Who Should Attend?

This training is designed for primary and secondary level school teachers. It is especially for you:

• If you have felt uncomfortable asserting yourself in a classroom, especially with some students
• If a student or colleague has made you feel less than, without you being able to identify why
• If you have wondered why some students get more attention, more patience, more benefit of the doubt from your peers, and maybe from yourself too
• If you have ever walked out of a classroom interaction feeling something was off, but couldn't put your finger on it
• If you teach in an environment where you suspect the classroom is not as neutral as it looks

This training starts with us, not our students. If you are willing to sit with some discomfort and look honestly but compassionately at your own assumptions, this is the training for you.

Course Overview

The classroom is not a neutral space. We all bring various aspects of our identity and privilege, as do our students. Our own experiences dictate meanings and feelings we ascribe to certain behaviors and individuals. Most of this is an unconscious process which makes it worth exploring.

This two-day training invites teachers to use the classroom and themselves as the primary unit of analysis, not as critics of the institution but as honest and curious observers of themselves.

Over the course of these sessions, participants surface their own identities and positionalities. They map the power dynamics of their actual classrooms, examine bias, and explore what happens in the moment when their authority is questioned or their assumptions are disrupted. We will also discuss how technology and AI are disrupting this classroom dynamic even further and how we are responding to them.

Learning Outcomes:

• Identify and articulate their own positionality and explain how they shape their teaching practice
• Analyse the classroom as a site of structural power
• Distinguish between implicit biases and structural discrimination
• Identify their experience of having their authority challenged and reflect on their responses
• Apply at least three specific facilitation moves in response to moments of power disruption in the classroom.
• Formulate at least one specific personal commitment to a changed practice in their classroom grounded in their observations of themselves

Important Details

Pre-requisites:

• At least 1 year of classroom teaching
• Willingness to engage in honest self-reflection, including on topics that may be personally uncomfortable
• Comfort with ambiguity - we are not resolving all questions, some things will be left more open than before
• Voluntary participation

Discount:

• Early Bird Discount: 5% discount for registrations completed by April 30th, 2026.
• Group Discount: 10% discount for groups of three or more participants.