The New Jersey State Bar Foundation is constantly working to provide comprehensive and diverse resources for New Jersey educators that meet the moment and address current classroom concerns. You may be familiar with the Foundation’s trainings held at the New Jersey Law Center in New Brunswick, and more recently, our virtual webinars. We are excited to announce the release of our newest service—In-School Virtual Workshops.
This service is for educators who are interested in bringing the Foundation’s workshops and webinars directly into their schools. Below are descriptions of the webinars and workshops available through this program. If you are interested, we invite you to apply. Please fill out the application form below. NOTE: We are providing a limited number of FREE workshops. Program choices are not guaranteed and are subject to facilitator availability.
Questions? Contact Aracely Suto at asuto@njsbf.org.
Program Descriptions
Webinars
Self-Awareness: A Boost for Ourselves and Our Students (2 hours)—Self-awareness is the keystone competency for SEL. It’s comprised of an inward understanding of yourself and knowing how others see you. This webinar will take a deep dive into the different components of self-awareness to help educators promote it in themselves and in their students. Click here for more information.
Resilience: Getting Through Stressful Times (2 hours)—This webinar introduces educators to different definitions of resilience, focusing on specific aspects of resilience and providing practical applications of resilience for educators and students. Click here for more information.
Motivation: Keeping it Up (2 hours)—Motivation can be a difficult state of mind to achieve. This webinar will cover what motivation is and what forms of motivation are effective. It will also cover the factors that need to be taken into consideration when motivating people. This webinar works to answer these questions, provides resources to use with adults and students and more. Click here for more information.
Workshops (must have webcam and microphone)
Talking About Race (3 hours)—Issues of race and ethnicity have been coming to the forefront more recently in schools. Educators may have felt lost in how to talk about race with their students. This training explores the reasons WHY it is important to talk about race. It will introduce educators to proper terminology surrounding the issues of race and ethnicity and have educators feeling more comfortable when talking about these important topics. Educators will leave knowing that it is NOT their responsibility to solve the race issues in our country, but it is their responsibility to create an open forum for students to express their feelings, frustrations and fears. Click here for more information.
Unconscious Bias (3 hours)—The Unconscious Bias workshop will introduce participants to the concept of unconscious (or implicit) bias in themselves and in others. This training will demonstrate to participants the many ways that unconscious bias manifests itself. It will also identify strategies to address unconscious bias in ourselves and in our school population. Click here for more information.
Breaking Bias: Lessons from the Amistad (3 hours)—These workshops looks at this history through an anti-bias lens and highlight the contributions that African Americans have made to the United States as well as the lessons our country has learned from African American history. They also focus on how African Americans have not only been victims but agents of their own change throughout history, how racial oppression has transformed over time in the U.S. and what our responsibilities are, both individually and collectively, to respond to racism. Finally, they share strategies for using our Breaking Bias: Lessons from the Amistad Curriculum. Workshop part one introduces participants to our background unit and units 1 and 2 which cover African civilizations, race as a social construct and chattel slavery both nationally and in New Jersey. Workshop part two introduces units 3, 4, and 5 which cover the reconstruction era, Jim Crow and the great migration, and the dawning of the civil rights movement. Click here for more information.
Social Emotional Character Development (3 hours)—This training shows how to integrate the five competencies of social and emotional learning into the school setting; self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, relationship skills and responsible decision-making. Educators will be able to incorporate these core SEL concepts into existing character education programs through lessons, journaling and habits. This training is designed for elementary, middle and high school educators. Click here for more information.
Being an Anti-Racist (2 hours)—Join us in this virtual workshop as we discuss what it means to actively be an antiracist. In this workshop we will look specifically at anti-Black racism, what it means to be antiracist, analyze the educational system in our country and work to create action-oriented personal goals. Each participant will need to choose an educational area to focus on during the registration process. The areas that we will focus on during this workshop will be: college readiness/access to AP/gifted and talented programs, educator expectations and biases, lack of representation of black educators/role models, school discipline inequities and curriculum. Each participant will also be asked to identify their racial identity when registering for the purposes of specific breakout group. Please be prepared to choose one area of focus during the workshop and your racial identity when you register.
**Please note that groups may not register for this workshop unless the majority of participants have participated in our “Talking about Race” workshop in a previous school year. Please let us know if you have any questions about this requirement**