join us in-person this FALL in amsterdam!

How do we HUMANIZe CLASSROoMS?

Few things are as important as how we tell the human story — the stories we tell about ourselves, others, and the larger world. In increasingly diverse and international school communities, educators are called to move beyond single narratives toward more expansive, inclusive approaches to teaching and learning. This workshop is designed to provide the support and guidance to facilitate such growth. 


This interactive two-day learning experience invites educators and school leaders to expand how the human story is told across classroom practice, curriculum design, and school culture. Grounded in inquiry, identity literacy, storytelling, and strategic design, participants will explore how to cultivate more inclusive approaches that promote belonging and academic success.


Participants will engage with practical strategies to:

  • Foster psychological safety and student belonging

  • Design more representative, humanizing, and impactful curriculum

  • Build learning environments grounded in curiosity, connection, and multiple perspectives

We’ll apply our work across disciplines — humanities, STEM, advisory, and SEL — and engage with concrete tools and inclusive frameworks that can be applied immediately. Participants are encouraged (but not required) to bring a unit, lesson, advisory and/or curriculum idea they’d like to develop; sample materials will also be provided.


This workshop is ideal for:

  • Educators across grades PreK-12

  • Curriculum designers

  • Administrators

  • And other leaders who want to create classrooms and schools where belonging and inclusion are foundational.

join us in-person this summer: ubd + humanizing history workshops!

How do we tell the human story?

Join Mike Matthews & Monique Vogelsang for a 3-day intensive to expand your thinking about best practices for including underrepresented voices, untold stories, and broader perspectives into your curriculum design, resulting in more inclusive and culturally expansive units.

For many educators, across grade levels and subjects, our work is connected to the larger human story.

  • Whether we are teaching content that spans social studies or STEAM, educators not only influence academic understandings, we also shape how our students view personal identity, culture, community, and how we understand our place in the larger world.

  • The resources we use, the questions we ask, and the activities students engage in not only support academic growth, if left unquestioned, they can also create a sense of exclusion, or — with intention and affirmation — can cultivate inclusion.

  • Therefore, it’s important that we reflect on our choices to ensure that the content we teach is age-appropriate, rooted in facts, and has many “windows and mirrors” for our students. 

Over the course of three days, through interactive workshops and small group working sessions, participants will examine a curricular unit they’d like to revise with the lens of inclusion.

Led by two educational leaders — Mike Matthews of Authentic Education and Monique Vogelsang of Humanizing History — participants of this professional development experience will be guided through frameworks of Understanding by Design and models of culturally expansive teaching.

  • Participants will explore the larger story our curricular units are designed to tell, will consider how we name and frame our ideas, and will craft identify Transfer Goals, Enduring Understandings, and Essential Questions. 

  • By the end of our three-day workshops, educators and school leaders will have a “ready-to-teach” UbD unit and a plan of action to bring back to their school community, which may serve as a model inclusive curriculum design. 

Sample Units

Examples of UbD units backwards designed with inclusivity, equity, & belonging front of mind.

Registration Details

Frequently Asked Questions