Session 5.6 Master Classes
Tracks
Track 6
| Saturday, November 2, 2024 |
| 11:05 AM - 12:55 PM |
| Meeting room P10 |
Overview
Meeting room P10
Details
11:05am – 12.00pm Students speak: A co-generational model for empowering youth voice in educational decision making Prof Michael Gregory, Harvard Law School, USA
12:05pm – 1:00pm Reframing behaviour through the lens of Neuroscience - Ms Susan Driscoll, Crisis Prevention Institute, USA
Speaker
Prof Michael Gregory
Clinical Professor of Law
Harvard Law School
Students speak: A co-generational model for empowering youth voice in educational decision making
11:05 AM - 12:00 PMAbstract
Students are in the best position to understand what they need. Yet decisions about schooling are often made without listening deeply to students. This disconnect can amplify the feeling of powerlessness many students feel and even exacerbate traumatic symptoms. Conversely, increasing opportunities for student voice and agency in decision making processes can enhance students’ feeling of belonging and improve their academic achievement.
This Master Class will introduce Students Speak, an initiative of the Trauma and Learning Policy Initiative (TLPI) that supports students from historically marginalized groups in the U.S., including many who have endured traumatic experiences, to raise their voices about what they need in order to do well in school while strengthening their advocacy skills. The session will share the details of an innovative mentoring process that supports students of all backgrounds and abilities to prepare and deliver testimonial statements about their school experiences to lawmakers.
Participants will learn Students Speak’s protocol for supporting students to
1) create and share stories about their school experiences;
2) develop self-knowledge from these stories about what they need in order to do well in school;
3) prepare and deliver written testimonial statements to lawmakers; and
4) identify key themes in their statements that resonate with common themes articulated by other students.
Participants will also understand key priorities that secondary school students in the Boston, Massachusetts area have identified as important for them to do well in school. Finally, participants will become familiar with and practice applying Hart’s Ladder of Participation, a framework for understanding and creating ethical and empowering youth-adult collaborations.
Group conversation in the session will focus on
1) surfacing participants’ expertise and experiences with centering the voices of young people in their own work and
2) discussing the implications of these efforts for trauma-sensitive practice.
This Master Class will introduce Students Speak, an initiative of the Trauma and Learning Policy Initiative (TLPI) that supports students from historically marginalized groups in the U.S., including many who have endured traumatic experiences, to raise their voices about what they need in order to do well in school while strengthening their advocacy skills. The session will share the details of an innovative mentoring process that supports students of all backgrounds and abilities to prepare and deliver testimonial statements about their school experiences to lawmakers.
Participants will learn Students Speak’s protocol for supporting students to
1) create and share stories about their school experiences;
2) develop self-knowledge from these stories about what they need in order to do well in school;
3) prepare and deliver written testimonial statements to lawmakers; and
4) identify key themes in their statements that resonate with common themes articulated by other students.
Participants will also understand key priorities that secondary school students in the Boston, Massachusetts area have identified as important for them to do well in school. Finally, participants will become familiar with and practice applying Hart’s Ladder of Participation, a framework for understanding and creating ethical and empowering youth-adult collaborations.
Group conversation in the session will focus on
1) surfacing participants’ expertise and experiences with centering the voices of young people in their own work and
2) discussing the implications of these efforts for trauma-sensitive practice.
Biography
Michael Gregory is Clinical Professor of Law at Harvard Law School (HLS) and a Member of the Faculty at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. He is the Faculty Director of the Youth Advocacy & Policy Lab (Y-Lab), the mission of which is to advocate for child- and youth-facing systems that are antiracist, healing-centered, and trauma-sensitive. Y-Lab prioritises elevating the voices of young people as it uses legal and policy tools to transform public systems, including schools, that impact them and their families. Through the Y-Lab’s Trauma and Learning Policy Initiative (TLPI), Gregory supervises law students to represent families of traumatized students in the special education system and to learn and practice the skills of legislative lawyering to advance a public policy agenda for trauma-sensitive schools.
As a result of TLPI’s advocacy, Massachusetts enacted the Safe and Supportive Schools Framework statute in 2014, a first-of-its-kind law that creates a statewide community of practice to support schools and districts to create safe and supportive whole-school learning environments that serve as a foundation for all students to succeed. In 2020, TLPI launched the Students Speak initiative to ensure that policymakers in Massachusetts hear directly from secondary school students about what they need in order to do well in school.
TLPI hopes to grow this initiative into a statewide movement of young people who are empowered to lead the way in improving their schools. Gregory is co-author of TLPI’s two landmark publications Helping Traumatized Children Learn, Volumes 1 and 2 and has also published in the area of special education law. He holds a JD from Harvard Law School and a Master of Arts in Teaching from Brown University. He and his husband are proud parents of an eight-year-old daughter who attends a school for students with dyslexia and who loves dancing to Kidz Bop videos and eating chocolate ice cream.
Ms Susan Driscoll
President
Crisis Prevention Institute (CPI)
Reframing behaviour through the lens of Neuroscience
12:05 PM - 12:55 PMAbstract
In this session Susan Driscoll will present neuroscience principles that are essential for a trauma-aware approach: neuroception (and fight, flight, freeze); brain development; interoception and self-regulation; co-regulation; and intentional practices for building relationships.. The presentation will also highlight neuroplasticity – what happens to us when we are exposed to prolonged trauma, but also what is possible with the implementation of trauma aware practices. The presentation will also highlight the specific perspective of neurodiverse individuals who, merely by living in a neurotypical world, are more likely to experience a lack of felt safety and the unintentional stress responses that result.
Biography
Susan Driscoll is President of Crisis Prevention Institute (CPI) and oversees the development of all products and programs, the trainers who deliver them, and for the support and care of the clients who use them. She joined CPI in 2017 and in 2022 was named a Director of the company.
Prior to joining CPI, Susan served as President and CEO of Wolters Kluwer Health, Professional and Education, where she transformed the business from a traditional book publisher to a subscription-based healthcare content business. She has extensive experience in both healthcare and higher education publishing and training.
Susan has direct experience in global markets including Australia, Europe, India and China. She was named one of the Top 50 Women in Publishing in 2009, and served on the Executive Board of the Association of American Publishers. Currently, she serves on the board of ISA, the Association of Learning Providers.
Session chair
Stephanie Curtis
Curtis Consulting
