the presenters: Lim has been supporting young people like our TNT youth leaders since he was still practically a kid himself. He started as a freshman at San Francisco State, mentoring middle school students through San Francisco Promise. Later he worked with Asian youth through the Aim High summer program, helping them research and document their families’ immigration stories. At the East Bay Asian Youth Center he provided young people with healthy lifestyle information and academic support. Alex says he keeps a particular eye on youth who might otherwise go unnoticed. “It’s easy,” he says, “for some young people to go under the radar.” TNT works with students growing up and going to school in neighborhoods where violence is chronic, where it’s not unusual to lose a loved one or a classmate to the gun. If it wasn’t for adults like Alex and programs like TNT, many young people in these East Oakland neighborhoods would go under the radar of care; the tension and trauma of their everyday lives would otherwise go unaddressed. Instead, these students join a program where their life experiences are seen as vital, where they are challenged and encouraged to live safer and healthier lives and to participate as advocates and violence prevention educators in the movement to create a safer city.
http://www.youthalive.org/
Theresa Guy Moran, Independent Consultant and Sima Savdharia, Teacher and Master's candidate - East Point Peace Academy, Oakland
Educators answering Dr. King's request
This session provided a brief overview of Kingian Nonviolence - a curriculum developed from the teachings of Dr. Martin Luther King - and explored how it can be applied in the classroom. One school in Chicago used this to reduce the rate of violence by 70% in one year. Participants learned how to combat the institutionalization of violence by institutionalizing a philosophy known as the “antidote to violence” and the “final marching orders of Dr. King.”
About the presenters: East Point Peace Academy takes Dr. King’s final marching orders seriously and see educators as key to the institutionalization of his philosophy and the learnings from the work of his many nonviolent colleagues and leaders. East Point facilitators include teachers, and we have presented at CAPS as well as collaborated with teachers in Oakland and San Francisco to facilitate workshops for them and for their students. Sima Savdharia was unable to attend.
http://eastpointpeace.org/
Dan Reynolds, CTA Representative and English Teacher
History and Implications of AB 420
REYNOLDS WAS UNABLE TO ATTEND DUE TO ILLNESS
Learn about the latest in a series of influential local and state reforms and milestones to reform harsh, disciplinary practices in California. Assembly Bill 420 places limits on the use of school discipline for the catch-all category known as “willful defiance,” which also includes minor school disruption. Willful defiance accounts for 43% of suspensions issued to California students, and is the suspension offense category with the most significant racial disparities.
About the presenter: Reynolds just transitioned to a position with the CTA after 17 years teaching high school English at Mt. Diablo High School. He has advocated for human rights throughout his career. He successfully lobbied the state of California to allocate more than $4,000,000 to students in need. He also created curriculum for a year-long social science course in Human Rights Education that is now being taught at high schools across the Mt. Diablo USD. Dan served as the committee chair for the CTA State Council of Education Civil Rights and as chair authored CTA’s policy on dismantling the school to prison pipeline. He recently won the Intellectual Freedom Award from the National Council of Teachers of English. Dan is also the board chair for the Mt. Diablo Peace and Justice Center and head of its Education Committee, responsible for organizing this conference.
Kaleo Ching and Elise Dirlam-Ching, Qigong and Meditation Instructors
Qigong for Peace and Healing
In this session presenters offered practices in Qigong (energy cultivation), an ancient form of healing energy work that is based in Chinese Medicine. Participants learned how to use Qigong to enhance energy and release stress. They learned how to feel energy in self, others, and the environment, thus deepening interrelatedness and connectedness to one another and the earth. They experienced Qigong meditation for wellness, centering, and grounding.
About the presenters: Elise worked as a nurse for 25 years in the SF County Jail. Kaleo has taught for Haight Ashbury Free Clinic in the jails. Both presenters have taught for 25 years at John F. Kennedy University and are now teaching workshops for the School of Applied Theology, San Damiano Retreat Center, Walnut Creek Civic Center, and Acalanes Adult Education. For the past 30 years, they've taught numerous workshops in high schools, universities, PhD programs, and healing centers such as the Acupressure Institute. They have also taught youth at: three annual retreats for St Mary’s High School Students (Berkeley); maskmaking workshops in various Bay Area high Schools for the Oakland Festival at the Lakes' 1000 Faces Project; and 3 yearly weeklong maskmaking courses for Idyllwild School of Music and the Arts.
