Professional Development Workshops

Umoja offers customized workshops with topics spanning the three pillars of Umoja’s work: Restorative Justice, Social-Emotional Learning (SEL) principles, and postsecondary readiness. We work with schools to customize a series of workshops to meet specific needs and to cultivate participant’s abilities to build purposeful relationships with young people and adults.

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Community Building Circles: A Proactive Restorative Practice

Circle practices create space for all voices to hear and be heard. Community building circles are a foundational practice that may serve as a launchpad for other circle practices, such as Peace Circles. Through experiential means, participants learn foundational elements and protocols of circles and leave with the skills to facilitate community building circles of their own.

Date: January 24, 2020
Location: National Louis University
Cost: $55-85

Restorative Classroom Management

In this workshop, participants engage in experiential activities to learn small but significant interventions to create a caring classroom. These interventions include: establishing shared agreements in collaboration with students and reinforcing them regularly, fostering peer to peer relationships, and intentionally choosing non-verbal and verbal language to correct rather than provoke students. As the model for social and emotional competence, adults will be called upon to examine their relationship to power in the context of relationships with young people.

Date: February 28, 2020
Location: National Louis University
Cost: $55-85

Restorative Conversations: A Responsive Restorative Practice

Through interactive means, this workshop focuses on listening and questioning techniques as a vehicle for relationship building and repair, reentry from crisis, and resolving personal and inner conflict. As participants interact with peers, they will explore four foundational questions that form the structure of Restorative Conversations. After internalizing the purpose of these questions, participants practice holding effective restorative conversations with true-to-life scenarios using a questioning tool.

Date: March 27, 2020
Location: National Louis University
Cost: $55-85

Past Workshops

Foundations of Restorative Justice

This workshop is Umoja’s foundational course for basic knowledge of Restorative Justice as a philosophy and engages participants in a mindset shift. Through experiential activities and targeted discussions, participants interrogate personal and professional beliefs about relationships, community, and harm. Participants will leave the workshop with greater understanding of restorative justice, deeper self-awareness of their own mindsets, and an emerging ability to reframe punitive language with a restorative lens. All ‘sister practices,’ such as peace circles in schools, restorative conversations, repairing harm, etc. are supported by this foundation.

Date: November 22, 2019
Location: National Louis University
Cost: $55-85

Umoja University Summer Institutes: Restorative Justice Foundations

Join us for Umoja’s foundational learning series in Restorative Justice, which lays the essential groundwork for the self-awareness and skills required of a restorative practitioner in educational settings! In a two-day institute, we'll engage in experiential activities in which we explore mindsets and cultivate self-awareness about relationships, community, and conflict. Building on this foundation, we'll learn proactive and responsive restorative practices to prevent and address harm, specifically community building circles and restorative conversations.

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Dates: July 24-25 OR Aug 13-14
Location: Robert Morris University

Umoja University Summer Institutes: Foundations of Umoja Seminar

Are you teaching the Umoja Seminar Curriculum next school year? Join us for Umoja’s foundational learning series in Seminar, which lays the essential groundwork for effective instruction of this curriculum. This two-day Institute serves as a pre-service orientation to Seminar and builds the capacity of teachers to effectively implement of the Seminar curriculum and support the social and emotional growth of students. Please note: This Institute is exclusively for new teachers of Umoja's Seminar Curriculum.

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Date: July 23-24 OR Aug 14-15
Location: Robert Morris University