CultureShift Session Options

Boundaries, Communication, and Consent

This session addresses the question:   

How do we maintain the playful freedom and physical “closeness” of Jewish camps and travel experiences while ensuring that staff and participants respect one another’s personal boundaries?   

Moving Traditions’ embodied consent education training session combines elements of bystander intervention skills, assertiveness and empowerment training, and dance education, to help staff and participants of all genders understand the underlying dynamics of power and consent and learn how to set and respect boundaries. Through a series of games and movement exercises that can be run in less than an hour, participants experience:  

  • Maintaining awareness of personal space and respecting the space of others.  
  • Making a safe and boundary-aware physical connection with someone else in a consensual way.  
  • Reading the body language and facial expressions of others.   
  • Evading or escaping unwanted touch.  
  • Disrupting others when necessary. 
  • Discussing consent and social responsibility.   

The curriculum includes a Jewish educational framing focused on healthy boundaries, positive relationships, and being an upstander. This is a great session to train your staff and it is a session that your staff members can lead for preteens and teens.  

Gender and Wellbeing for All Teens

This session addresses the question:   

How are participants of different genders experiencing safety and wellbeing in immersive summer programs and what can be done to make those experiences better? 

During adolescence, navigating gender and learning when to fit in and when to stand out are top of mind. In this session, we will look at how pre-teens and teens are interacting with the changing world of gender codes, norms, expression, identity, and language and discuss ways to create more inclusive environments for all teens. We will discuss the experiences of boys, girls, trans and non-binary teens. Participants will:  

  • Map how and where gender shows up in terms of activities and relationships.  
  • Examine the landscape of gender codes, norms, and expression that teens are redefining, and why this matters for supporting teens from an adolescent wellness approach.  
  • Better understand the role of language in expressing and affirming gender. 
  • Experience tools to have inclusive and affirming conversations with teens about gender identity.  
  • Explore the Jewish framing for an expansive understanding of gender.  
Healthy Relationships and Sexuality

This session explores the question:  

What is the role of staff in supporting healthy summer relationships? 

Even when staff effectively communicate the boundaries regarding sexual encounters, some teens are going to find ways to make-out or hook-up. It is also inevitable that staff will become aware of some of these encounters, and that, in some cases, teens will turn to staff for help navigating the ups and down of relationships or dealing with more crisis situations that arise. How can staff be better prepared for these situations, so that they understand what is helpful and what is potentially harmful? In this session, we will use games, videos from the CultureShift video series, prompts and Jewish wisdom to explore how staff actions can positively or negatively impact the culture of immersive summer experiences around hooking up and healthy relationships. Staff will be encouraged to practice various responses that decrease the social pressure in real-life situations that they may find themselves in with the participants in their care.  This session is for staff of any level who interact with youth. 

Participants will: 

  • Explore their role in creating a healthy culture around sexuality and hookups.  
  • Understand how to appropriately support participants on their individual journeys towards healthy relationships. 
  • Discuss the obstacles to reporting breaches of culture and appreciate their part in holding one another accountable.  

Camps and travel programs that partner with Moving Traditions will have access to all three trainings, the guided overview, and implementation support from our Moving Traditions’ trainers. For an additional fee Moving Traditions’ trainers will train your staff online or in-person.