Session VIII-3      (March 4 @  9:00 – 12:00)

Disaster Safety Education
This half-day workshop emphasizes the importance of disaster awareness and education.  It covers earthquake and tsunami safety, and includes how to identify hazards in your schools on the North Coast.  It will help educators and school personnel understand their responsibilities, requirements and role of schools and educators in the event of a disaster.  It also provides an opportunity to exchange curriculum ideas for teaching K-12 students about natural disasters and safety.
Presenters:  Lori Dengler, Kimberly Comet, Dawn Albrecht

Popular Education: Coyuntura Analysis
Inspired by the intersection of critical pedagogy and liberation theology in America during the 70s and 80s, Coyuntura invites participants to develop a shared analysis drawing on the group´s resources, experiences, histories, and skill sets.  Coyuntura approach facilitates a collective examination of the intersections of the material, economic, political, social and cultural forces affecting a particular community or group at any given moment.  Coyuntura can also refer to the actual gathering that enables a community to arrive at a shared analysis and agree on a plan of action.  As an analytical framework and popular education tool, it draws heavily on the major theoretical advancements of critical theory.  Thus, it links theory and practice, or praxis, by developing an analysis of the relations of forces at any given moment in order to determine an effective plan of action.  Coyuntura, therefore, enables us to reflect upon the forces that affect us internally as individuals and groups as well as examine those external forces that impact our daily lives.  In opposition to liberal strategies which are idealistic and a historical, coyuntura proposes an analysis that is both historical (within a context) and dialectical  (engaged in the present and future).
Presenter:  Gustavo Castro

Beyond Roses are Red, Violets are Blue
Receive in-service training in the 'middleground method": a practical way to help students write free verse. The Middleground guides students throught he entire process of writing a poem: word-gathering, composing, revising, and publishing. Complements the state standards and framework. Poet Benjamin Green will conduct a hands-on demonstration.
Presenter:  Benjamin Green

Using the Arts as a Means for Transforming Multiple Subject Teacher Education
This workshop is structured to give the attendee the knowledge and tools to create exciting and fulfilling lesson plans for the classroom; as well as a means of developing a creative classroom management plan.  Creative Drama focuses on process (not product) and offers the student the opportunity to experience an artistic expression while acquiring the necessary information that is offered through the study of a curriculum unit.   Since this is processed-based it promotes and fosters a student's ability to form ideas and concepts through active learning and by the use of drama techniques and simple exercises.  This workshop is physically-based and uses drama techniques from V. Spolin, M. Chekov, and N. McCaslin.
Presenters:  Patty Yancey, Cathleen Micheals

Street Speaking: Confronting Fear, Encouraging Audacity
This workshop focuses on how to facilitate street speaking as a training tool for organizers, educators, and others.  Street speaking is literally that, taking a group of people into the streets in order to share stories, spread messages, and interact with the public.  Street speaking is unpredictable and spontaneous, can bring up fears, assists in the development of clarity on a subject/content, can be a recruiting device, encourages people to be fast on their feet, and provides participants an arena for practicing giving and receiving support.  Participants will get an opportunity to street speak on a subject we collectively choose as well as take home handouts detailing how to facilitate street speaking in other organizing/educational contexts.  If you have fears speaking in public, then this workshop just might be perfect for you!
Presenter:  Jerome Bearbower