Curriculum Development
Racial trauma curriculum development
I partner with universities, mental health organizations, and professional education providers to design curricula and certificate programs that help clinicians understand racial trauma and internalized oppression, and what both mean for psychotherapy.
The aim is to take complex scholarship and turn it into learning clinicians can carry into the room with the people they work with.
Talk with me about a project
How I think about a curriculum
Most of the clinicians I meet have already read something about racial trauma. What many of them have not had is a place to work with it over time, where the readings, the clinical material, and their own reactions are held together long enough to change how they sit with clients. That is what I try to create when I design a curriculum. Each program is built around a clear framework, so that the learning accumulates from one course to the next, with early sessions offering shared language and concepts and later sessions putting that language to work with real clinical situations.
The curricula I develop draw on psychodynamic, relational, and intersectional thinking, and they are grounded in the Trajectory of Awareness model and my research with Black women psychotherapists on internalized racial oppression. In practice, participants spend time with case vignettes drawn from the kinds of moments clinicians actually face, with reflective exercises that ask them to notice what a client's story stirs in them, and with guided conversation about how race, power, and history live inside the therapy relationship.
I also pay close attention to who the learners are. A program for early-career clinicians in a community agency asks for something different from one designed for experienced supervisors or doctoral students, so the pacing, the readings, and the depth of self-reflection are shaped with that audience in mind. Throughout, participants are invited to think carefully about their clients and to look honestly at themselves, since both are part of doing this work well.
What a project can include
Planning
Needs assessment and learning goals
Program architecture and course sequencing
Learning objectives
Writing the courses
Content development
Clinical case vignettes
Experiential and reflective activities
Facilitator materials
Teaching and revising
Assessment approaches
Refining existing educational programs
Recent work with the YWCA Northern New Jersey Center for Racial Healing
For the YWCA Northern New Jersey Center for Racial Healing, I created the Post-Graduate Certificate in Racial Trauma Treatment, a program of ten courses and 30 continuing education hours. I also created a curriculum on addressing racial trauma in clinical work.
Questions about curriculum projects
What kinds of organizations do you work with?
Universities, mental health organizations, and professional education providers, including programs building something new and programs refining what they already offer.
Can you help with a program we already have?
Yes. Reviewing and refining existing educational programs is part of this work, whether that means sequencing, learning objectives, case material, or facilitator support.
Do you also teach the courses?
That depends on the project. We can talk about whether you want me to design the curriculum, teach parts of it, prepare your facilitators, or some combination.
How does a project begin?
With a conversation about your organization, your learners, and what you hope the program will do. From there I put together a proposal with a scope and timeline.
Have a curriculum or certificate program in mind?
Tell me a little about your organization, your learners, and what you hope the program will do, and we can find a time to talk.