CREATE 101: Critical Conversations

Dates: Sept. 14, Oct. 5, Nov. 2 and Dec. 7, 2024

Time: 9am - 1pm

Location: Atlanta Neighborhood Charter School - Elementary Campus

A Primer to Critical Conversations in Education is the foundational course facilitated to introduce participants to dispositions, skills, and embodiment practices for liberation through a transformative process that explores topics such as Black Love and freedom dreaming (Kelley, 2002) in education.

This retreat introduces participants to The CREATE Project’s framework for supporting experienced educators and educational leaders as they:

• NAVIGATE the profound challenges and current education climate
• PAUSE and think deeply about who they are personally and professionally in their educational setting
• Explicitly CONNECT their work with the CREATE Project approach to supporting education in Atlanta

Healing Centered Justice Retreat

Dates: Oct. 5, Oct. 12, Oct. 26 and Nov. 2, 2024

Time: 9am - 1pm

Location: Atlanta Neighborhood Charter School

This highly interactive and research-based learning experience empowers teachers and leaders to develop a healing–centered framework that they can incorporate into their professional practice.

Despite a wide range of constraints and profound challenges that schools and educators are facing, this learning experience seeks to better understand the specific needs of educators in order to provide tailored support for them within the education ecosystem.

Male Educator of Color Convening

Building on past CREATE work focusing on curated support for males of color in education, we are partnering with the community to host a series of convenings that aim to support the recruitment and retention of males of color in education in Atlanta and Georgia. The goals of these convenings are to:

• Connect in person around the ways this work is happening in metro Atlanta and collectively highlight who or what is missing from this work.
• Continue building collaborative strategic plans and pathways based on the work organizations are doing and the resources currently available.
• Begin to map out collaborative research, data and resource-mapping plans.

Session information coming soon!

CREATE 101- Critical Conversations: A Primer to Critical Conversations in Education is the foundational course in the CREATE Professional Learning Pathway toward liberation in education facilitated through critical pedagogy and healing-centered practices to introduce participants to dispositions, skills, and embodiment practices for liberation through a transformative process that explores topics such as Black Love and freedom dreaming (Kelley, 2002) in education. It is a four-day in-person retreat. After completing CREATE 101, participants will receive an invitation to register for CREATE 201.

The second course, CREATE 201- Critical Community: Unpacking Educational Dilemmas in Community, develops experienced educators' critical consciousness around the geo-social and historical perspective on professional dilemmas and problems of practice while broadening perceptions of self, social, and systems awareness necessary to dismantle institutional oppression. It is a hybrid experience with two online and two in-person days. After completing CREATE 201, participants will receive an invitation to register for CREATE 301.

The third CREATE Professional Learning Pathways course is CREATE 301- Critical Collaboration: Building Educational Leaders for Liberation. It is designed as a call to action for liberatory facilitation to cultivate the dispositions, strategies, and embodiment practices of liberatory facilitation moves necessary to influence mindset shifts, enact micro and macro-level change through deconstructing power dynamics, and empower teachers to see themselves as educational leaders. In this course, participants explore creative ways of knowing, being, and doing in spaces to cultivate transformation through one-on-one dialogue and group discussion for equity and social justice within classrooms, schools, and organizational settings toward collective care and well-being to lead and facilitate positive change in educational settings. It is a hybrid experience with eight online modules and eight in-person sessions.