Center for RelationaLearning

🌏 A Rare Opportunity in Melbourne, Australia 🌏
The Center for RelationaLearning is honored to offer a two-day Relational Leadership Intensive—an experience that is both timely and deeply needed.

This is a rare opportunity to learn in person with George Otero, who has not been in Australia for several years, alongside Lisa Otero, in an intimate and immersive setting.

Hosted by Elwood Primary School on May 21–22, this Intensive is more than professional learning—it is a transformational experience designed to restore joy, meaning, and satisfaction in both your personal and professional life.

Through the Center’s Relationship-First Approach and the practice of Relational Leadership, participants will engage with:
✨ Foundational principles
✨ Operational principles
✨ Relational practices and tools

This is an invitation to reconnect—with yourself, with others, and with the deeper purpose of your work.

📍 Melbourne, Australia
📅 May 21–22
Spaces will be limited.
Flyer and registration information found by clicking link below https://drive.google.com/file/d/1NOlQIEVTztZqPfhofvryNCJyoGmQBFxz/view?usp=drive_link

📣 We are proud to announce a new partnership between the Center for RelationaLearning (CRL) and the NAFSCE - National Association for Family, School, and Community Engagement to co-sponsor the Relational Leadership Intensives, Level I—a transformative, three-day immersive learning experience held in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

This partnership reflects a deep alignment in mission and practice. Together, CRL and NAFSCE are advancing a Relationship-First approach to family, school, and community engagement—one that centers trust, connection, and CRL's relationships first approach as the foundation for meaningful and sustainable change.

As NAFSCE Executive Director Vito Borrello shared, this collaboration expands purposeful professional learning pathways for family-facing practitioners nationwide. Participants will engage in experiential practices that move beyond compliance-driven systems toward transformational ways of leading and being—by putting relationships first.

The Relational Leadership Intensive is designed for educators, family engagement professionals, and leaders who believe that:
*Trusting relationships are the root of effective family and community engagement
*Learning and leadership are relational, not transactional
*Schools thrive with families and communities, not despite them

Held in the culturally rich setting of Santa Fe, this three-day retreat develops practical tools and embodied relational practices to strengthen relationships with students, families, colleagues, and communities. Participants will also receive Relational Leadership Certification, Level I, along with a one-year NAFSCE membership as part of the experience.

📍 2026 Santa Fe Intensives
March 4–7, 2026
June 22–25, 2026
If you are ready to deepen your practice, reconnect to purpose, and lead with greater presence, trust, and impact, we invite you to join us in Santa Fe.
🔗 Registration and full details are available HERE - https://drive.google.com/file/d/1hRTHmYVM4n7DP9N-dhflJlzz2k4tb5PK/view?usp=drive_link

🍂 Honoring National Gratitude Month
As we enter the day before Thanksgiving, the Center for Relational Learning is reflecting on the season of warmth, connection, and appreciation.

We are deeply grateful for all who believe that Relational Leadership—and placing relationships first—has the power to transform us individually and reshape the purpose of our work. Gratitude is more than a feeling; it’s a powerful practice that enhances our wellbeing, the first Operating Principle of Relational Leadership: First and always, activating wellbeing.

Gratitude shifts our focus from what’s missing to what’s already present. It helps us see beyond life’s challenges and setbacks and re-center on what truly matters. Our primary associate, Maggie Farrar, reminds us that the heart of gratitude lies in the practice of noticing—noticing when someone offers us care or recognition, noticing how it makes us feel, and finding the courage to offer that same affirmation to others.

Gratitude shows up not in grand gestures, but in the micro-moments—the small interactions that make us feel seen, valued, and understood.

🧡 We invite you to join us:
In the comments, share a micro-moment of gratitude you’ve noticed recently. What small thing made a meaningful difference in your day?

Let’s fill this space with appreciation and relational warmth as we move into the holiday.

🦫 🌙 Introducing the Beaver Moon Cohort of Relational Leaders

The Relational Leadership Intensive I came to a conclusion on Saturday evening. The name for the cohort emerged organically, because we began this journey together on the day of the full moon. We concluded our time together with appreciation, gifting and a commitment to continue to place relationships first in everything we do.

