Fall 08 Seminars

Training Brains to Become Minds: Neuropsycology for Teachers — With Dr. Raymond Chin

The explosion of knowledge in the neurosciences has been phenomenal in the last ten years. Dr. Chin will give teachers an accurate and useable neuropsychological model of brain functioning that can be applied to many types of learning, emotional and developmental disorders. These strategies can be used by all teachers with whole classes or individual students.See Current Seminar schedule

Co-Teaching and Differentiating Instruction: Essential Strategies for Educating All Students — With Dr. Richard Villa

A powerful 1-day seminar for educators concerned with increasing every student's academic performance. See dates, locations, and descriptions

Got Meetings

Powerful Take-Home Tools for Increasing Meeting Productivity and Satisfaction.

Power Struggles: What To Do When A Student Says "Make Me!"

Proactive, Positive, and Powerful Strategies for working through conflicts with students who are disruptive, disrespectful, and disengaged.

Effective Strategies for Facilitating Productive and Satisfying Meetings

Educators spend a significant amount of time in meetings. Often this time is not well spent. During this seminar, participants learn how to plan, run, and evaluate meetings that promote active participation, individual accountability, and enable members to keep to the agenda, and respectfully confront and resolve disagreements and conflicts.

Audience: K-12
Length: ½ day or 1 day training

Nurturing Social and Emotional Competence: Teaching Students Social Skills and Self-Control Strategies

An ever-increasing number of students enter school every year lacking the social skills and self-control strategies required not only for school success but for life success as well. Participants leave this seminar with multiple strategies for authentically teaching students the social skills and self-control strategies required for getting along with other people and solving daily living problems.

Audience: K-8 or 9-12
Length: ½ day, 1, 2 or 3 day training

Educating and Supporting Students with Serious Emotional and Behavioral Challenges in Regular Education Classrooms and Schools: Best Practices

Perhaps one of the greatest challenges educators face today is how to educate and support students with serious emotional and behavioral challenges in inclusive environments. During this seminar, we will identify and practice a wide range of strategies and interventions reflective of best practices which facilitate individual student growth and nurtures learning environments that are safe, stimulating and respectful for all.

Audience: K-12
Length: ½ day, 1, 2 or 3, 4 or 5 day training

Creative and Collaborative Responses for Students with Challenging Behavior

Using case studies and guided practice, participants learn how collaborative teams apply creative problem solving strategies to develop individualized behavior support plans for students for whom more traditional interventions have failed to promote success.

Audience: K-6, 7-12
Length: ½ day, 1- or 2-day training

Promoting Responsible Student Behavior: A School Wide Disciplinary Approach

As schools become more diverse and inclusive, the challenge of meeting the needs of students who are non-compliant, angry, impulsive, and difficult to motivate is of increasing concern to all educators. During this seminar, participants explore assumptions about why students misbehave, compare discipline and punishment, and identify why many school-wide disciplinary systems often fail. Participants gain mastery of a wide range of in-classroom and out-of-classroom strategies (including the design and use of planning rooms) that help students gain ever increasing skills at self-control, social problem solving, and responsibility.

Audience: K-6, 7-12
Length: ½ day, 1, 2, or 3 day training

Staying Sane Supervising Elementary Lunchrooms and Playgrounds

Recipe for madness: Take large numbers of young people, place in a large, noisy place, and offer either food or free play after having made them sit and pay attention for long periods of time, mix with 2 or 3 adults. Bake for 30 minutes. Lunch and recess take up only a small amount of the overall school day, but every teacher knows that what happens during lunch and on the playground impacts classroom learning. During this seminar participants explore strategies which promote positive and fun environments, techniques that enhance pro-social behavior and ways of responding to problematic behavior during lunch and recess.

Audience: K-6
Length: ½ day or 1 day training

What To Do When a Student Says:"Make Me!"

It is inevitable: weather, taxes and power struggles with students. During this seminar participants learn about what causes power struggles, how responses to such struggles either help or make the situation worse, and practice behaviors that are likely to positively and productively resolve power struggles.

Audience: K-12
Length: ½ day or 1 day training

If Adult Teaming Is So Great, Why Do I Feel So Lousy?

In schools today, people are working together to accomplish many goals. Whether a student support team, a grade level team or a site base management team, teaming is a fact of professional life. It is also true that teams often deal with complex and emotional issues that result in anger, frustration, and unresolved conflict. During this seminar, participants learn what makes for effective teaming. Learn strategies for establishing team goals and norms, staying with agendas, and working through such team problems as dominating team members, side conversations, lack of closure, and productively resolving conflict.

Audience: K-12
Length: ½ day, 1, 2 or 3 day training

Structuring Productive and Positive Class Meetings

Participants leave this seminar having the skills to facilitate focused, highly interactive, and productive class meetings. Increase your skills in teaching students effective listening, paraphrasing, social problem solving, and consensus decision-making skills via class meetings. Learn how to establish class agreements, and how to effectively respond to one student dominating, side conversations, mean and rude comments, and refusing to attend or participate in class meetings.

Audience: : K-8
Length: ½ day or 1 day training

Lessons from White Water Rafting: How to Use Current Knowledge to Navigate Successful School Change

For anyone who has been around schools for a while, there is a good chance you are a survivor (or perhaps a victim) of one educational change effort (or fad) after another. Feelings of "here we go again," "this too shall pass," and "whatever" are all too common when discussing school change efforts. During this seminar, we explore what every educator should know about change. Learn how and why people respond differently to change efforts and consider strategies to combat the "this too shall pass" syndrome. We will answer the riddle of how white water rafting is like school change.

Audience: K-12
Length: ½ day or full day training