Chant Thomas

When your students describe math, do they say things like 'boring,' 'stressful,' and 'frustrating'? Do you wish they would say things like 'exciting,' 'interesting,' and 'engaging'? Math classes and curriculums lack in helping students make the connection between math done in the classroom and math in the real world. In her text Becoming the Math Teacher You Wish You'd Had: Ideas and Strategies from Vibrant Classrooms, Tracy Zager explores how to make math class more like mathematics in the real world.

Discover how big ideas such as risk-taking, mistakes, challenges, questions, reasoning, and more play a role in the math classroom. You will be surprised how easy it is to implement these strategies in the classroom, and you will see how much your students will grow as mathematicians!

This course is appropriate for educators who teach math in grades K-6.

Text: Becoming the Math Teacher You Wish You'd Had: Ideas and Strategies from Vibrant Classrooms by Tracy Zager. Amazon price: New: $52

This unique course is designed for teachers to take advantage of any experiential opportunity that inspires. As educators, we continually adapt, grow, and evolve our curriculum to meet the needs of our students and community. As reflective practitioners, we often ask our students; What moves you? What do you want to learn more about? What are you getting stuck on? What are you wondering? Rarely, however, do we make space to pause and consider this for ourselves.

Students who respond to us the least might actually need us the most. This course introduces an approach that prepares teachers to counter the harm inflicted when students internalize the negative stereotypes society aims at black, brown, native and other groups of marginalized students. In The Innocent Classroom, the author of our course text Alexs Pate reveals how internalized stereotypes create a sense of unwarranted guilt in these students that adversely affects their engagement in learning. This course is designed to help teachers create individual relationships that can guide our hard-to-reach and marginalized students to shed this sense of guilt, restore their innocence, and re-engage in learning.

Whether a family, student group, classroom or school, every group has a culture which is the invisible but powerful influence that affects peoples’ felt experience as well as group outcomes. 
When a group taps into these three skills: build safety, share vulnerability and establish purpose, they feel happier; they know they can navigate the challenges presented to them. 
Do you know groups who would like to take their performance to the above and beyond? If so then come along and explore more about how that might happen with The Power of Group Chemistry.
 

Contributing to positive school culture and climate benefits all educators PP-K-12th grade. Especially administrators, professional learning communities (PLCs), grade levels, collaboration, book study groups, and or individuals that would like to explore stories from the trenches that we can all laugh about. This course is an excellent way to excite collaboration within any group grade level, professional learning community, staff-wide book study, or taken for self-enrichment.

This course meets OSPI's STEM requirements.

Are you as overwhelmed with the sheer volume of digital communication as I am? It has become a never-ending stream of inputs that is difficult to get a grip on!

This course takes aim at the tremendous level of input that comes across our devices and helps you develop systems and strategies to process it all. Along the way, you will learn about the Getting Things Done methodology, how technology companies are competing for our limited attention, and much more.

Time to organize all that input so you can clear your brain and do your best work.

LEARNING OUTCOMES: Upon completion of this course, participants will enjoy:

• The Getting Things Done methodology
• Getting to Inbox Zero
• Digital storage systems
• Task management
• A workflow system that actually helps
• Technology and competition for your attention

Today's students differ greatly from each other and their learning needs vary more dramatically than ever! These differences are wide ranging and are being identified earlier. Such classroom disparities require all educators to think differently about teaching and learning; educators have been differentiating for ages. This class is intended to move you from where you are now (beginner, proficient, advanced) in the process of differentiation, to the next level essential for success.

The book for this course introduces you to the most typical student types and how best to work with them such as: the Good Kids, the Rebels, the Perfectionists, the Invisibles and more.  With each introduction, there will be ample information on what is needed and how to work best with that student.

K-12 educators may explore in this course a wide range of health subjects and curriculums that apply to your grade level and which cover physical, mental, emotional, and social dimensions of health. Learn more about First Aid, Bullying, Emotional Health, Sex Education and Goal Setting for a healthy life.

Poor social skills are the leading reason why people lose jobs, according to Labor and Industry research. While educators know the importance of social skills, schools do not provide adequate training in this area.