Katherine Koch, Concord High School Teacher
Work Experience Coordinator, Contra Costa County Workforce Development Board
Earn and Learn
Presenting Positive Alternatives to Youth,
Child Labor Laws - Accessing Employment Opportunities
This session provided alternatives to youth with a discussion on child labor laws and the connections that can be made between school and career exploration. Participants learned how students may access immediate job opportunities, internships and how they may receive school credit while working.
About the presenter: Koch has been teaching in the Mount Diablo Unified School District for 42 years. Her passion is to help students find a career path and give them the tools to accomplish their goals. She is on the Executive Board of the California Association of Work Experience Educators as well as an independent contractor with the Contra Costa County Workforce Development Board/ Earn & Learn/ DGI. She presents to local Parent/Faculty Committees and community organizations as well as CTE Conferences.
Adrienne Lopez, American Studies Teacher, Certified Mindfulness Educator, NVC Practitioner
Mindfulness Based Cognitive Practices for Communicating Peacefully in our Schools
LOPEZ WAS UNABLE TO ATTEND DUE TO ILLNESS
Communication sits at the center of our lives. More specifically, our “felt “experience shapes the space of signification that is central to self-understanding and authentic communication. Language is the instrument we use to negotiate our relationship to ourselves and others—both personally and socially. Through cultivating a greater awareness of our own embodied experience, mindfulness promotes empathetic listening and speaking. Participants will receive handouts and practices utilizing mindfulness in relation to Non-Violent Communication Strategies.
About the presenter: Adrienne teaches American Studies at Valley View Middle in the Mount Diablo Unified School District. She is also a PBIS School Coordinator. It is Adrienne’s purpose and passion to support communities in creating healthy, productive, and reflective ways of interacting and communicating. As a presenter at the Peaceful Schools Conference last year she was well received and she’s excited to have another opportunity to participate.
Amy MacClain, Training Director, Lead Facilitator, and SEL Specialist with Soul Shoppe
Beyond Discipline - Creating the Culture that Eliminates Expulsion
Participants learned practical strategies for creating socially and emotionally safe school climates in the classrooms, halls and on the playgrounds of your schools. There's plenty of research out there showing that Positive Behavior Interventions make a difference, but not enough hands-on, how-to strategies that are successful in changing school culture and climate. They walked away with a concrete plan for moving beyond discipline to create an engaged, empathetic and empowered student body!
About the presenter: Amy is the Chief Synthesizer, Training Director and Social Emotional Learning Specialist for Soul Shoppe. As a licensed facilitator, Amy has presented to over 100,000 students, teachers and parents. Amy has a BA in Psychology from the University of California, San Diego, and has done extensive post-graduate training in SEL, Developmental Neuro-Science, Somatic Experiencing, Meditation, Restorative Justice and Social Justice. She has worked with and supported global organizations like The Pachamama Alliance and Music In Schools Today, consulting on projects and curriculum development, and coaches parents on how to interrupt and handle bullying.
Soul Shoppe works with many schools in MDUSD, WCSD, MUSD and beyond. We believe it’s a critical time to be helping teachers and administrators learn how to cultivate safe Social and Emotional Learning environments at their schools to prevent bullying, handle conflict, raise academic capacity and to grow the socially and emotionally empowered leaders of tomorrow! We've presented at many conferences and to hundreds of elementary school, middle school and college staffs over the last 16 years. See www.soulshoppe.com for more information.
Rev. Marsha Flagg, Hospitality House Ministry and Elby Salazar, Outreach Program Educator
Peaceful Communication Skills
REV. FLAGG WAS UNABLE TO ATTEND
This presentation is based in multicultural, interfaith, communication research study. Peaceful Communication creates a trusting environment, healing for those who have been hurt, and a peaceful way of communicating for all. This presentation will give you ideas to help your students defuse stressful feelings and situations. Participants will gain the knowledge to overcome injustice using successfully peaceful communication skills.