Here are a few of the participant reflections from the three days:

"The biggest surprise for me was that this did not feel like other trainings - it was messy, fun, funny, deep, but above all REAL."

"The most useful information I learned at the Intensive was to be present both with others and myself, and one small step is better than no step at all."

"I valued how supported I felt in this learning process. The expertise of the facilitators and the group contributed to how the approach and informations was absorbed."

☀️ DAY 2 of the Relational Leadership Intensive ☀️

Foundational Principles
Relational Principles
Community Conversations - Poster illustrates what we want students to leave with.
Natural Ways of Learning via ART with local Santero Frankie Lucero

Day 1 at the Relational Leadership Intensive I
🌟 Activating Wellbeing 🌟 Wellbeing Welcomes 🌟
A special Learning Walk at the Santa Fe Indian School. Many thanks to principal Dr. Yann Lussiez, Assistant Principal Bernie Gurule, the students and staff. Connecting, Storytelling, Sharing and learning together.

The room is quiet now… but soon it will be alive with connection, conversation, and discovery.
We’re in beautiful Santa Fe, New Mexico — surrounded by art, culture, and the watching eyes of the kachinas on the wall — preparing to begin our Relational Leadership Intensive.

Over the next three days, we’ll explore what it truly means to place relationship first in all we do — cultivating trust, joy, and meaningful impact in our personal and professional lives.

Stay tuned for daily reflections and photos from this journey of learning, growth, and connection. 🌿

✨ Last week, the Center for RelationaLearning hosted a Learning Journey for a team from Elwood Primary School located in Melbourne, Australia. George and the Center have been collaborating and partnering with Elwood for over 15 years. Elwood Primary is a relational school that places the relationship first in everything they do. This focus is evident in the curiosity, wonder, joy and appreciation displayed by this team.

The Center extends it's gratitude to the schools and organizations that hosted a visit to explore the myriad of ways that we can activate wellbeing, establish relational trust and lead realtioanlly. Anansi Charter School in Taos; The May Center in Santa Fe; and the Alleyway Activation initiative hosted by Wilson Middle School in Albuquerque.

If you and or your school or organization would like to learn more about our Learning Journey offering please visit our website at www.relationalearning.com or contact us directly at [email protected] to schedule a consultation with the Center.

Appreciation to our hosts from MiLEAP who invited the Center for RelationaLearning to share our putting relationships first approach and RelationaLeadership principles and relational tools with leaders from across Michigan last week. Gratitude to Melissa Manko, MA, Tewonia Lee Alamu, LLMSW, Jonnie Taton, Al Thomas, Shanon Everett and Rawlan Lillard II for their partnership in the effort to highlight trusting relationships as the cornerstone to all family and community engagement practice.

🍀 What Luck! 🍀

Co-authors (George, Susan, Bob and Monica) celebrating the 25th anniversary of the publication of the book RelationaLearning: Education for Mindy, Body and Spirit. We are so excited about the growing interest in RelationaLearning and RelationaLeadership.

Look for a revised edition on our website soon!

Visit our website and find our other publications that are available for sale.
www.relationalearning.com

📣 WEBINAR NEXT WEEK! 📣
What can schools do to improve the ways they connect with families -- and create a positive school culture where everyone feels seen, heard, understood and valued?
Anne Henderson and George Otero will share the research, principles and practices for forming and nurturing authentic trusting relationships that connect family, school and community.

Connect is one of NAFSCE’s family engagement core competencies. Effective partnerships with families are grounded in positive relationships. We start by activating wellbeing, making sure families, students and teachers feel seen and heard, and engaging in on-going discovery of ways to work better together,
Anne and George will describe the Relationships First approach and some practical tools that school, family and community members can adopt to know and listen deeply to each other and work as respected partners in education.

Goals: Understand how current research on Family Engagement spotlights the importance of building trusting relationships.
Understand the three operating principles that create trusting relationships among all members of the school community.
Better value their connections and relationships with students, parents, colleagues and the wider community.

Register Here:
https://lnkd.in/gN-pT7Sr