1) If your school isn't already a member, encourage them to join
here
!
2) Register for our upcoming events, and keep an eye out for our spring schedule of workshops. 3) Get in touch and let us know what kind of professional learning opportunities you're looking for. 4) Have expertise to share? Contact us about writing a blog post or leading a workshop. 5) Join our mailing list to stay up to date on all our future workshops and events. |
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A message from the
Executive Director,
LISA HANEY
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Having grown up in Santa Barbara and spent most of my adult life in Oakland, my love for and connection to California stretches from north to south. One of the many great joys of my new position with the CATDC has been getting to know educators throughout the state, and observing our outstanding facilitators in action as they help to build capacity and community.
As one of the largest fires in California history was beginning to gain strength, I was on my way to a CATDC workshop for Department Chairs in Los Angeles led by Stella Beale, Director of Studies at Windward School. With the recent tragedy of the North Bay fires very present in my mind, I looked out the plane window at plumes of smoke with some anxiety, but I had no idea. In the words of a staff member at the Ojai Foundation responding to the suddenness with which the fire spread and the destruction in its path, "we can never really know what's ahead."
The staff of the CATDC sends our deepest condolences to all of those who have suffered losses from the Thomas Fire and the others that have swept across southern California. Once again, we have been moved by the community that grows in times of such adversity, by the outpouring of support. For information about schools that have been impacted, and some ways that you can help, please go to this
page
shared by The Enrollment Management Association. Many schools in my home town and environs have closed early for the winter break due to bad air quality and the continued threat from encroaching flames. I am sure you share my deep gratitude for the 1000's of firefighters who have been working virtually nonstop for the last two weeks.
Just a week before the fire, some 6,000 educators gathered from across the nation under clear blue skies in Anaheim at the
People of Color Conference
to engage in a very different kind of critical endeavor: building their capacity to "
enhance the interracial, interethnic, and intercultural climate in their schools, as well as the attending academic, social-emotional, and workplace performance outcomes for students and adults alike."
The CATDC's member schools were well represented, whether demonstrating collaboration in action in a presentation for women of color aspiring to greater leadership, as Lori Cohen describes in her piece included in this month's "Buzz," or sharing strategies for implementing restorative justice in our schools. A message that resonated through many of the presentations and workshops was that just as we need to tend with care and compassion to our students and colleagues, so we need to tend to ourselves.
This theme was echoed by Stella Beale during her meeting with Department Chairs, this quote by Peggy McIntosh one of the many gems she shared. "Having worked in schools for 58 years, I've come to wish that all educators were given more time and more rewards for self-knowledge. I feel that when we as teachers have the opportunity to get to know our deep selves better, we improve our lives and the lives of those who deal with us."
Providing this kind of opportunity is a core component of the CATDC's mission. I hope you will join us for one of our upcoming events-note that there is plenty of space in the workshop on mindfulness in the Bay Area on January 11, a great way to start the New Year. In the meantime, enjoy the other offerings in this month's "Buzz" centered on the profound importance of nurturing ourselves and building many different kinds of community. May your winter break be filled with rest, renewal, and joyous times with your loved ones.
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How Racial Affinity Groups Saved My Life
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By Trina Moore-Southall, NAIS
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One of the many reasons I love PoCC so much is the affinity group experience. An affinity group is a group of people with common interests, background, and experience that come together to support each other. Affinity groups for people of color can be magical places in a historically elite and exclusive independent school system.
Participants of both adult and student affinity groups often find it to be a place of encouragement and a way to increase their sense of belonging in their institution.
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Building and Sustaining Community
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By Lori Cohen, The Bay School of San Francisco
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If there is anything I have learned in my time working with the CATDC and serving as a leader at my school, it is the value of community: the knowledge that while it is certainly possible to go it alone, it's much more enriching and has a greater impact when in collaboration with others. The past few months have allowed me to delve further into several collaborations, and the impact of these working relationships has been transformative. Our school is undergoing a schedule transition, and as we embark upon a more daring way to "do school," we know we're not the first to pioneer these efforts.
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Use the Winter Break to Renew Your Spirits and Sense of Purpose
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My first day of vacation has strict rules. After removing all electronic devices with screens, I lock myself in the guest bedroom. A sign taped to the door reads "Coma Day," to signal that nobody should have expectations of me. Next to a bag of food, a sleep machine plays fish tank sounds. With all these elements in place, I stay in bed as long as I can stand it. One time I lasted until 5:45 p.m. Following these rules is the quickest strategy for recovering from exhaustion.
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Vacations and Showers: Another Reason for Winter Break
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By Andrew Davis, Mount Tamalpais School
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At some point this week or next most of our schools will close for "Winter Break." Why? Perhaps the most obvious reason for this school vacation is Christmas and Chanukah and the Judeo-Christian cultural norm to take an extended break during this time to celebrate and visit family. As educators, the vacation provides much needed time to recharge and relax while also planning for the second half of the school year. If you, like me, have to justify your extended vacation to family and friends - or current parents who want more school day bang for their tuition buck, you can add creativity to the list of reasons for winter vacation. Yes, time away from school, our work, can improve creativity.
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The Call to Community in a Changed World
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By Anand Giridharadas and Whitney Camball Coe, On Being
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No challenge before us is more important - and more potentially life-giving - than that we come to see and know our fellow citizens, our neighbors, who have become strangers. Journalist Anand Giridharadas and Whitney Kimball Coe of the Rural Assembly have two very different histories and places in our life together. But they are both stitching relationship across the ruptures that have made politics thin veneers over human dramas of power and frailty, fear and hope. We spoke at the Obama Foundation's inaugural summit in Chicago.
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