Life Skills Professional Learning

Supporting Teacher Efficacy Through Self-Care and Wellness

Recent research shows that 93 percent of teachers report high levels of job-related stress. Not only is this a concern for our educators, but it’s a serious problem for our students as well. Students with stressed-out teachers have more behavior issues, and those students have lower overall achievement. This workshop explores easy-to-implement wellness hacks that will positively impact both the adults and the students in your building or district.

• Review the four seasons of a typical school year and how to help yourself and your staff members thrive through each phase.
• Explore multiple self-care/wellness hacks that are easy to implement at both the personal and professional level and correlate to the phases of the school year.
• Discover new ways to motivate and inspire your staff so they can lead by example for their students.

Best Practices in Wellness for Learners

Educating the “Whole” learner is essential to fostering student learning and wellness, through both in-person and virtual instruction. Students come to educators with a multitude of social and emotional needs, and schools must have a support system in place that provides learners with the social and emotional skills necessary to achieve their highest potential. This workshop provides essential best practices for establishing, fostering, and monitoring an effective social and emotional support system, schoolwide.

• Learn how to establish and foster a schoolwide system that supports social and emotional learning, through both traditional instruction and e-learning.
• Explore a menu of best practices for embedding social and emotional learning in every environment, including the virtual classroom.
• Develop a practitioner’s toolkit for effective schoolwide implementation and monitoring of social and emotional learning.

Healthy Teachers, Happy Classrooms: Twelve Brain-based Principles to Avoid Burnout, Increase Optimism, and Support Physical Well-Being

Many teachers have long struggled with stress and burnout, even before the challenges of COVID-19. A 2018 study found that 40 to 50 percent of those who become educators decide to depart the profession within the first five years. So, what support can you find to maintain the fire and passion that drew you to the classroom in the first place? Education expert Marcia L. Tate offers strategies that will empower you to be your own best source of strength. In this light-hearted and life-changing workshop, you will learn how to restore your passion for teaching and explore 12 specific ways to improve and maintain your health and improve your quality of life. Come ready to be inspired and leave with your own specific action plan for sparking positive personal and professional change.

• Identify what causes teacher burnout.
• Learn how to restore your passion for the profession.
• Determine how to establish and maintain close personal relationships with others.
• Connect the 12 principles for well-being back to your daily classroom practice.

Demystifying MTSS: A School and District Framework for Meeting Students' Academic and Social-Emotional Needs

Learn how to simplify the approach and process for building an effective and coherent multitiered system of supports (MTSS). Teams will engage in learning the fundamental components of MTSS that can be applied in their own schools and districts using tools and strategies provided in this workshop. Teams will be able to initiate or refine their MTSS journey with clearly defined actions and next steps.

• Identify key MTSS foundation components.
• Know the “why” of MTSS and the importance of communicating your “why.”
• Understand the foundational role of collaborative leadership and teams needed to support MTSS.
• Discover how to align systems and resources to build a successful MTSS.

Strategies for Activating SEL Across the Curriculum

Teacher teams and individual teachers trying their hand at social-emotional learning may be uncertain about how to develop strong SEL plans and create the best possible learning experiences for students. In this interactive session, K–16 educators will consider their own emotional intelligence skills, student SEL, and the research-based Equity and SEL Integration Framework when making instructional decisions.

• Create relevant learning experiences.
• Prepare students for learning by creatively incorporating high-yield teaching strategies.
• Activate SEL in everyday lessons to keep learning at the forefront while still pivoting for learners with diverse needs.

Up to the Challenge: Teaching Resilience and Responsibility in the Classroom

In this discussion-based workshop, teachers will learn how to use tools that will help them facilitate student discussions about performance character—concepts that will assist students in learning why and how to take on any classroom challenge successfully and happily. The tools provide a practical way to assist teachers with being intentional about performance character without sacrificing class content.

• Build performance character skills that enhance the class content you already teach.
• Gain a deeper understanding of performance character concepts.
• Observe the tools in use to see how you can facilitate your own classroom discussions.
• Brainstorm lesson ideas that will teach content to students while allowing them to understand and experience performance character concepts.

School Climate Matters: Developing a Culture of Wellness

Educational leaders juggle tasks and challenges daily, from budgets to compliance to hiring to conflict resolution. The list can be overwhelming and it’s tough to know what to prioritize. During this era of staffing shortages, developing a culture of wellness is critically important. The demand for a positive culture is at an all-time high, and applicants have become more discriminate regarding an organization’s culture. This one-day workshop provides leaders with the understanding and tools to improve school culture so that it attracts and retains talented educators, improves teacher wellness, and clears the way for the real work to occur: to prepare students for the future.

• Discover the impact of a positive school culture
• Gain trauma-compassionate strategies to attract and retain the best team members
• Explore the leader’s role in ensuring an environment for teachers and students that is positive and caring

Design Your Own Master Class to Invigorate Your Professional Learning

Engage with thought leaders and discover how to improve teaching and learning for all students. This customizable workshop offers educators direct access to timely ideas from psychologists, neuroscientists, artists, activists, and more. Each session will cover 1-2 issues that feel most urgent for your school or district such as balancing technology use, fostering civil classroom conversations, promoting emotional literacy and self-regulation, reducing teacher decision fatigue, or increasing equitable outcomes. Leave this session feeling inspired and empowered to improve student engagement and learning, and infuse joy into your classroom.

• Gain access to urgent ideas from thought leaders spanning a wide variety of disciplines, including Adam Grant, Trabian Shorters, Cal Newport, and Brene Brown.
• Reflect on and engage in conversation about research-based ideas to consider how they can positively impact teaching and learning.
• Leverage your team’s collective insights to devise creative solutions that really work for your school.
• Delve into a learning experience that honors and centers educators’ professional expertise as the driving force for change.

The Recipe for Student Well-Being: Five Key Ingredients for Social, Behavioral, and Academic Success

Help your students move from surviving to thriving through five research-based strategies that promote student well-being.

• Learn about how to create the Safe, Predictable, and Positive school and classroom environment.
• Access concrete strategies for building and supporting positive student-teacher relationships.
• Demystify the use of data and assessment in your efforts to support student well-being.

Little Learners, Big Hearts: A Teacher’s Guide to Nurturing Empathy and Equity in Early Childhood

Bring mindful consciousness, compassion, confidence, and courage to your school or early education center, as you foster a sense of community and belonging across races and ethnicities.

In this powerful session, you will learn how to:

• Help staff understand bias—their own biases, and those of families and students.
• Increase children’s well-being by building a positive racial and cultural identity.
• Prevent and stem trauma that results from peer aggression and bullying.
• Practice mindfulness with staff and students to increase equity and justice.
• Select and use children’s literature as a catalyst for antiracist conversations and action.