The Center for Teaching & Reaching the Whole Child presented our webinar on “RESPONDING CONSTRUCTIVELY ACROSS DIFFERENCES: TOOLS FOR NAVIGATING CHALLENGING CONVERSATIONS” at the end of March. We were thrilled and so appreciative of those of you who were able to attend from across the United States, Canada, and Europe!
Our webinar goal was to increase participants’ awareness about CRTWC and its role in supporting educators’ and students’ social, emotional, and cultural competency development. We provided a brief introduction and ‘unpacking’ of the Anchor Competencies Framework – a Framework that is grounded in the latest research on social and emotional learning, culturally responsive and sustaining teaching practices, the science of learning, and human development.
We would like to share a few highlights from the webinar that might ignite your thinking regarding this timely topic, as teachers are increasingly forced to navigate challenging and polarizing situations in their classrooms. In addition, a brief summary of the webinar may ‘spark your interest’ as a ‘preview’ of our future webinar possibilities.
In the webinar, we shared that…
the Framework is ‘not a program’, but a ‘lens—an aperture’ designed to support the development of the Anchor Competencies and it offers a ‘roadmap’ or ‘tool’ for helping educators to teach and support learning with a Social, Emotional and Cultural aperture.
the Anchor Competencies are foundational for teachers to support students’ social and emotional development, thriving, and academic success.
navigating difficult conversations is often challenging and may be uncomfortable, especially in the polarizing times we are living in. As one of our colleagues shared, doing the internal work of examining our own biases and assumptions prepares us to know and manage our emotional responses to situations.
the stress response or “fight or flight response” – a reaction often activated when faced with challenging situations or difficult conversations – can narrow our lens or aperture, helping us to focus on the immediate stressor, but limiting our information gathering, our question asking, and our ability to see the situation from multiple perspectives. The Framework offers a tool for us to consider these reactions, identify the situations that cause them to arise, and find the practices and strategies needed to respond with greater awareness.
learning to become aware of and managing emotional schema, scripts, and responses, can help educators to respond more constructively across differences. Developing skills like mindful awareness can widen our aperture in teaching and strengthen our productive response to challenging experiences.
In a follow-up survey, we asked participants about the usefulness of the webinar and the likelihood that they would recommend it to a colleague or a friend.
100% of participants shared that they were either “Likely” or “Very Likely” to recommend a webinar by CRTWC to a friend or colleague.
80% of participants reported that the webinar was “Very Useful.” And, 20% reported that it was “Useful” or “Somewhat Useful.”
When asked to identify a take-away from the webinar, participants shared some of the following:
“I wish to investigate the Framework further and make it ‘live’ in my work in a deliberate way.”
“Loved all of the concepts being shared. You all are doing such important work to support young teachers to be in this most important profession.”
“I appreciate how the Framework emphasizes context, as I’ve found in my own self-reflection that different dimensions of different contexts—such as relational closeness, psychological safety, conceptual congruity or incongruity, self-awareness, etc.—play a critical role in how a situation unfolds. I think this Framework puts so many of my ideas together in a beautiful, organized way, and am so happy that I was able to take part in this webinar!”
In our post webinar review discussion, the CRTWC team realized the webinar was just a ‘snapshot’ of the larger picture of the Anchor Competencies Framework. The conversation continues to evolve as we continue to share the Framework with each other.
“I broadened my understanding of how the Anchor Competencies Framework can guide my response and behavior during difficult conversations. The ‘real world’ teaching case scenario involving a contentious verbal interchange between two teacher candidates was something I could relate to in my role as an educator. My understanding deepened hearing from the other panelists on how parts of the Framework can help educators respond constructively to challenging situations. The sample statements of how you might diffuse the situation were very helpful.” — CRTWC Webinar Panelist
We are already thinking about our next webinar! But for now…we are staying in the moment.
”Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.” –– Viktor Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning
In ‘Joy’ for the ‘Work’….
The CRTWC Team
