Making as Healing: Reflecting On An In-Person Workshop for Oakland Educators

The last several years have been incredibly difficult for educators. On June 4th, we celebrated a milestone by having our first in-person event since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic. For this event, we collaborated, co-designed, and co-facilitated with Agency by Design Oakland (AbDO), their Director Paula Mitchell and phenomenal Oakland Educator, Abdul-Haqq Khalifah. During this retreat we invited Oakland educators to use their radical imaginations — using making as a form of healing and reflection. Using an Agency By Design Project Zero HGSE thinking routine, we participated in activities that encouraged reflection. Educators ideated how our communities could be more healing, liberating, beautiful and inclusive. The thought leaders made art, discussed change, and pressed pause. A huge thanks goes out to the AbDO team for being incredible co-designers and facilitators. We are so grateful for AbDO for this partnership. We appreciate their collaboration and close friendship throughout the years, and are excited to bring this workshop to our joint community. We are also grateful to the Koshland Foundation for supporting the work we’re doing together this year.

If you couldn’t make it, here’s some relevant resources we used during the workshop that you can enjoy at home:

• Create mindful mandalas in this episode of our Learning in the Making video series
• Download the full Cultivating a Repair Mindset Toolkit on our resource library
• Additional repair resources:
  • Culture of Repair– website
  • The Art of Repair: A Middle School Elective Class– blog post from an Agency by Design Oakland teacher fellow
  • Cuba’s DIY/Technological Disobediance– video
• Learn to make zines in this episode or read about the activity we did in this blog post
• Use these Thinking Routines in your practice
• Read this blog post to see how another Agency by Design Oakland teacher fellow used the Imagine If thinking routine to help middle schoolers in the GSA club imagine a more inclusive world.

Here’s some photos that highlight the in-person event: