Block off Tuesdays (and one Wednesday) on your calendar this year for an impressive line-up of virtual PD courses from ACSA’s Online Learning Center.

ACSA’s live online courses have allowed participants from throughout the state to deepen their knowledge of topics crucial to today’s educators, said ACSA Online Learning Executive Janaye Field.

“We are seeing that hosting our workshops, academies and PD options in a virtual space we are reaching so many more ACSA members across the state,” she said. “The major advantage to joining live webinars is being able to interact with the presenters and ask questions in real time. Presenters have utilized breakout rooms so that members from all of our regions are able to share their experiences and approaches to different obstacles.”

Registration for the live online courses listed below is now open at onlinelearning.acsa.org.

August: Racial Healing and Allyship Workshops This weekly course held on the first four Tuesdays in August is your invitation to join the movement and be intentional about transformation for yourself and your organization. Presenters Tovi Scruggs-Hussein, Sally Albright Green and Grace Helms Kotre will guide you through the inner work of racial healing and help you develop the awareness and skills to support others in becoming allies.

“Our professional learning experiences often focus on the technical aspects of our leadership, not the inner-aspects that cultivate us as more courageous and effective leaders,” Scruggs-Hussein said. “Without the ‘inner work,’ we will continue to perpetuate the habits of systemic racism we have been raised and educated in because we operate on automatic pilot and often do not question our actions or have the skills to interrupt them. If we want more equitable schools, we will have to create more equitable behaviors and mindsets. We cannot successfully transform schools until we have successfully transformed ourselves.”

This unique program will investigate how racism operates in us and through us, explore the systemic nature of racial oppression, and develop racial literacy so that leaders can have difficult race-based conversations with compassion and growth for actionable behaviors, resulting in systemic change.

8/4: Diversify Your Bookshelves Are you looking to incorporate culturally diverse texts into your school’s curriculum? This two-hour webinar on Wednesday, Aug. 4, will guide administrators on how to start this process.

This webinar is led by experts Tammy Milligan and Jenean Bray, ELA/ELD Curriculum Specialists and Co-Directors of the Tulare County Office of Education Readership Initiative.

“When teachers diversify classroom bookshelves, students gain access to culturally relevant texts in which they will connect with the characters’ identities,” said Milligan and Bray, in a statement. “Background knowledge and similar lived experiences increases reading engagement. Engagement sparks personal motivation which increases volume of reading and leads to higher literacy achievement.”

Learning objectives include understanding reader identity and windows/mirrors; English language development through literature, culturally-diverse texts. Sources of recommended book lists will be provided as well to help make this part of your school’s overall culture of literacy.

9/14: Engaging High School Leaders with the CIF Executive Director for the California Interscholastic Federation Ron Nocetti will lead a one-hour presentation that’s free for ACSA members on how school leaders can use the CIF and its various programs to best serve the 800,000-plus students currently involved in athletics. Learn about developing a coaching staff that will transform the lives of students both on and off the field and how to engage the CIF through local presentations to school boards, parents, coaches and students.

10/12: The Way We Were: Honor Tradition, Imagine the Future Build on past projects and institutional knowledge to improve your school’s climate. In this session from Tracy Piper, learn the connection between equity, discipline, attendance and social-emotional learning. Find out how to use improvement science strategies as the foundation for improving equity and how to incorporate the perspectives of your stakeholders to inform your actions. Strategies discussed will include: restorative practices, trauma informed care, alternatives to suspension, mindfulness, socio-emotional screening and interconnected systems frameworks.

11/16: Ready for Anything Retired Carlsbad USD Superintendent and author Suzette Lovely will help education leaders pursue a “better normal” in our post-COVID world. By learning to think like a start-up and uncovering ways to make changes stick, schools can turn their aspirations into reality. The goal is to overcome any mental limitations that keep school leaders and their teams from accomplishing what might have otherwise felt impossible.

12/7: Courageous conversations webinar The live webinar “How Courageous Conversations About Race Can Lead Us to Effective, Productive, and Transformative Action” will provide participants a process of thinking and understanding the impact of race on their lives, their work, and their overall growth. Recently retired San Lorenzo USD Superintendent Belen Magers has spent 37 years as an educator in California. She will provide a model for generative discussions about race so that leaders can create their own unique racial equity transformation plans — because we cannot solve the problems created by systemic racism without discussing race.

Jump start your career with ACSA Professional Learning.