About the presenters: Rev. Flagg has a Masters in Theology from the interdisciplinary seminary Claremont School of Theology. She has advanced training in Clinical Pastoral Education and is an ordained Pastor who has worked as a Facilitator and Trainer for a Volunteer Organization entitled Crisis Response Spiritual Support Team. She is currently serving as Congregational Church Pastor. Salazar is an independent consultant with the San Ramon Valley School District with serving as an Early Childhood Educator Specialist, Education Consultant for Higher Education and an Outreach Program Coordinator NHNR.
Arash Daneshzadeh, Ed.D., Lecturer, University of San Francisco
Associate Director-Urban Strategies Council
“The Healing Component”: What do Hip Hop Education, Linked Learning, and Restorative Justice have in common?
This session uprooted deficit-based practices that plague standard forms of school climate reform and other alternatives to draconian discipline. As well, participants engaged in an interactive reflection on best practices and curriculum-- that distinguish hip hop pedagogy, indigenous incarnations of (Tier 1) restorative justice, and community based learning projects that reorient school norms towards equity, student culture, and healing. Participants reviewed a case study from a local public Bay Area school that has successfully integrated community action projects and music theory, with restorative healing components.
About the presenter: See above, Keynote Speaker
John S. Marvin
Former teacher with Mount Diablo Unified School District
The Emotional Brain
Much of what we ask students to do in any regular classroom - sit still, be quiet, do fine motor stuff - goes against the nature of most young humans. Result? Frustration, impatience, misbehavior. This workshop centered on the emotional parts of the brain and how they affect our thinking and behavioral processes without our knowledge, and how we can adjust the classroom environment to better serve all students. Handouts and reading lists were provided.
About the presenter: John Marvin became interested in the workings of the human brain a few years ago when he was diagnosed with Adult ADHD and Anxiety Disorder in his late fifties. As a result, he researched the brain and neuroscience, and began teaching middle school students, parents, and faculty about the brain’s direct and mostly unknown impact on our everyday lives. Mr. Marvin taught middle school, high school, college and adult education classes. He has been awarded Outstanding Educator awards in Columbia, Missouri, and Pleasant Hill, California.
Marvin has presented at several of the Creating a Peaceful School Conferences to rave reviews and has presented to faculties, staffs, students, and parents on the topic of Brain Science. We are thrilled to welcome him back!
Marcia Rayene, M.A., Principal at Mindful Business,
and Inner Ally Breakthrough Coaching, affiliated with Inner Explorer
Mindfulness ~ cultivating focus, calmness, and learning readiness to support healthy students and teachers.
Participants learned how neuroscience explains what happens during reactivity and the benefits of mindfulness in helping us reintegrate the triune brain. We will experience a few mindfulness practices, which offer examples of how to cultivate self-management and resiliency. Mindfulness in schools results in better grades, fewer discipline issues, and less stress for educators and their students. It prepares students to learn and creates transformational energy within the educational system and beyond.
About the presenter: Rayene crafted her current coaching and educational work to leverage her deep knowledge of communication, neuroscience, organization development and psychology, neuro-linguistics, and mindfulness. She is a transformational coach with a proven track record of supporting her clients to upgrade their thinking and behavior, cultivate better relationship capacity, and take inspired congruent action from the inside out. She has worked with children and teens, as well as in the corporate and non-profit sectors and has co-authored mindfulness curricula for K-5 students and for adults. She has presented to many hundreds of educators on the topics of applied neuroscience and mindfulness practices, plus communication, conflict resolution, and mediation practices.
Affiliated with http://innerexplorer.org
Alexander Lim, Program Coordinator, joined by two staff and three youth presenters/leaders -
Teens on Target, Youth Alive - Oakland
The Root Causes of Violence
This session introduced TNT, the concept of violence prevention, and how youth can become advocates for preventing violence. It was facilitated by 3 TNT youth leaders accompanied by 1-2 staff. They explored the root causes of violence and the concept that violence is preventable. With the help of crowd participants, they collaboratively share ways to help prevent violence within our own communities and how to identify different forms of violence.
