Sofia Center Programs

How can you best manifest your unique capacities to create a vibrant and inspirational classroom? How might your superpowers light up your leadership? And what becomes possible for our students when we teach with deep awareness of their individual strengths? Rooted in the scholarship about strengths-based teaching and learning, this is an interactive and playful session devoted to identifying our educator superpowers and exploring how we can use them to transform our teaching and leading.

Educators As Artists is an interactive and vibrant session that invites insight and dynamic change by reconsidering our education practice as an art form. Inspired by the scholarship of Elliott Eisner and the teaching of Yo Yo Ma, participants are guided through a series of reflections and exercises that unearth the possibilities that come alive when we think of ourselves as artists. Together, we’ll explore: What emerges when we think of ourselves as artists and our education practice as an art form? How do we move beyond a singular focus on technical expertise and aspire to well-honed craft and artistry? What is our role as educators – like artists – to challenge, inspire, encourage change, and value beauty? Participants will reconnect with the passion of their work and tap into their creativity.

Social Justice in the Schoolhouse offers an ongoing series of topics focused on diversity, equity, and cultural competency in our schools. Led by colleagues with deep expertise as diversity practitioners, Social Justice in the School includes topics such as: How to Talk about Race in the Classroom; Decolonizing the Curriculum by Collaborating with Local Knowledge Keepers; Naming White Supremacy – A Way to Decenter Whiteness with Students and Colleagues, Microaggressions – Catch, Own, Repair; Supporting Transgender Students; and Social Justice Starts with You through Self-Liberation.

What is reflective practice, and why does it matter? What methods of reflective practice support disciplined, systematic exploration of our work? How can we build a reflective practice that is grounded in critical inquiry and that yields change and action? This workshop begins with an overview of the purposes and benefits of building and sustaining a professional reflective practice. We’ll explore why it is essential for us to develop mechanisms for examining our teaching and leading — all with the shared goal of growing our skill and wisdom as teachers and leaders.

From daily practices to annual celebrations, the rituals we enact play a profound role in defining school and organizational culture. They have power greater than words to message what we believe and value. And because of their power, they merit review. In this workshop, we explore the impact of well-considered rituals and the potential danger of those we enact without thinking. We explore which rituals serve learning, which reinforce a status quo that needs disrupting, which serve justice, and how a new ritual – whether small or large, individual or collective – might offer the transformation you and your school are seeking.

What does love have to do with teaching and leading? This workshop takes a deep dive into answering that question, guiding participants through an interactive exploration of what is possible when we center love in our education practice. Turning to the transformative scholarship of Paulo Freire, bell hooks, Cornel West, and others, we’ll consider how a pedagogy of love is critical for social justice work, compels us to teach and lead with courage, and can shape our daily practice in profound ways that open up possibility for ourselves and our students.

Research tells us that young people have significantly fewer hours of unstructured play time than in previous decades. Amidst the pressures to quantify all assessment of student learning, it’s easy for play to take a back seat. What we know intuitively as educators and what is supported by research is that play is, itself, a critical and essential form of learning. And it’s true not only for children but for all of us. In this session we’ll explore play’s essential role in learning and emotional well-being, play as an equity issue + the threats to play, and strategies for incorporating more play – and joy! – in our teaching and leading.