Culturally Responsive Mindsets with System Involved Youth

Jalesa Washington and Vivian Liao

Training Description

Cultural responsiveness is the ability to utilize expansive practices that honor the voices and experiences of all contributors and dismantle oppressive tenets of organizational culture that serve to silence and control. We will engage in culturally responsive mindsets and plan to implement them in our work with system involved youth and families including naming how the dominant culture infiltrates organizations and making a plan to interrupt it in order to improve outcomes for system involved youth who are disproportionately youth of color.

Learning Objectives

● Engage in culturally responsive mindsets;

● Develop plans to implement culturally responsive mindsets within their efforts to support system involved youth and families; and

● Learn about how the dominant culture infiltrates organizations and make a plan to interrupt this.

Agenda 

10:30-10:40am Opening & Grounding

10:40-11:05am Levels of Culture

11:05-11:20am Educator Bias

11:20-11:50am Bias Intervention

11:50am-12:00pm Closing

Meet Our Trainers

Jalesa Washington

Jalesa joins Girls Leadership after being an educational administrator and teacher for over 8 years. She

loves inspiring and empowering youth and adults to achieve both their personal and professional goals

by building an authentic relationship with individuals. She achieves this by leading with love,

compassion, empathy, humility, and respect. Being a product of the NYC public school system, she

believes in the importance of seeing individuals as who they are and using emotional intelligence to

spark greatness in youth. Jalesa’s passion of developing self-awareness within individuals has blossomed throughout the years and has developed greatly during her time as an educator and Girl Scout troop leader. Paired with her

background in fashion and entertainment, she is known as a fashion extraordinaire who impacts and

encourages through style as well. She has been featured on Humans of New York for her interactions

with her students and has been a panelist at various events, highlighting the benefits of social emotional

learning and culturally responsive education strategies. She holds a BS in Human Ecology from the

University of Maryland Eastern Shore and a MAT from the Relay Graduate School of Education. When

Jalesa is not fulfilling her God-given purpose within her work, she enjoys dancing, journaling, spending

time traveling alone, and traveling with friends and family.

This course meets the qualifications for (1.5) BBS CE Hours for LCSWs, LMFTs, LPCCs, and LEPs as required by the California Board of Behavioral Sciences & is provided by Fred Finch Youth Center, CAMFT Provider #045295.