Power + Character educator training

We hope you’ll join us if you are. . .

• Looking for citizenship-inspiring activities, modules, or frameworks you can bring to groups of students you already work with
• Wanting to create opportunities that invite others to show up and take collective action in intergenerational ways
• Building your skills as a facilitator, activator or community leader
• An experienced educator looking for new tools to help young people develop a sense of civic identity
• Yearning for space yourself to make sense of the challenges your community faces and your role within it

It’s time to reimagine civics.
Most civic programs stop at knowledge. But in today’s world, young people need more than facts — they need formation. This training helps educators offer experiences that ground students in a sense of self, community and purpose in public life.

We must couple power and character.
Too often, students learn about civic power without ethical grounding — or learn about “being good” without knowing how to effect change. We teach both. When young people integrate civic fluency with moral clarity, they begin to live like citizens.

This is identity-based, not issue-based.
This isn’t a one-off project or plug-and-play lesson. Our curriculum helps young people explore who they are, who they’re responsible for and how they want to show up — not just in the classroom, but in the communities they’re a part of.

Educators deserve this too.
We know how much heart you pour into your work. This training is designed to nourish your civic imagination, too. You’ll reflect, connect and leave ready to lead experiences that change how young people see themselves — and what they believe is possible.

We invite members of the training cohort to engage with the Power+ Character curriculum as a flexible, civic identity-centered framework that can be thoughtfully integrated into existing educational, co-curricular and community-based work. Rather than positioning the curriculum as a stand-alone program, participants are encouraged to draw on the elements that resonate most with their roles and contexts, embedding its principles, activities and reflective practices into classrooms, student organizations, leadership initiatives, out-of-school programs and community partnerships in ways that enhance and strengthen the work they already do.

Through this approach, participants can design citizenship-inspiring experiences that move beyond civic knowledge toward civic formation, ethical grounding and agency, supporting students in understanding who they are, who they are responsible for and how they wish to show up in public and communal life. The curriculum also supports participants’ growth as facilitators, activators and community leaders by fostering spaces for dialogue, reflection and collective action across differences, while remaining adaptable to local needs and real community challenges. Implementation is intentionally reciprocal and developmental, inviting educators to engage in self-reflection, clarify their own civic identities and nourish their civic imagination as they guide others. Our hope is that cohort members leave the training equipped to reimagine civics in ways that are ethical, sustained and deeply human, integrating power with character in service of their communities.

Cohort members will be invited to share their implementation successes (and challenges!) with the Civic Health Student Programming community-of-practice, which meets each fall and spring.

Sharpen your citizen senses

• Practice close observation of your community instead of resting on assumptions
• Deepen your capacity to listen curiously to others’ thoughts, experience and opinions
• Touch into emotions and explore your memories — reflect on how your story drives you towards active citizenship

Clarify your citizen mind

• Investigate how your thoughts are formed, what lenses you use as you perceive the worl, and how you react in heightened situations
• Consider the mind of America: what are the powerful myths, narrative and foundational concepts that shape how we do or don’t identify with a sense of national pride

Deepen your citizen heart

• Unpack your values and practice applying those priorities to shared civic life
• Add space to your definition of service—and build civic habits and rituals with civic love at the center

Embrace your citizen power

• Practice mapping power in your community and noticing how it flows
• Understand your place in the flow, and learn strategies for disrupting or recirculating power in order to challenge toxic systems
• Create action plans for how you’ll integrate all this learning into your life as a civic catalyst at home

Many institutions across the country have already engaged with this curriculum! We encourage you to check out the sample curriculum and case study examples below to get a sense of what we’re inviting you into. . .

• Power + Character sample

This is a three day experience that will take place Tuesday to Friday, January 27, 28 and 29, 2027. Participants are expected to commit for the full three days of training.

Sessions will take place on the University of Washington’s Seattle Campus in the Hans Rosling Center for Public Health.

Breakfast and lunch will be provided for participants.

We encourage you to use public transportation when possible. If you do need to park on campus, we encourage you to review these resources in advance of your arrival.

We invite you to join us for a three-day professional development experience, taking place in person on January 27-29, 2027. Each day is essential, as the curriculum builds progressively, enriching your learning journey.

There is no cost to participate, and breakfast and lunch will be provided for participants.

This will be a free, highly engaging and genuinely fun learning experience for faculty and staff, one that directly supports the work many of us care deeply about: teaching, mentoring, leadership, civic engagement and student development. In addition to being energizing, practical and immediately useful across roles and disciplines, we are eager to build the community of practice where colleagues from across the UW can share ideas, learn from one another and strengthen their work to advance civic health and community engaged teaching and learning.

If your department would like to support this work by promoting the opportunity within your campus network, we welcome you as an event partner! Importantly, event partnership does not require any financial contribution or additional workload. The only commitment involved is helping us recruit and encourage faculty and/or staff from your unit to participate in the program.

In short, event partners are asked to:

• Lend their name/office as an event partner
• Help promote the program and encourage participation within their networks
• Support broad, cross-campus engagement in this shared learning opportunity

Colleagues from the Evans School of Public Affairs and Governance and the Community Engagement and Leadership Education (CELE) Center will handle all logistics and program coordination. The program will be facilitated by a very well-respected national organization called Citizen University that happens to be based in Seattle! Your partnership helps us reach a diverse and robust group of participants and signals campus-wide support for this work.

If you’re interested in partnering with us, contact Kathryn Pursch Cornforth (purschk@uw.edu) in the CELE Center or Amen Tsegai (amen2@uw.edu) in the Evans School.