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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Restorative Classroom Management: Tools & Practices for a Connected and Collaborative Learning Environment

Engage in experiential activities to master simple and effective interventions that create a caring classroom. Examine your role, identity, and power as a teacher in the classroom as you learn ways to establish and maintain shared classroom agreements, foster peer to peer relationships, and utilize invitational, non-escalating language to redirect behaviors and invite student reflection.

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

Discovering Root Cause: Restorative Conversations that Encourage Reflection, Accountability, & Repair

Learn how to engage in effective, meaningful conversations after conflict occurs that lead to self-reflection, conflict resolution, and relational repair. This interactive workshop invites participants to learn the four foundational questions of an effective restorative conversation and practice restorative conversations with true-to-life scenarios and Umoja’s best-practice tools.

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

Check Yourself: Cultivating Self-Aware Restorative Practitioners

Build skills to cultivate connected relationships and approach engagement with others through deep self-awareness. Through a series of exercises, participants will build an awareness of how social identities and privilege can create challenges that, when left unexamined, can cause unintentional harm and present obstacles to relationships with others and restorative practice. Establishing a foundation of social and emotional awareness allows participants to be present for others as restorative justice practitioners that are not only rooted in practice, but also equity-rooted engagement.

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

Supporting Students as Individuals: Creating Space for Important Conversations

Mentoring students to achieve personal and academic goals is critical to fostering the relationships that keep students on track. Umoja mentoring is rooted in inquiry-based conferences that are intentional, rigorous, student-centered, and cyclical. This session supports educators with Umoja’s best-practice tools to lead effective conferences in their classrooms. Participants will learn and receive Umoja's inquiry-based toolkit, in addition to engaging in role plays and action-planning.

Date: May 15, 2020
Location: National Louis University
Cost: $55-85

Past Workshops

Creating Intentional Community: Community Building Circles & Practices

Learn to build intentional proactive Restorative Justice practices through the use of Community Building Circles and practices. Community Building supports groups of students and adults to connect, build trust, and maintain ongoing relationship building. When strong relationships exist within a community, individuals are less likely to harm one another and more invested in repairing relationships if conflict occurs. Using Umoja best-practice planning tools, you will leave this workshop ready to re-engage your community with intentionality.

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

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