Professional Development Events

Explore restorative practices to effectively respond to serious incidents and trauma.

Whether you work with youth living in poverty, families with broken relationships or older immigrants facing language barriers, you know that adversity can be as debilitating as extreme trauma. Learn techniques that can help you work with individuals and communities facing adversity or impacted by trauma.

This is an advanced restorative practices event, which assumes you have already received introductory professional development in the field. If you haven’t, please consider starting with our Basic Restorative Practices event.

This event is comprised of highly interactive instruction, including case studies, storytelling and personal reflection.

1. Learn two new techniques to work with highly traumatized populations or clients who have experienced significant emotional distress:

• Restorative Questions, which help people process their feelings and provide emotional healing.
• Compassionate Witnessing, as developed by Kaethe Weingarten, Ph.D., as a method to explore common shock resulting from witnessing violence and violation.

2. View and discuss videos of powerful true stories illustrating the emotional dynamics and healing potential of restorative practices in the wake of serious incidents.

3. Explore the grieving process from a fresh and practical perspective, more beneficial than the traditional linear “stages of grief.”

4. Address the essential issue of self-care in your work with traumatized clients in a high-stress environment, as well as how your organization can ensure the health and well-being of your staff.

You will learn how to:

• Help individuals heal in the wake of personal harm.
• Foster trusting and supportive relationships with clients.
• Develop methods for your own self-care and avoid burnout.

You will receive an e-book copy of Kaethe Weingarten’s Common Shock.

Upcoming Restorative Responses to Trauma and Adversity events

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A highly participatory experience for anyone in a position of responsibility or authority.

Learn the principles of restorative leadership, an engaging, collaborative and effective way to exercise your authority.

This is an advanced restorative practices event, which assumes you have already received introductory professional development in the field. If you haven’t, please consider starting with our Basic Restorative Practices event.

During this very personalized event you will examine your own leadership style and characteristics through inventories and reflective processes. Participants share their own leadership challenges and receive support and feedback from others to help build new organizational and implementation strategies.

You will also learn about:

• Building relationships with staff using practical supervision strategies.
• Responding to conflicts using an approach that repairs relationships.
• Effectively managing organizational change.
• Employing your strengths as a leader to overcome gaps and weaknesses.

Upcoming Restorative Leadership Development: Authority with Grace events

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During our flagship event, you will learn skills you can use immediately to strengthen relationships and respond to conflict in your classroom, community or organization.

Introduction to Restorative Practices and Using Circles Effectively - Days 1 & 2

From day one, you will learn a range of strategies you can use every day. You will learn how to set high expectations while being supportive. You will practice how to provide direct feedback and how to ask questions that foster accountability. You will also learn the most effective methods to resolve common conflicts.

We devote the second day entirely to teaching attendees to facilitate restorative circles. Circles are an essential process for building social capital, resolving social problems and responding when harm occurs. Circles create a positive learning environment. You will learn by participating in circles with other attendees, taking turns to learn how to facilitate. By the end of the day, you will be prepared to return to your setting and run your first circle!

Facilitating Restorative Conferences - Days 3 & 4

Effective responses to incidents of conflict, wrongdoing and harm are the hallmark of restorative practices. We dedicate two full days to teaching you how to facilitate a formal, scripted circle process to address racial incidents, bullying, vandalism and other serious infractions. You will learn all the steps required to conduct a restorative justice conference, from determining the readiness of victims, offenders, their families and friends to participate, to running the formal meeting itself.

Even if you will not be responsible for conducting conferences yourself, you will learn how to better address everyday conflict and incidents in your workplace and community. Skills taught include monitoring your own reactions in stressful situations, listening with empathy and creating shared understanding among conflicting parties.

Note: While this event will help attendees strengthen social bonds in any setting, many of the examples are drawn from K-12 schools.

Upcoming Basic Restorative Practices events

Choose your date and location below. During the registration process, you will be asked to choose all four days ($700) or two days ($400).

Please click through to the registration page for any events that interest you to check ticket availability as seating is limited and many events sell out.

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To empower others, it is essential to learn how to listen.

Expert listeners are not passive. They are strategic, structured and purposeful in how they engage others. Listening is a skill that can be learned, and this event will help you gain proficiency in how to listen.

Motivational Interviewing (MI) is a collaborative, research-based dialogue process that strengthens the motivation for change in people you support. This interactive event will help you learn how to bring awareness to individuals about the discrepancy between their current behavior and their future goals. You will learn how to empower them to make meaningful life changes.

MI grew out of addictions treatment, but it has also demonstrated effectiveness in the fields of criminal justice, education, organizational management and the healthcare industry. MI is particularly effective with individuals who are non-compliant and resistant to making changes. Understanding the “Stages of Change” as outlined in MI will help practitioners develop strategies to support individuals in identifying and achieving their goals or developing new ones.

You will learn how to:

• Create dialogue with a range of individuals and families, identifying current behavior and future goals.
• Help individuals overcome internal resistance to change.
• Engage and empower people to make meaningful changes, employing Motivational Interviewing.
• Focus on “Change Talk” and “the Stages of Change” to help people identify and achieve their goals.
• Increase motivation, empowering people to move thorough the change process.

Professional associations have approved this for Continuing Education Credit. Learn more »

Upcoming Motivational Interviewing events

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Empower youth to take responsibility for their behavior and learn healthier ways to interact.

Explore how to reduce violence and youth aggression, whether you work in education, criminal justice, social services or youth counseling. Aggression Replacement Training® is an intervention for aggressive adolescents and children consistent with the restorative practices framework. An extended series of studies has demonstrated its efficacy with skill learning, anger control and reducing recidivism.

This two-day workshop will present the rationale and background underlying this group process, its specific procedures, materials, application and administrative challenges, and evaluation results.

Note: This event is the first step in learning about Aggression Replacement Training® as a practitioner and also as a graduate student if you are taking this for credit. If you are planning on implementing the Aggression Replacement Training® with fidelity as a 10-week program, please be aware it is a co-facilitated process; you will need to have two people trained and work with master trainers for additional support.

Recognition:

Aggression Replacement Training®  has been recognized by the following entitites:

• U.S. Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention —Model Program
• U.S. Department Education's Safe, Disciplined, and Drug-Free Schools Expert Panel —Model Program
• U.S. Department of Justice —Promising Program
• American Correctional Association —Model Program
• U.K. Home Office —Model Program

Through interactive exercises, demonstration, guided practice and implementation planning, you will learn the three components of Aggression Replacement Training^®:

1. SkillStreaming, which teaches a curriculum of prosocial, interpersonal skills (i.e., what to do instead of aggression);
2. Anger Control Training, which teaches youth what not to do if provoked;
3. Moral Reasoning Training, which promotes values that respect the rights of others and helps youths want to use the interpersonal and anger management skills taught.

You will also learn about:

• Causes of aggression, its magnitude and impact, as well as “best practice” solutions.
• Updated research on brain development and meta-cognition strategies for new neural pathway development.
• Generalization techniques to increase the likelihood that prosocial skills learned in the training setting will transfer to other settings and endure over time.

You will receive two books, Skillstreaming the Adolescent: A Guide for Teaching Prosocial Skills by Ellen McGinnis, with Robert P. Sprafkin, N. Jane Gershaw and Paul Klein, as well as Anger Control Training: Prepare Curriculum Implementation Guide by Mark Amendola and Robert Oliver.

Upcoming Aggression Replacement Training® events

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