Jessy and Mike Molina have over 20 years of experience in training and facilitation with multiple areas of expertise. Training led by Molina Consulting is dynamic, engaging, meaningful, practical--and fun! Participants will engage with diverse modalities of learning, build community and connection with one another, and leave with concrete tools and strategies that are immediately applicable to their work. Below are some major training areas—if you don’t see what you are looking for, just ask! All workshops are tailored to meet the needs and culture of your school, organization, or company. 

Building Community

The Art of Community: Strategies to Build Meaningful Connection in Schools

How do we build a resilient sense of community in schools? How do we build a community that can skillfully navigate tension and conflict and emerge stronger and more connected? How can we ensure that all members feel included in their school communities, even those historically on the margins? Join us to learn concrete strategies to foster a meaningful sense of belonging for students, families, educators, board, and beyond.

The Art of Community: Strategies to Build Meaningful Connection

How do we build a resilient sense of community in our institutions? How do we build a community that can skillfully navigate tension and conflict and emerge stronger and more connected? How can we ensure that all members feel included, even those historically on the margins? Join us to learn concrete strategies to foster a meaningful sense of belonging for all constituencies.

Beyond the POC/BIPOC Jargon: Building Meaningful Solidarity Across Communities of Color

Using the terms “people of color” and “BIPOC” can imply a common experience and struggle. We know that no community is a monolith, much less an aggregation of communities. However, umbrella coalitions can be a source of resilience, strength, and power. This power and strength does not appear magically, but must be intentionally and carefully cultivated. This requires an examination of our experiences and needs, and where those needs might diverge or even conflict. Join us to learn how to build true solidarity among communities of color, in a way that centers the marginalized and lifts all boats.

Building Equity

Topics include implicit and unconscious bias, equity-driven data collection; intersectionality; identity development; deep dives into understanding dynamics of race, gender, class, gender identity, sexuality, religion, cultural and other identities; building welcoming spaces for all.

Sample workshop series:

Session 1: Race as a Social Construct

Race is so central to life in our nation today that it seems it has always been an immutable fact of life. In reality, race has been socially constructed over time and codified in laws and practices. There have been hundreds of years of “race science” attempting to root race in biological difference and the myth of a biological basis for race persists in our culture today. This training will support participants to learn how race was constructed over time as a social, rather than biological, construction, and why this distinction is critically important in dismantling racism.

Session 2: Reducing the Impact of Implicit Bias

This workshop is designed to give participants an understanding of implicit bias and how our brains are wired to create mental shortcuts that have mostly positive impact on our lives. Participants will also learn about biases with negative impact that are reinforced unconsciously through literature, popular media, and other messages we receive. Participants will learn the language and tools needed to examine their own biases, consider how bias shows up in personal and professional relationships, and learn proven strategies to reduce the impact of bias on our decision-making. 

Session 3: Interrupting Microaggressions

Implicit bias has a significant impact on organizational culture and climate. Left unchecked, implicit bias can leave people feeling unwelcome, excluded, misunderstood, and marginalized. In this workshop, participants will learn how implicit bias leads to microaggressions. Researcher Dr. Derald Wing Sue describes microaggressions as “everyday verbal, nonverbal, and environmental slights, snubs, or insults, whether intentional or unintentional, which communicate hostile, derogatory, or negative messages to target persons based solely upon their marginalized group membership”. Participants will learn what microaggressions are, how they show up in the workplace and beyond, and what they can do to interrupt microaggressions in order to create a more welcoming and inclusive climate.

Session 4: Understanding Institutional Racism

Institutional racism has shaped every institution in our nation in profound ways. This training will look at the impact of institutional racism on the U.S. criminal justice, public education, and housing systems. Participants will learn how racism shaped these institutions and continue to impact the way they operate today, with devastating impact on communities of color. Participants will leave with a strong understanding of institutional racism, its impact on individuals, communities and the country, and strategies to begin to identify and dismantle institutional racism and repair the harm.

Culturally Responsive Education 

Topics include culturally responsive pedagogy, understanding youth culture; culturally responsive practices in math and science; becoming a “warm demander” teacher; creating curricular maps; integrating multicultural perspectives in curriculum, teacher training, coaching and support; and understanding “windows and mirrors” as a curricular frame.

Sample workshop series:

Who am I?

In order to be culturally responsive, educators must reflect on who they are and acknowledge and confront what we bring into school each day. Where did we grow up? What are our values? Where did those values come from? Using the “Culture Tree” model from Zaretta Hammond’s book “Culturally Responsive Teaching and the Brain”, participants will reflect on their home cultures and how those cultures show up in their teaching and impact relationship building with students and families.

