Kathleah Pagdilao
Transforming Together
Kathleah Pagdilao
Kathleah Consul Pagdilao leads Confluence Rising’s adult programming team,
Transforming Together, which trains and coaches individuals and groups in
Equity, Transformation, and Restorative Justice and provides organizations
support through conflict facilitation. A former classroom teacher, Kathleah
started as a Confluence Rising volunteer, joined as staff to create Conscious
Classrooms, and served as the Director of Building Bridges for Youth for six
years. She has been designing, coordinating, and facilitating critical dialogues on
inclusion and justice topics for over a decade as she believes in the power of
building connections across differences to transform relationships and
communities.
Kathleah’s interests and experiences span many fields from conducting research
at a progressive K-8 school and co-authoring articles including “Transnational
Children Orchestrating Competing Voices in Multimodal, Digital Autobiographies”
(Teachers College Record) to coordinating an oral history project in rural
Colorado. After growing up in six different cities around the world, Kathleah is
grateful to call Southern California home and to learn and work alongside
community-centered leaders, including her fellow graduates of both the
Leadership Long Beach Institute and The Nonprofit Partnership’s Emerging
Leaders Program.
Kathleah is wholeheartedly invested in community and brings a collaborative spirit to her work with schools, workplaces, and organizations. She is proud to be
the daughter to immigrant parents who she attributes her deep love of learning to
as they taught her the value of education. Kathleah is grateful to work at
Confluence Rising where she is able to bridge her love of education with social
justice as well as find deep meaning in helping young people and adults feel
seen, heard, and valued. As a loyal and introverted Aquarius, Kathleah is a
compassionate facilitator and Restorative Justice practitioner who enjoys
connecting over shared stories, experiences, and laughter. Outside of work, she
loves spending time in nature, watching women’s soccer, and supporting small
businesses.
SESSION OVERVIEW
Identities & Inequities In Youth Relationships & Communities: Strategies for Navigating Identity-Driven Conflict
Youth routinely are in conflict with each other and with adults. However, when youth engage in conflict connected to larger societal groups like racial identity, sexual orientation, immigration status, or gender identity, they can experience and cause much deeper harm. With the current larger social and political battles raging across the country and within schools and communities, youth are facing these kinds of conflicts at an increasing rate, and often have no support for navigating what they’re experiencing.
In this session, we’ll explore what identity-driven conflicts are, how they are rooted in systemic inequities, and often create harm and disconnection that ripple out beyond the individuals involved. We’ll examine common examples of identity-driven conflicts that can occur at school, within families, in service provider agencies, and out in the community.
We will learn about tools based in Restorative Justice values that can be effective ways to guide youth to share their experiences, take authentic accountability in developmentally-appropriate ways and understand the complex harm they caused, helping to begin the process of individual and community reconnection and healing.
Finally, we will practice using these Restorative Justice tools in realistic scenarios adults service providers are likely to encounter when working with youth. Participants will leave this training with a workbook that will include all concepts and tools, and space for them to map out how they will apply what they learned in their work with youth. The workbook will also include resources for participants to continue their learning.