Using Classroom Circles to Foster SEL, Build Community and Support Restorative Practices

Victoria Cheng-Gorini has worked with Morningside since 2007. For five years, she served as the conflict resolution specialist at our PAZ after-school program at PS 24 in Brooklyn, where she helped both adults and students develop SEL skills. She is currently a lead trainer and coach for CREW: Friends for the Journey, our program to build the capacity of after-school programs to integrate SEL, and has helped develop the CREW curriculum. Victoria has also trained and coached staff from public schools across NYC in fostering social and emotional learning through our 4Rs and Restore360 Programs, and trained peer mediators in both elementary and middle schools. In addition to her work with Morningside Center, Victoria has facilitated trainings in positive discipline for CBO staffs for Development without Limits, served as a conflict resolution teacher for Project Reach Youth, and was program coordinator for the Police Athletic League Port Richmond Center. She has a BA in Criminal Justice, from John Jay College and a Masters in Conflict Analysis and Engagement from Antioch.

Dionne Grayman has been a staff developer for Morningside Center since 2014, and writes a regular blog for the organization, See and Be Seen. Dionne became an English teacher in 1993, and her first classroom was in the Rikers Island Education Facility (C-74) teaching male adolescent inmates. Says Dionne: “It was both the hardest and best teaching job I have had to date. I learned much from those young men and that experience has continued to inform who I am professionally and personally.” Dionne also taught at Brooklyn Tech, PATH on the Thomas Jefferson Campus, and Boys and Girls High School. She has been a parent and community activist. She cofounded NYCPublic, a non-profit organization dedicated to empowering NYC's public school parents, and she co-founded Mothers Empowered. She has served as a community organizing consultant for the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund. Dionne has a BA from Brooklyn College and an MS in special education from Hunter College.