Introduction to Culturally Affirming Social and Emotional Learning

In this workshop, participants explore and engage in activities around the Who, What, Where, When, and—most importantly—Why of culturally affirming SEL and how to integrate it into as well as take it beyond academic spaces. Participants have an opportunity to share their experience(s)/knowledge of SEL and then discuss cultural competency and knowledge holes that may exist in their current understandings.

This is an interactive workshop and will not be recorded.

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Your Facilitators

Dionne Grayman, Director of Strategic Partnerships. Before joining our staff full time, Dionne worked for eight years as a trainer and staff developer for Morningside Center. Dionne became an English teacher in 1993, and her first classroom was in the Rikers Island Education Facility (C-74) teaching male adolescent inmates. Says Dionne: “It was both the hardest and best teaching job I have had to date. I learned much from those young men and that experience has continued to inform who I am professionally and personally.” Dionne also taught at Brooklyn Tech, PATH on the Thomas Jefferson Campus, and Boys and Girls High School. She cofounded NYCPublic, a non-profit organization dedicated to empowering NYC's public school parents, and she co-founded Mothers Empowered. She has served as a community organizing consultant for the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund. Dionne has a BA from Brooklyn College and an MS in special education from Hunter College.

Jillian Luft, Curriculum Writer & Editor. Prior to joining the team in 2021, she worked as a social-emotional learning curriculum developer; inclusive education middle and high school teacher; inclusive education compliance manager and instructional coach; and Assistant Director of Student Support. In each of these roles, she rooted her pedagogical approach in the promotion of restorative practices, community building, and disability justice. Jillian has facilitated trainings on adult and student SEL through an anti-racist lens at the Collaborative for Inclusive Education and the NPEA (National Partnership for Educational Access) Conference. She has a BA in Literature/Gender Studies from the New College of Florida and a MS from the Bank Street College of Education.