Self-care, Healing, and Equity-Responsive Practices When The World Feels Heavy
In this session, we will explore self-care strategies as a way to cope with isolation, uncertainty, and the collective traumas of COVID-19 and our country’s reckoning with race. We will also reflect on what is causing our burnout as a way to tackle it with relevant emotion regulation and self-care strategies. As we plan for the start of a new year, we will discuss how best to meet the needs and demands of former and current students who expressed harm done at school/district, plans for creating systemic change, and anti-racist practices to ensure equity and to facilitate healing in the midst of multiple pandemics.
About Dr. Dena Simmons
Dr. Dena Simmons is an activist, educator, and student of life from the Bronx, New York. She is the founder of LiberatED, a liberatory approach to social and emotional learning (SEL) that centers radical love, healing, and justice. She writes and speaks nationally about social justice and culturally responsive and sustaining pedagogy as well as creating emotionally intelligent and safe classrooms within the context of equity and liberation. She is the author of the forthcoming book, White Rules for Black People (St. Martin’s Press).
Dr. Dena Simmons is the founder of LiberatED, a liberatory approach to social and emotional learning (SEL) that centers radical love, healing, and justice. She is also a visiting professor at the Institute for Racial Justice at Loyola University of Chicago. Before LiberatED, she co-led a university center, where she supported schools to use the power of emotions to create a more compassionate and just society. Prior to her work there, Dr. Simmons served as an educator, teacher educator, diversity facilitator, and curriculum developer. She has been a leading voice on teacher education and has written and spoken across the country about social and racial justice pedagogy, diversity, emotional intelligence, and bullying in K-12 school settings. Dr. Simmons’ research interests include teacher preparedness to address bullying in the K-12 school setting, culturally responsive pedagogy, and the intersection of equity and SEL—all in an effort to ensure and foster justice, belonging, and safe spaces for all. She is the author of the forthcoming book, White Rules for Black People (St. Martin’s Press).
Learn more about her work at https://www.denasimmons.com/