The "HOW" of authentic, reciprocal community partnerships
Rooted in Relationship is a 4-part series for educators and community partners who believe that the most powerful learning happens when schools and communities work together (not for each other, but with each other).
Drawing on research, real examples, and practical frameworks, each session explores a different dimension of what it takes to design, sustain, and grow reciprocal partnerships that create positive, meaningful impact for students, communities, and the planet.
This is a series for practitioners and partners who are ready to move from good intentions to grounded, purposeful action. You can take this course yourself, as can your partners. Or you can experience the modules at the same time, reflecting on what you're learning with your partners for maximum impact and deep, mutual understanding.
Here's a sneak peek of the modules:
Session 1: Learning That Sticks: How Real-World Contexts and Community Partnerships Deepen Student Learning
When students apply knowledge and skills in authentic local and global contexts alongside community partners, a lot shifts. Learning becomes purposeful, relevant, and lasting. This session explores the research and practice behind deep learning and learning transfer, and makes the case for why community engagement is not an add-on to the curriculum, but the space where meaningful learning can live.
Through real examples from international and local school contexts, participants will develop a shared language and framework for understanding what deep learning looks like when it is rooted in genuine community relationships.
Whether you are an educator designing curriculum or a community partner wondering what schools are trying to achieve, this session will ground the rest of the series in a common understanding of the power of authentic learning transfer.
Session 2: From Transactional to Transformative: Designing Authentic Action with Community Partners
What does it actually look like when schools and community partners take action together: not for each other, but with each other? This session moves beyond fundraising drives and short-term partnerships to explore the full spectrum of authentic action: advocacy, direct engagement, community building, social entrepreneurship, planet care, and systemic change.
Participants will examine what shifts when relationships replace transactions, and explore practical models for designing action that is purposeful, reciprocal, and rooted in community assets rather than needs and a deficit mindset.
Drawing on examples from schools and partners around the world, this session invites participants to honestly assess where their current partnerships sit on the spectrum, and to imagine what is possible when they move toward the transformative end.
Session 3: Designing Together: The How of Reciprocal Co-Design, Co-Planning, and Co-Facilitation
Reciprocity is a practice. This session goes deep into what it means to genuinely co-design, co-plan, co-facilitate, and co-reflect with community partners, exploring the process from both the educator and the partner perspective.
What does it look like when a community partner is an authentic co-designer of learning experiences? What conditions make that kind of collaboration possible, and what gets in the way? Participants will examine the role of deep listening, cultural humility, and ongoing reflexivity in building partnerships that are truly mutual.
This is the most practical session in the series, and participants will leave with concrete tools and approaches they can bring directly into their partnership work.
Session 4: Measuring What Matters: Reflection, Storytelling, and the Long Arc of Impact
How do we know our partnerships are creating positive impacts for students, for communities, and for the health of the planet? This closing session focuses on building intentional reflection practices into the rhythm of partnership work: from in-the-moment check-ins to summative reviews at the end of an experience or school year.
Participants will explore practical frameworks for measuring impact across multiple dimensions, tools for capturing and sharing the story of what happened, and habits of reflection and reflexivity that sustain partnerships across school years and beyond.
This session also invites participants to think expansively about impact beyond grades and project outcomes to the deeper questions of what it means to contribute to community wellbeing and planetary health over the long term.
Your facilitators
LeeAnne and Julie are experts in curriculum design rooted in the practical application of knowledge and skills in authentic local and global contexts. They both believe that when students transfer learning from the classroom into authentic situations, contexts, and relationships, deep engagement and learning unfold. And the positive, purposeful impacts for learners, communities, and the planet are pretty incredible, too.
As schools evolve into ecosystems of learning with a foundation in relevant, personalized, and contextual experiences, community engagement and reciprocal community partnerships become a non-negotiable part of what we design, nurture and celebrate!
Julie Stern
Julie Stern is a four-time, best selling author with two decades experience facilitating adult learning. She supports educators and parents with tools to empower young people and to make sense of complexity and use their learning to promote sustainability, equity, and well-being. Through keynotes, online courses, consulting, and writing, Julie teaches others how to become pattern seekers - recognizing the deeper patterns of the world - so that they can be who they want to be and build the type of world they want to live in. Her publications include Learning that Transfers, Visible Learning for Social Studies, The On-Your-Feet-Guide to Learning Transfer and Tools for Teaching Conceptual Understanding, Elementary and Secondary.
LeeAnne Lavender
LeeAnne Lavender partners with schools worldwide to turn mission statements from static ideals into lived, daily practice. By weaving together community engagement, storytelling-informed pedagogy, and authentic global citizenship, she helps educators create learning experiences where students apply their knowledge and skills in local and global contexts with purpose and impact. LeeAnne is committed to helping educators build changemaker and changeseeker cultures that empower students to engage in positive, purposeful action fueled by the power of stories.