About the presenters: Lim has been supporting young people like our TNT youth leaders since he was still practically a kid himself. He started as a freshman at San Francisco State, mentoring middle school students through San Francisco Promise. Later he worked with Asian youth through the Aim High summer program, helping them research and document their families’ immigration stories. At the East Bay Asian Youth Center he provided young people with healthy lifestyle information and academic support. Alex says he keeps a particular eye on youth who might otherwise go unnoticed. “It’s easy,” he says, “for some young people to go under the radar.” TNT works with students growing up and going to school in neighborhoods where violence is chronic, where it’s not unusual to lose a loved one or a classmate to the gun. If it wasn’t for adults like Alex and programs like TNT, many young people in these East Oakland neighborhoods would go under the radar of care; the tension and trauma of their everyday lives would otherwise go unaddressed. Instead, these students join a program where their life experiences are seen as vital, where they are challenged and encouraged to live safer and healthier lives and to participate as advocates and violence prevention educators in the movement to create a safer city.
http://www.youthalive.org/
Theresa Guy Moran, Independent Consultant and Sima Savdharia, Teacher and Master's candidate - East Point Peace Academy, Oakland
Educators answering Dr. King's request
This session provided a brief overview of Kingian Nonviolence - a curriculum developed from the teachings of Dr. Martin Luther King - and explored how it can be applied in the classroom. One school in Chicago used this to reduce the rate of violence by 70% in one year. Participants learned how to combat the institutionalization of violence by institutionalizing a philosophy known as the “antidote to violence” and the “final marching orders of Dr. King.”
About the presenters: East Point Peace Academy takes Dr. King’s final marching orders seriously and see educators as key to the institutionalization of his philosophy and the learnings from the work of his many nonviolent colleagues and leaders. East Point facilitators include teachers, and we have presented at CAPS as well as collaborated with teachers in Oakland and San Francisco to facilitate workshops for them and for their students. Sima Savdharia was unable to attend.
http://eastpointpeace.org/
Dan Reynolds, CTA Representative and English Teacher
History and Implications of AB 420
REYNOLDS WAS UNABLE TO ATTEND DUE TO ILLNESS
Learn about the latest in a series of influential local and state reforms and milestones to reform harsh, disciplinary practices in California. Assembly Bill 420 places limits on the use of school discipline for the catch-all category known as “willful defiance,” which also includes minor school disruption. Willful defiance accounts for 43% of suspensions issued to California students, and is the suspension offense category with the most significant racial disparities.
About the presenter: Reynolds just transitioned to a position with the CTA after 17 years teaching high school English at Mt. Diablo High School. He has advocated for human rights throughout his career. He successfully lobbied the state of California to allocate more than $4,000,000 to students in need. He also created curriculum for a year-long social science course in Human Rights Education that is now being taught at high schools across the Mt. Diablo USD. Dan served as the committee chair for the CTA State Council of Education Civil Rights and as chair authored CTA’s policy on dismantling the school to prison pipeline. He recently won the Intellectual Freedom Award from the National Council of Teachers of English. Dan is also the board chair for the Mt. Diablo Peace and Justice Center and head of its Education Committee, responsible for organizing this conference.
Kaleo Ching and Elise Dirlam-Ching, Qigong and Meditation Instructors
Qigong for Peace and Healing
In this session presenters offered practices in Qigong (energy cultivation), an ancient form of healing energy work that is based in Chinese Medicine. Participants learned how to use Qigong to enhance energy and release stress. They learned how to feel energy in self, others, and the environment, thus deepening interrelatedness and connectedness to one another and the earth. They experienced Qigong meditation for wellness, centering, and grounding.
About the presenters: Elise worked as a nurse for 25 years in the SF County Jail. Kaleo has taught for Haight Ashbury Free Clinic in the jails. Both presenters have taught for 25 years at John F. Kennedy University and are now teaching workshops for the School of Applied Theology, San Damiano Retreat Center, Walnut Creek Civic Center, and Acalanes Adult Education. For the past 30 years, they've taught numerous workshops in high schools, universities, PhD programs, and healing centers such as the Acupressure Institute. They have also taught youth at: three annual retreats for St Mary’s High School Students (Berkeley); maskmaking workshops in various Bay Area high Schools for the Oakland Festival at the Lakes' 1000 Faces Project; and 3 yearly weeklong maskmaking courses for Idyllwild School of Music and the Arts.
