2024 Bridge Conference

In this affinity session, BIPOC participants will co-create a container of connection, inclusion, diversity, and inspiration through centering their lived/living and professional experiences from a cultural identity focus lens. Connecting aspects of their identity and how that might inform their leadership style of youth development, participants will gain a deeper awareness of the systemic barriers they are confronting amongst themselves and with their youth. With this greater sense of awareness, participants will be given opportunities to practice peer to peer coaching skills to strategize, advance, and enhance their skills towards greater leadership, collaboration, and peer support in strengthening the BIPOC collective voice for future possibilities in the field.

In this session, participants will:

• Build connection amongst BIPOC youth development leaders 
• Strategize and practice strengthening their leadership skills

In this workshop, participants will gain practical strategies and essential tools to transform their educational programs into nurturing and responsive environments for individuals who have experienced trauma. Attendees will learn how to implement trauma-informed care principles, fostering a culture of understanding, safety, and support. This session will provide actionable steps to equip your staff, ensuring they are well-prepared to meet the unique needs of your youth participants.

We will build on the participants' baseline awareness that we all operate in systems that were built to oppress BIPOC or neurodiverse youth. Some of us were formally trained to serve all youth within these systems. Some of us are lucky enough to have awareness of the ways we think and operate that perpetuate the damage these systems have done. This session will help all participants see ways to manage the systemic pressures and internal biases that we all have. Even if we don’t know exactly what we’re thinking when a bias is at play, we can create activities and build relationships with staff, students and leadership that will help us identify, set aside and understand the impacts of bias. The key is to see that we are all learning: educators, students, executives and administrators. We are all experts in our experiences of the lessons presented and have a wealth of experience outside the classroom. When we come to teaching with an expectation that teachers are experts we are less capable of learning how to improve our methods according to the students’ needs. We want to attract participants from all levels of education, whether they are certificated, experienced teachers, administrators, non-profit executive leadership or funding partners who can support program development or implementation.

As shifts in global migration continue, schools and community organizations are welcoming a diverse range of newcomers coming to the U.S. through the resettlement program. This session will delve into the emerging groups arriving in Washington, helping participants build a stronger understanding of these newcomers and the unique factors that shape their resettlement experiences. Participants will explore essential approaches for addressing the backgrounds, strengths, and challenges these populations bring, while also learning how to navigate key resources and data to remain informed about demographic trends. The session aims to empower educators and administrators to tailor their strategies at all levels—from individual classrooms to district-wide planning.

Can you have program quality without racial equity? This workshop is for all involved in promoting program quality, as everyone can make decisions and carry out actions with equity in mind. Building an equitable quality improvement system is like assembling a puzzle, where racial equity is integral to each piece. Participants will explore equity considerations within four quality improvement system components. We will discuss specific examples of policies and practices that contribute to equitable quality improvement. Collectively we will highlight themes, review resources, and support participants in developing plans to advance racial equity within their own program, organization, or system. This workshop is intended for individuals who work at the upper-management and leadership level, including system leaders and funders.

Four years after the Covid shutdowns, are kids just different now? How are the impacts showing up disproportionately for people of various races, ethnicities, identities, and abilities? Is it all “gaps” or did children also learn skills and knowledge we should be celebrating? As afterschool and youth development professionals, we know it’s very difficult to connect outcomes to specific experiences, even decades later. We’re beginning to see research now, but there’s a need for much more, and it’s likely to continue for years into the future, yet we are sensing some trends. For example, the 2-year-old who would have been learning facial expressions in child care instead saw masked faces, and now, at 6, are they connecting with peers in a different way? In this session, we’ll explore our own experiences with the children who were anywhere from 1 to 14 in 2020, how key developmental experiences might have looked different during these 4 years, and what we can do to support the now 5 to 18-year-olds we spend our time with.

Are you a youth worker who values restorative practices, youth voice, and growing equitable and connected program spaces? This workshop is for those who are excited by the liberatory possibilities of community circles, by the why, and are looking for guidance on how. Moving beyond the programmatic foundations of emotional safety and self- and co-regulation, we’ll link individual practices like developing agreements, using mistakes as opportunities for repair, and solutions vs consequences into a scaffolded process to implement community circles in youth programs. This workshop also provides specific strategies to teach these higher-order SEL practices to youth.

In the world of out-of-school activities, icebreakers are often used as a way to encourage groups to bond and build relationships in a short period of time. However, icebreakers are typically ineffective due to participants' reluctance to engage with them. They also tend to be non-inclusive for participants who are neurodiverse, disabled, speak English as a second language, or are introverted. In this session, participants will learn how to turn icebreakers into more effective connection builders that are inclusive of the majority of participants and that foster more authentic connections. Participants will leave this session with new activities to bring back to their groups as well as a new perspective on icebreakers and activity accessibility.