Discover fresh new ways to cope with the daily grind; and become inspired with a new vision of what we could become, and find ways to bring those visions to your students in this class. In this course you will find answers to why and how to inspire and remotivate your classes on a daily basis, making lively and engaging daily work, encouragement, and teachable moments your norm.

The pressure to keep up with global events leads to feeling defeated and anxious. Over 77% of people experience stress, anxiety, and loneliness. Our minds begin to spin while coping with underlying anxiety and tension. This course will teach gratitude, mindfulness, stress reduction, and visualization strategies. You will be invited to leave behind your overthinking mind as you explore the reason behind the incessant chatter of our overcharged brain. 

Are you looking for a class that will allow you to create digital resources for your students?  Then this is the perfect course for any K-12 educator interested in furthering their skills.  This course is designed to lead you through the process of making digital Google Jamboards for your students.  It is practical and a great use of your time to meet the diverse needs of your students. 

Albert Einstein said, “Peace cannot be kept by force; it can only be achieved by understanding.” These words are the basis of peace in our classrooms. Peace means empathy for others, comprehension of differences, and knowledge of how and why to bridge those differences.

It’s harder than ever to know where the truth can be found today in public media. Since the 2016 presidential election in the United States, both the political as well as social polarization in America has sunk to new lows. While this reflects historic social, political and ideational differences, the widening gulf in media reporting, including fake news, is a main contributor to the breakdown in finding the “truth” as bias pushes narratives on different sides further apart, each side claiming fact-based truth.  Common ground and bipartisanship is all but lost. In this course for secondary teachers we will explore fake news and bias in all media platforms and its effects on public attitudes and actions. Participants will develop the tools, skills, and strategies to help students be able to break through the barriers of disinformation to find the truth within the agendas being pushed by governmental, and outside powers of influence. Our text, Fact vs. Fiction: Teaching Critical Thinking Skills in the Age of Fake News, is $24 on amazon.

The key to student success is not how well they perform on standardized tests or their ranking in school, but their ability to work hard, struggle, and persevere until they accomplish a task. Learn how to instill grit in your K-12 students through relationship building, challenging tasks, goal setting and active reflection. Students should perceive mistakes as an opportunity to grow. When taught in the classroom research suggests grit may have an impact key to long term success and happiness.

Google is currently offering schools a hosted solution for their email, calendar, documents, websites, and chat through Google Apps for Education, an integrated communication and collaboration cloud-based network. Email storage and search tools that help find information fast.

In this diversified driving tour, you will travel Portland and surrounding suburban areas to discover a variety of forested parks, gorgeous gardens, wetlands sites, and geologic sites, where you will learn about trees, plants, birds, ecosystems and natural formations. Most importantly, you will learn how to bring this information to your students across the curriculum, both in the classroom and on field trips. $25 payable to instructor for a course field guide after registration.     

This course meets OSPI’s STEM requirements

Climate change poses the single largest, global threat to life on Earth, and yet the United States and our schools lag far behind the international community in educating and acting responsibly to mitigate the causes and effects of a warming planet. This online course for grades K-12 teachers uses excellent platforms developed by NASA and the EPA to educate about the science of climate change in kid-friendly, interdisciplinary ways. Youthful graphics, games, lesson samples that cut across science, social studies and math, virtual expeditions to places where climate change is visible, CO2 footprint calculators and more make this a rich learning environment from which grades K-12 teachers will develop their own units and themes—whether that’s oceans, birds, butterflies, fish, trees, fresh water supplies.  Many of your common science units can be modified with a climate change perspective (ie ocean life, plants and animals).