Professional Development Courses: Schedule

The course is designed to help teachers, administrators, and support staff assess their stress levels, identify primary causes of excess stress in both their professional and personal lives, and learn specific, realistic stress reduction strategies. Participants will learn how and why stress levels, burnout, and job dissatisfaction are disproportionately high in the educational field. Educators will explore the most appropriate and necessary choices facing anyone in high-stress occupations: change your skills, change your position, change your attitude, or change jobs. Participants will learn and practice relaxation and visualization techniques, safe and simple exercise options. and other strategies that are under their control.

Sonic SEL is an exciting new course designed for educators of all grade levels, emphasizing student engagement and connection through sound. This course is one that is experiential as educators will be exposed to various modes of engagement that invite both teacher and students to interact, create, reflect, and respond to sound. We will also discuss how sound and the other senses are intimately and innately connected to memories; educators will discuss research that highlights the potential of student engagement utilizing both sound and SEL that can complement and enrich the classroom community.

This course is designed to provide concrete, immediate, experiential, prevention/intervention skills to deal with the issues of conflict, anger, and violence. Conflict is constant in the lives of ever-changing human beings, but conflict, left unchecked, becomes unhealthy. Anger and subsequent violence have brought fear into our schools, classrooms, and our children’s daily experience. No one is perfect. It is unrealistic to think we can avoid conflict and anger completely. Furthermore, it is unrealistic to think these emotions cannot be harnessed in a safe, healthy manner. In this course, we will cognitively and experientially understand the “seeds” of violence and develop healthy individual and school system responses.

As an educator, it can be hard to know how to navigate the changing landscape of gender. At times it may seem like your students know more than you do, with different acronyms and terms being used every day. This course will help educators at all grade levels grapple with the gender question by reflecting on their own socialization, analyzing the cultural norms surrounding their students, and exploring age-appropriate ways for bridging their lived experiences with their classroom communities. This course will also explore the current political climate regarding LGBTQIA+ students and educators. Educators will leave the course with terms, tools, and training for how to best support all students.