Christine Williams

Don’t lose heart when everything you do to help failing students doesn’t work, because this course will turn that around.  You don’t have to lose students through the cracks anymore, as research-supported strategies based on neuroscience and mindset can help inspire interventions for powerful change. Your instructor, Brenda McKinney, has spent her career teaching, creating programs, and developing curriculum for failing students. You will learn practical, data-driven strategies

The pandemic and racial injustice are amazing opportunities for teachers. If we are all to rise together to navigate our global crises, the new generation needs us to provide a new kind of learning. Young people need to understand how their behavior affects the behavior of viruses, influences the climate, and how their lives affect others whose life experience is different from their own. They need to know what they stand for and be ready to act for a greater good. These are challenging new capacities. To develop them, our students need a kind of learning that begins with understanding themselves more fully than has been common in school. 

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  

Many students lack the social and emotional skills that lead to success in work, community, and family life. Infusing Social Emotional Learning (SEL) practices is about how you teach what you teach and not something added on to the required curriculum. Through videos, articles, and our text by Dr. Bobbi Hansen (The Heart & Science of Teaching: Transformative Applications that Integrate Academic and Social-Emotional Learning)  participants in this course will cover:

• What does SEL encompass and why is it important
• What various SEL classrooms can look like
• Creating an emotionally safe environment
• Resolving student conflicts using peer mediation
• How to tap student assets
• Content accommodations for special needs
• Cooperative and collaborative learning
• Fostering community and world connections through service learning
• Nurturing students to become self-directed learners
• Cognitive and emotional engagement through projects 

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.

Anxiety, stress, depression, and suicide are on the rise. Is it any wonder that the rise in these afflictions has happened lockstep with the rise in screen time among people of all ages? As educators, we increasingly need to become aware of this growing epidemic whether it is impacting us, our students, or those around us. Together we will explore the impact of screens on our population from birth through adulthood. We will explore the work of Thomas Kersting, Cal Newport, and Simon Sinek. You will learn strategies to optimize technology use both for yourself and those around you. Join us as we disconnect from technology and reconnect with each other.