• Are you an educator wanting to help your students or colleagues better manage conflicts?   
• Are you a leader looking for ways to gain buy-in and develop expectations and goals with your organization?
• Are you looking for resources and guidance on techniques for classroom management?   
• Do you want strategies to support community members coping with stress or trauma they carry with them onto campus?

Spend two days digging into role plays, simulations, activities, and theory focused on supporting our community members not only academically, but also psychologically and emotionally.  During the sessions you will gain facilitation, community building and conflict management techniques you can implement immediately.

Topics:

• Community Circles: Participants will actively engage in a community circle and delve into social-emotional community building approaches.
• Restorative facilitation techniques: Experience a session integrating restorative techniques into your facilitation skills and practices. Expand your own practice and share with others.
• Standards-Setting Role Play: Observe and participate in role plays to create community standards. These have been used in many contexts including organization vision, mission and goal-setting, classroom management, and conflict resolution.
• Connecting with your community members: Learn a few lessons you can implement in your classroom or organization to create a positive environment where all members are included and accountable.

Workshop Overview:

Day One: Developing a Restorative Worldview

This workshop will challenge you to think differently about how you build relationships, build community with groups, and respond to conflict or incidents of harm. We will wrestle with the notions of discipline, conflict and justice through lecture, discussion, activities and role plays-looking closely at what our current systems are accomplishing and if the real needs of victims, offenders and communities are being met. Ultimately, we will emerge from day one of the workshop with ideas of how we can use restorative practices as a way of thinking about how we exist in community with others.

Day Two: Using Restorative Tools               

This workshop focuses on practical skills to set up and host a circle, how to use different types of circles and concrete tools and techniques to support engagement from participants in the circle process. The workshop uses adult education and experiential learning techniques, as well as activities and discussion. Circles can be used for:

• Establishing agreements on how community members will interact and engage with each other;
• Creating a sense of shared responsibility for maintaining agreements inside and outside of the classroom;
• Offering a way to address issues and have an open and honest discussion of these issues;
• Providing a way to address and deal with conflict.

E-mail restorativepractices@umbc.edu for more information!

The two-day training will take place during UMBC's Spring Break on Thursday, March 20 and Friday, March 21 from 9:00 AM - 5:00 PM. Breakfast, lunch and snacks will be provided. The training is free for UMBC affiliates, but purchasing guidelines require us to charge $75 to cover the per-person costs for meals and training materials. If you are NOT affiliated with UMBC, please also purchase a ticket here. 

Please use the website below by March 14, 2025 to register for the training, and to indicate dietary needs.

We understand that two full days is a lot to ask; however, we are confident that this training will be a catalyst that will enable relationships of all types to flourish and assist us in operationalizing the Community Living Principles and other aspirational goals in and beyond the Division of Student Affairs.