Katherine Koch, Concord High School Teacher
Work Experience Coordinator, Contra Costa County Workforce Development Board
Earn and Learn
Presenting Positive Alternatives to Youth,
Child Labor Laws - Accessing Employment Opportunities
This session provided alternatives to youth with a discussion on child labor laws and the connections that can be made between school and career exploration. Participants learned how students may access immediate job opportunities, internships and how they may receive school credit while working.
About the presenter: Koch has been teaching in the Mount Diablo Unified School District for 42 years. Her passion is to help students find a career path and give them the tools to accomplish their goals. She is on the Executive Board of the California Association of Work Experience Educators as well as an independent contractor with the Contra Costa County Workforce Development Board/ Earn & Learn/ DGI. She presents to local Parent/Faculty Committees and community organizations as well as CTE Conferences.
Adrienne Lopez, American Studies Teacher, Certified Mindfulness Educator, NVC Practitioner
Mindfulness Based Cognitive Practices for Communicating Peacefully in our Schools
LOPEZ WAS UNABLE TO ATTEND DUE TO ILLNESS
Communication sits at the center of our lives. More specifically, our “felt “experience shapes the space of signification that is central to self-understanding and authentic communication. Language is the instrument we use to negotiate our relationship to ourselves and others—both personally and socially. Through cultivating a greater awareness of our own embodied experience, mindfulness promotes empathetic listening and speaking. Participants will receive handouts and practices utilizing mindfulness in relation to Non-Violent Communication Strategies.
About the presenter: Adrienne teaches American Studies at Valley View Middle in the Mount Diablo Unified School District. She is also a PBIS School Coordinator. It is Adrienne’s purpose and passion to support communities in creating healthy, productive, and reflective ways of interacting and communicating. As a presenter at the Peaceful Schools Conference last year she was well received and she’s excited to have another opportunity to participate.
Amy MacClain, Training Director, Lead Facilitator, and SEL Specialist with Soul Shoppe
Beyond Discipline - Creating the Culture that Eliminates Expulsion
Participants learned practical strategies for creating socially and emotionally safe school climates in the classrooms, halls and on the playgrounds of your schools. There's plenty of research out there showing that Positive Behavior Interventions make a difference, but not enough hands-on, how-to strategies that are successful in changing school culture and climate. They walked away with a concrete plan for moving beyond discipline to create an engaged, empathetic and empowered student body!
About the presenter: Amy is the Chief Synthesizer, Training Director and Social Emotional Learning Specialist for Soul Shoppe. As a licensed facilitator, Amy has presented to over 100,000 students, teachers and parents. Amy has a BA in Psychology from the University of California, San Diego, and has done extensive post-graduate training in SEL, Developmental Neuro-Science, Somatic Experiencing, Meditation, Restorative Justice and Social Justice. She has worked with and supported global organizations like The Pachamama Alliance and Music In Schools Today, consulting on projects and curriculum development, and coaches parents on how to interrupt and handle bullying.
Soul Shoppe works with many schools in MDUSD, WCSD, MUSD and beyond. We believe it’s a critical time to be helping teachers and administrators learn how to cultivate safe Social and Emotional Learning environments at their schools to prevent bullying, handle conflict, raise academic capacity and to grow the socially and emotionally empowered leaders of tomorrow! We've presented at many conferences and to hundreds of elementary school, middle school and college staffs over the last 16 years. See www.soulshoppe.com for more information.
Rev. Marsha Flagg, Hospitality House Ministry and Elby Salazar, Outreach Program Educator
Peaceful Communication Skills
REV. FLAGG WAS UNABLE TO ATTEND
This presentation is based in multicultural, interfaith, communication research study. Peaceful Communication creates a trusting environment, healing for those who have been hurt, and a peaceful way of communicating for all. This presentation will give you ideas to help your students defuse stressful feelings and situations. Participants will gain the knowledge to overcome injustice using successfully peaceful communication skills.
About the presenters: Rev. Flagg has a Masters in Theology from the interdisciplinary seminary Claremont School of Theology. She has advanced training in Clinical Pastoral Education and is an ordained Pastor who has worked as a Facilitator and Trainer for a Volunteer Organization entitled Crisis Response Spiritual Support Team. She is currently serving as Congregational Church Pastor. Salazar is an independent consultant with the San Ramon Valley School District with serving as an Early Childhood Educator Specialist, Education Consultant for Higher Education and an Outreach Program Coordinator NHNR.