What is Culturally Responsive Teaching?

We will share definitions of culturally responsive teaching from Zaretta Hammond, Geneva Gay, and Gloria Ladson-Billings. Drawing on Billings’ work, we will focus on culturally responsive teaching mindsets in this session. We will reflect on seven components of culturally responsive teaching, including positive perspectives on parents and families, communicating high expectations, learning within the context of culture, student-centered instruction, culturally-mediated instruction, reshaping the curriculum, and teacher as facilitator as a way to understand the heart of this approach.

Examining Curriculum with a Culturally Responsive Lens

Using the “windows and mirrors” framework, participants will think about their curriculum with regard to which histories, stories, viewpoints and perspectives are represented, and which are not. What messages does this curriculum send to different students, families, and communities? Participants will identify places in their existing curriculum where they can adjust units and lesson plans to ensure their curriculum is inclusive of all.

Who are my Students and Using Cultural Knowledge to Guide Instructional Strategy

Knowing our students in deep and meaningful ways is central to culturally responsive teaching. Returning to the “Culture Tree”, participants will explore the surface and deep cultures of their students. After creating a “Culture Tree” mapping the students’ cultures, participants will reflect on the differences between their own “Culture Trees” and the ones created for students, and how they may honor and welcome students’ cultures into their instructional practice. In addition, participants will explore how a deeper understanding of students’ cultures impacts their capacity to engage students and families in deep and meaningful ways. Participants will explore how to use student cultures to guide their instructional strategies, including ways of knowing, understanding and sharing information in ways that may be different than the teacher’s cultural background and traditional school culture. 

Best Practices for Talking about Race in the Classroom

Talking about race in the classroom can be challenging. Students may perpetuate myths and stereotypes and inadvertently hurt others. Conversations may get heated and spiral out of control. As teachers, we may not know what to do or say in the moment, or may be afraid of saying the wrong thing. At the same time, learning to talk about race and racism is a critical skill for young people who will live and work in increasingly diverse environments. Race has shaped our nation and our world in important ways, and understanding race is essential to understanding history--and our current context. This session will offer concrete strategies designed to support teachers in talking about race in your classroom in ways that are trauma-informed, culturally responsive, and engaging for young people.

Building Connected and Caring Learning Communities

Strong relationships are foundational to effective teaching. This session will explore how to build connected and caring learning communities. Building on restorative practices for schools, this session will explore strategies for building relationships and trust in classrooms, in ways that are connected to content, as students are more engaged and successful when they feel connected to one another and their teachers. 

Negotiating Power Dynamics

There are always power differences between schools and communities and within classrooms. Families remember and are impacted by their own experiences of school, and stereotypes about parenting and culture also play a role in school-family dynamics. Students are highly aware of when they feel that their own identities are seen and valued in the classroom, and when they are not. Dr. Geneva Gay discusses the importance of mediating power imbalances that show up in schools based on race, gender, sexuality, culture, ethnicity, religion, class, and more. This session will give participants tools for understanding power dynamics and how to mitigate the impact of inherent imbalances on their instruction and student and family engagement.

Teaching for Social Justice 

The reality is that we are teaching our students to change the world for the better by creating more equity and justice. In order to prepare students to do that effectively and powerfully, we must approach teaching with a social justice lens. Using the Teaching Tolerance social justice standards and a culturally responsive teaching framework, we will explore how teaching may support students to understand structures of power and privilege in society, theories of personal, institutional and societal change, and how they may participate in creating a more just world.

Dialogue Across Difference

Topics include differences between dialogue and debate; how to host and facilitate dialogue on difficult issues; how to formulate dialogic questions; how to gracefully handle divisive or disruptive participants; how to use the art of dialogue to build community, connection and understanding.

Building Connection and Understanding through Storytelling

Topics include what is a story; what makes a compelling story; how to tell a story; how to use storytelling to build connection and understanding between diverse groups of people. 

Culturally Responsive Parenting

Topics include helping children talk about race, gender, sexuality, class, gender identity, social justice issues and more; supporting healthy identity development in children; ensuring that families help create “identity-safe” environments for children to grow into themselves.

Social Justice and Activism

Topics include understanding important social justice issues such as immigration, criminal justice, policing, education, healthcare, and more; understanding power dynamics; community organizing skills; designing culturally responsive service learning programs; supporting young people to be agents of change.

Facilitation Skills

Topics include understanding facilitation; facilitation skills; handling challenging participants; training and workshop design; developing your facilitation style and voice.

If the training you are looking for doesn’t fit into one of these categories, just ask! Each of our workshops is custom-designed to meet the particular needs of your community. We would be happy to develop and design a dynamic, engaging and transformative training for you!