Offerings: Workshops & Residencies
Below is a collection of programs I am currently offering. Contact me to discuss what will work best for your school or organization! Programs are catered to your needs.
Liberation Music Circles: From Pedagogy of the Oppressed to Music of the Oppressed
I created Liberation Music Circles as a weekly after-school class or in-school club for youth musicians in high schools to process, reflect on, and create musical works of art based on the experiences of their own daily lives, inviting them to partake in civic engagement, practice being upstanders, and develop as socially conscious neighbors, students, and community members.
Duration: Weekly after-school class.
Students will:
- Develop music literacy and critical listening skills grounded in social justice history, identity, and collective well-being.
- Strengthen their musicianship and artistic voice through hands-on practice in instruments, composition, performance, and collaborative creation.
- Express their lived experiences through original activist songs that uplift their voices and communities.
- Build confidence as public performers and cultural workers who use music to catalyze dialogue, healing, and change.
- Cultivate solidarity, care, and collective leadership in multiracial, gender-expansive, and ability-diverse learning spaces.
Who this program is for: This offering works best for grades 9-12 schools that are interested in starting and or growing their social justice and civic engagement music department’s offerings as a means to transform culture in their schools.
Building Youth-Centered Restorative Justice Practices, Schools & Lives!
I created this professional development workshop series because, as a 20+ year public school teacher, I've learned firsthand the importance of an offering that gives educators hands-on tools, skills, and best practices they can implement immediately, while also grounding their experience in theoretical frameworks, research-based data, as well as the social, political, and historical contexts of school discipline. This workshop provides the time and space to grow a school’s capacity to transform school culture away from policing and toward restoration.
Duration: Six full days, scheduled once per month, supported by remote weekly or bi-weekly coaching sessions.
Who this program is for: This professional development workshop series works best for K-12 schools that are interested in starting and or growing youth leadership within their restorative justice practices.
What educators will take away: Educators will begin or grow their schools’ intergenerational teams of youth and adults as they collaborate in sustaining restorative justice (RJ) processes for community building and conflict resolution, from simple day-to-day misunderstandings to complex interpersonal and systemic conflict, harm, and violence.
YOUTH InPower! Youth Participatory Action Research
Youth Participatory Action Research (YPAR) Camp is based on providing the team of intergenerational participants with tools, skills, best practices, and theories that will support them in creating project-based learning projects based on a research framework that centers the voices, experiences, and cultural wealth of young people using various methodologies from surveys, focus groups, interviews, as well as arts-based activities such as collaging, photography, and more!
Duration: Either a 1-day workshop or a multi-day offering, depending on your school's capacity and need/interest.
Students will:
- Develop research, policy analysis, and advocacy skills to influence decision-making processes that impact their lives.
- Design and implement arts-based YPAR projects rooted in civic engagement and youth culture.
- Gain first-hand experience in policy change processes through direct engagement with elected officials, media, and school leadership.
- Strengthen their critical consciousness and political education, building a shared understanding of history, systems, and intersectional struggles.
- Expand their public speaking, event production, and campaign organizing skills through real-world projects.
Who this program is for:
This program works best for youth and educators in grades 9-12 who are interested in developing research skills to produce evidence-based data to solve issues that affect their own communities.
Sing Down The Walls Workshop: A Singing Resistance
Sing Down The Walls is a participatory singing and drumming workshop rooted in cultural organizing and creative resistance in the spirit of the “singing resistance” choirs that have been protesting in the streets against ICE violence. This workshop explores how singing has been used in social justice movements historically, from the Freedom Singers during the civil rights movement, to bomba y plena traditions in Puerto Rico and beyond.
Duration: A single 2-3 hour workshop.
Participants will:
- Develop music literacy and critical listening skills grounded in social justice history, identity, and collective well-being.
- Strengthen their speaking, singing, and chanting voice through hands-on practice, vocal warmups, theater of the oppressed games, and embodied healing-centered practices.
- Express their lived experiences through original activist songs that uplift their voices and communities in the fight to end children and family separation.
- Build confidence as public performers and cultural workers who use music to catalyze dialogue, healing, and change.
- Cultivate solidarity, care, and collective leadership in multiracial, gender-expansive, and ability-diverse learning spaces.
Who this program is for: This offering works best for communities interested in exploring creative resistance as non-violent direct action, healing-centered protest, and socially conscious civic engagement.