Pedagogies of Belonging In Practice: A Workshop for Educators On Creating Welcoming Communities
We created and led a virtual workshop for educators to discuss Pedagogies of Belonging, a new REACH book containing microportraits of educators whose practices seek to build welcoming communities. The workshop was intended for Boston-based educators to discuss pedagogies the book highlighted and to determine if and how to engage with these pedagogies in their respective contexts.
On the day of the workshop, our team logged onto zoom and exchanged sleepy-eyed greetings full of anticipation for the morning ahead. As participants joined the call, we felt the excitement: here was a group of educators, willing to offer up their time to delve deeply into discussions of community and belonging for their students with experiences of migration. The commitment to the project of belonging shone through during our community-building activities, in which we not only learned about our participants, but also were grounded in the importance of identity-work. Realizing that our participants were already familiar with one another and eager to delve into the discussion of the microportraits, we decided to cut some introductory activities and begin our longer discussions. We each facilitated rich conversations in breakout rooms on the four sets of themes represented in the puzzle pieces (above). As we all came back together, participants shared about their discussions and drew connections across groups. We closed the workshop with individual time to reflect and journal before giving our parting gift, a folder of resources to support ongoing learning and an invitation to create a similar workshop within the educators’ respective communities.
Creation Process
Approximately one month before hosting this online workshop, the team gathered to decide the direction and scope. Through the support of Professor Sarah Dryden-Peterson and Dr. Abdi Ali, we drafted a plan for a workshop for educators to engage with the Pedagogies of Belonging microportraits and the actions teachers have taken globally to support students who have experienced migration and displacement.
Once we determined our focus, we collaboratively designed an agenda that would engage participants in deep conversation, carefully crafting the workshop to invite engagement through frequent activities and discussions. To visualize the concepts we were discussing, we used a ‘puzzle piece’ graphic (above) to demonstrate how the themes were interconnected. We united as a team to design a workshop that was as accessible, impactful, and equitable as possible by engaging in trusting conversations that surfaced our best ideas and challenged each of us to remain cognizant of the roles and experiences of our participants.
Design Considerations
We encountered various important considerations throughout the design process.
Time: We chose a weekend date in consideration of teacher availability.
Creating links across contexts: We initially thought that introducing Boston educators to practices from other countries would be challenging, as global contexts are diverse. We wanted the focus to remain on pedagogies and not developing an understanding of the various global contexts. However, our discussion of the pedagogies in connection to broader themes was well-structured and revealed relevance across contexts. We focused on themes of building relationships, empathy-centered practices, identity and future building, curriculum, collaboration, playfulness, and acting with resistance.
Meaningful learning experience: We wanted to ensure that educators left our workshop with a toolkit of pedagogical strategies and resources for continued learning and reflection that would feel generative to them in their practice.
Autonomy and choice: We wanted to give educators the autonomy to explore themes that were interesting to them. We chose 4 microportaits to focus on throughout the workshop, centering on a total of 8 themes from Pedagogies of Belonging. We structured our workshop with breakout rooms, each room centering on 2 themes (as detailed in the graphic above), giving educators the opportunity to engage deeply with themes of their interest and to gain a new understanding of meaningful ways to connect with students, families, and their colleagues through collaborative discussion and pedagogy.
Workshop Reflection
Overall, the creation, facilitation, and production of this workshop was a great experience for us, and one of the highlights of our year of graduate study at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Not only did our group work collaboratively, maintaining a dedication to equitable decision-making, but we remained committed to centering the needs and experiences of educators throughout the process. As facilitators, we are all walking away with tangible learnings and action steps, inspired by the words of wisdom shared by the educators who joined us. One lesson that we learned was to ensure the scale of a workshop is balanced within the time available. Many educators involved in this workshop indicated an interest in more time to continue the discussion. Another lesson was the value of proactive problem solving. Our conversations as a team identified many potential roadblocks that we were able to avoid during the workshop, such as balancing the amount of time we could dedicate to community building compared to in-depth discussion of Pedagogies of Belonging. Our final lesson, and most valuable, was the importance of leaning on our colleagues and communicating openly during the workshop just as much as in the planning process. As our workshop took place, we were quickly able to pivot and adjust our activities to create the most impactful space for the educators involved and to give them the best introduction to Pedagogies of Belonging possible.
If you would like to discuss planning a workshop with your school community or group of educators, please be in touch.
About the authors:
Nisha Srinivasa is a Master’s candidate in the Human Development and Education program at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. She has an extensive background in the intersection of education and human rights practice as a former teacher in Oakland, California, and is interested in continuing to support migrant and refugee students in her work as an educator.https://www.linkedin.com/in/nisha-srinivasa-8239b3b3/
Brayan Hernandez is an aspiring educator and social entrepreneur from El Salvador. He is a Master’s candidate in the Education Leadership, Organizations, and Entrepreneurship program at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Brayan’s mission is to humanize education and the leadership practice to offer diverse students a top-quality education. Learn more about Brayan: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brayan-hernandez1/
Brenna Lewis-Slammon is a Master’s student in the Teaching and Teacher Leadership program at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. As an experienced educator, she deeply values a sense of belonging in classrooms, humanizing pedagogies, and the transformative power of learning through story. Learn more about Brenna: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brenna-lewis-slammon-67a413142/
Tracey Matheny is a Master’s candidate in the Education Leadership, Organizations, and Entrepreneurship program at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. She cares deeply for the experiences of all of her students and is excited to continue integrating pedagogies of belonging into her work. Learn more about Tracey: www.linkedin.com/in/traceymatheny