Chant Thomas

Students taking action through service-learning is an effective way of engaging students in community service with explicit learning objectives, preparation, and reflection that positively engage them in classroom activities. You will discover that service-learning is not just another objective to meet; it connects students between the service they provide and their academic coursework.

In this practical, hands-on course, I’ll show you how to harness the power of AI to engage your students and transform their learning experience. I’ll introduce you to AI tools and techniques that help you teach everything from math to rap battles (yes, you read that right).

This course is designed to support teachers in developing language and techniques for teaching decision-making skills to students. Teaching this skill is important because our decisions shape the quality of our lives, communities, and environment. Many decision-making models are available; this course is designed around the Stakeholders-Consequences Decision Making (SCDM) model. It is a flexible model and can be used in many different ways, with multiple grade levels, and in many subject areas including academic and social-emotional learning. You can confidently use and teach this model which is powerful for both individual and team-based decisions. 

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

The Science of Reading is at the forefront of many educators' minds. Are you looking for practical ways to help your struggling readers become proficient readers? Are there simple shifts you can make in your reading instruction to effectively teach your students? This class will focus on the book, Shifting the Balance and provide opportunities to learn from current articles, podcasts, and videos. This class is guaranteed to change the way you see your students as readers. It will engage you in a powerful, informative, engaging, and classroom-relevant text and give you concrete ways to make your reading instruction more effective.

Classroom Management is essential to the creation of a productive, creative and brave community. It is the bedrock to all the potential learnings that can be. However, it is one of the most nuanced and most difficult things an educator is called to do every single day. Our relationships with our students are the foundation for everything that happens throughout the day. Yet, it is incredibly challenging having to balance the many pieces of our job. Using the Responsive Classroom’s The Morning Meeting Book as our guide, we will dig into the purpose and execution of daily morning meetings in classrooms from grades K-8. 

From Behaving to Belonging, The Inclusive Art of Supporting Students Who Challenge Us is a rare book that asks us to find out how some of the most challenging students can benefit most from feeling the power of belonging. 

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.

Through self-regulation, students of all ages can take charge of their effect and behavior towards their learning. Teaching kids to control themselves involves providing skills and strategies for students to be able to engage in their learning; knowing when and how to take a break, how they feel and think about each activity, and be able to be confident with assignments that they take home. In the assigned text, Dr. Richard Cash has compiled research-based theories and strategies that can easily be implemented in your K-12 classroom. Supporting videos and articles will enable you and your school to be able to foster a culture of self-regulated learners in your classroom.

Who could imagine that by being fully present the nature of our mind and life could improve so noticeably? You see, there is only this present moment. The past is gone and the future has not yet come. Being led around by an undisciplined mind, we are trapped in thoughts, old emotions, outmoded biases and wrong attitudes, all of which cause stress, fatigue, conflict and suffering over which we have seemingly little control.  Participants in this course will appreciate and benefit greatly from Jon Kabat Zinn’s ground-breaking book, Wherever You Go, There You Are: Mindfulness Meditation in Daily Life, a best-seller that made mindfulness a household word. Through the reading accompanied by videos you will learn: 

• Various forms of meditation using the breath, including different postures (sitting, walking, lying down) 
• To use nature as an object of meditation, such as a mountain, lake tree or favorite area in your garden
• How to deal with common difficulties in meditation
• How to monitor and cultivate healthy attitudes and let go of unworkable ones
• The benefits and techniques of loving-kindness meditation
• Ways to bring mindful practices to your work with students  

In this diversified driving tour experience, you’ll make your way to at least 18 cultural, historical, and or natural sites in Central Oregon (from Warm Springs to Prineville), where you’ll discover the natural and human history of this area.

This course addresses the vital topic of childhood and adult stress, providing strategies to help children to direct their stress through coping skills into positive avenues. Peer relations, chaotic family structures, generalized feelings of anxiety, failure and negative thought processes, as well as many other topics will be covered.