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Dena Simmons
Founder of LiberatED
Dena Simmons
Founder of LiberatED
Biography
Dr. Dena Simmons is the founder of LiberatED, a liberatory approach to social and emotional learning, racial justice, and healing. She is also the inaugural scholar-in-residence at the Institute for Racial Justice at Loyola University of Chicago. She is the former Assistant Director of Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence, where she supported schools to use the power of emotions to create a more compassionate and just society.
Prior to her work at the Center, Dr. Simmons served as an educator, teacher educator, diversity facilitator, and curriculum developer. She has been a leading voice on teacher education and has written and spoken across the country about social and racial justice pedagogy, diversity, emotional intelligence, and bullying in K-12 school settings, including the White House, the inaugural Obama Foundation Summit, the United Nations, two TEDx talks, and a TED talk on Broadway.
Dr. Simmons has been profiled in Education Week, the Huffington Post, NPR, the AOL/PBS project, MAKERS: Women Who Make America, and a Beacon Press Book, Do It Anyway: The New Generation of Activists. Dr. Simmons is a recipient of a Harry S. Truman Scholarship, a J. William Fulbright Fellowship, an Education Pioneers Fellowship, a Paul and Daisy Soros Fellowship, a Phillips Exeter Academy Dissertation Fellowship, a Hedgebrook Writing Residency, and an Arthur Vining Davis Aspen Fellowship among others. She earned her doctorate degree from Teachers College, Columbia University, where she recently served as faculty in the Summer Principals Academy.
Dr. Simmons’ research interests include teacher preparedness to address bullying in the K-12 school setting, culturally responsive pedagogy, and the intersection of equity and social and emotional learning (SEL) interventions—all in an effort to ensure and foster justice and safe spaces for all. She is the author of the forthcoming book, White Rules for Black People (St. Martin’s Press).
Speaker Videos
Building a Culture of Equity Through Social Emotional Learning
TEDx: What to Do if Your Student Comes at You With Scissors?
6 Ways to Be an Antiracist Educators | Edutopia
TEDx: It’s 10 P.M. Do You Know Where Your Children Are?
Abolitionist Teaching and the Future of Our Schools
Speech Topics
Engaging in LiberatED Social & Emotional Learning (SEL) for Racially Justice & Healing
We will discuss and reflect on opportunities for LiberatED social and emotional learning (SEL), which takes into mind the social and political context of our community and larger society. Participants will dissect current SEL standards and models and brainstorm ways that they can begin to implement fearless SEL with the goal of collective liberation. Educators will also reflect on what gets in the way of equity. We will also create a plan for realizing our vision for leading for equity – and liberation – through leveraging SEL practices that center healing, racial and social justice, and radical love.
Session Objectives:
- Reflect on causes burnout & engage in a burnout inventory
- Discuss self-care and coping strategies as well as conduct a self-careinventory
- Explore strategies to ensure equity-responsive, trauma-informed, and healing- centered practices
- Make a commitment to care for self and for others
From Surviving to Thriving: Creating Equitable Environments Through Emotional Intelligence & Culturally Relevant Practices
For community members to thrive, they must feel safe to be who they are; they must love themselves. As a result, our leadership, instruction, and assessment must foster psychological and emotional safety through emotional intelligence, culturally responsivity, and anti-racist practices. During this interactive session, participants will explore impostor syndrome, emotional intelligence, and culturally relevant pedagogy, and anti-racist practices. Through narrative, Dr. Simmons will discuss how the intersection of emotionally intelligent and culturally relevant practices can create equitable and welcoming communities, where everyone can learn in the comfort of their skin.
Session Objectives:
- Explore impostor syndrome
- Discuss the skills of emotional intelligence as well as cultural relevant and antiracist practices
- Explore the intersections between culturally relevant practices and emotional intelligence
- Describe ways to incorporate culturally relevant and emotionally intelligent practices into participants’ lives and work
Collective Care, Healing & Equity-Responsive Practices When the World Feels Heavy
In this session, we will explore self-care strategies to cope with isolation, uncertainty, and the collective traumas of COVID-19 and our country’s reckoning with race. We will reflect on what is causing our burnout to tackle it with relevant emotion regulation and self-care strategies as well as how to commit to care not just for ourselves, but also for our community. Last, we will discuss plans for creating systemic change and implementing anti-racist practices so that we can ensure equity and facilitate collective healing amid so much heaviness.
Session Objectives:
- Reflect on causes burnout & engage in a burnout inventory
- Discuss self-care and coping strategies as well as conduct a self-careinventory
- Explore strategies to ensure equity-responsive, trauma-informed, and healingcentered practices
- Make a commitment to care for self and for others
Testimonials
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