Educational Consulting for Teachers and Parents

Educational

Consulting

For schools:

I'm available to come to schools (these days, virtually) to work with both teachers and parents. As a verified trainer for Aspire, feel free to contact me about providing professional development or running parent workshops. I work with the New York Early Childhood Professional Development Institute as a Gender and Sexuality trainer; we currently offer a series of three workshops for professionals, and two for families.

I also offer workshops dealing with strategies for talking to young children about difficult (for grownups) topics, such as race, gender, and sexuality.

If you'd like me to come to your school/organization, please be aware that I don't currently offer one-off workshops, as we can't get into things in a meaningful way in such a short amount of time. If your group is interested in a series of three or more workshops, then please contact me! Don't forget to let me know the number of participants expected; the target audience (elementary educators? school staff? parents of young children? middle school teachers? etc); the number of workshops desired; the timeframe for the workshops; the budget available; and the goal(s) you have in mind.

For teachers:

I have some limited availability to talk to fellow educators. If you and a few of your colleagues want to book me for an hour or so to answer questions about how to talk to little kids about big ideas, get in touch. Likewise, if you want to talk to me about bringing gender and sexuality workshops to your school, or incorporating Black Lives Matter into your curriculum, drop me a line. To be clear, I don't currently have capacity to do pro bono work on top of teaching kindergarten; I slide my scale way down for teachers, but definitely be clear with you fellow educators about needing to pass the hat if you'd like me to come chat with you.

For parents:

Right now:

Tough talks

Right now, the world is in quite a state. Kids have lots of questions, and it can be hard to have the answers. I can offer guidance on having tough conversations with your children, while also offering you resources for your own work. Check out my online course, "Rooted: Framework & Education for Creating an Antiracist Home."

If a full course is more than you can handle right now, I'm also available for single sessions, both for individuals and for groups. I offer a sliding scale for groups of four to eight parents; you can bring your questions and the sticky situations you've dealt with, and get some insight into how children think about things, as well as strategies for talking with them. Here's what a parent wrote after sitting in on my conversation with kindergarteners about George Floyd:

Dear Laleña,

I cannot express enough gratitude to you for holding that space for all of us yesterday. Not only was yesterday’s meeting very helpful for [our child], but for our entire family. While [my partner] and I are doing our best to speak to [our child] about what is going on right now, seeing it modeled helps us see how we can be more effective in our conversations with a 6 year old, especially as these conversations touch upon our own grief and rage.

In tremendous gratitude,

All the time:

Working with your child's teacher

It’s the beginning of the school year. You might have some questions. How do you enter into your relationship with your child’s teacher? How do you ensure you have an open dialogue with the adult your child spends most of her time with? How can you prepare for your parent-teacher conferences? What do you do if you have questions throughout the year? Your child might spend a significant amount of time away from you, in the care of another adult who will get to know them very well, albeit in a very different way from the way you experience them. I have some tips for making the relationship with your child’s teacher a rewarding and educational one, and I’m happy to share them.

Beginning of the year

Parent-Teacher Conferences

Something's come up...