Administration Systems & Check Points For Teachers & Students
Discuss innovative ideas and models to deliver high-quality instruction and leadership in a changing world. Learn checkpoints for new system implementation needed to transition classrooms and schools in challenging times.

Emotional Health for Teachers
Teacher burnout is one of the biggest problems facing schools today. Psychology Today describes burnout as “a state of chronic stress that leads to physical and emotional exhaustion, cynicism, detachment, and feelings of ineffectiveness and lack of accomplishment.” The emotional health of teachers can be a major contributing factor to burnout. Worst-case scenario is that teachers leave the profession after showing up day after day discouraged, disgruntled and slowly disconnecting. We have all seen the signs and many of us recognize the symptoms. Despite the fact that unfortunate circumstances have recently forced schools to close, teachers are now experiencing stress in a whole new way. Unfortunately, there is little being done to decrease or eliminate the feelings of ineffectiveness that are certain to be a part of this new norm. Not because there is no desire to reverse this growing trend, but school leaders are also overloaded. The priority of student achievement tends to outweigh the emotional health of the educators who are responsible for instruction. Our approach to emotional health for teachers is based on avoiding burnout, eliminating stressors that lead to burnout and addressing the multitude of factors contributing to the high rates of stress and burnout in the education field.

With appropriate support, resources and processes teachers can learn how to incorporate practices that improve their health, increase their passion, and produce desired results for them personally and professionally. Emotionally healthy teachers can positively influence effective teaching practices among their peers, impact the profession, and most importantly, work to improve student learning. After all, that is why we are all here.

Join us for a series of engaging sessions that address a number of topics that explore resilience in teachers without reducing it to something as simple as self-care.  Instead, participants work towards a transformation only after reframing their experiences and identifying emotional triggers. Schools across the country are engaging in Social Emotional Learning for students, while we want to ensure Healthy Emotional Teaching.

Connecting with Students in a Disconnected World
Teachers learn how to connect with students using technological advancements and resources. As teachers across the country move to teaching remotely, there is little attention given to a basic theory of human development and motivation. Maslow’s hierarchy of needs reveals that it is a basic need for humans/students to have a sense of safety, belonging, love, and self-actualization. This means that in order for motivation to arise at the next stage, each stage must be satisfied within the individual/student. In other words, as we consider remote teaching or distance learning we must recognize that effort and motivation are correlated. The presence of the teacher is a vital and motivating factor in students accomplishing a sense of safety, belonging, and love, which helps them to achieve academic success. This webinar provides creative and engaging ways for teachers to connect with students during this time of mass disruption and disconnection. Teachers will work to design a plan that creates a sense of safety, belonging, and love while providing instructions remotely. A list of resources and tools are provided and participants are guided through the process of content creation that leads to connection and allows for immediate implementation. Research reveals that while there may not be any physical indications, students whose needs go unmet may ultimately experience anxiety and tension.

The Brain and Emotions in Motion
Researchers have proven that emotions play a crucial role in learning. Unfortunately, the pressures of standardized tests, benchmarks, common- assessments, and end-of-course exams are only a few of the things that have placed many teachers and the students they teach on an emotional rollercoaster. This emotion is often coupled with stress and anxiety that can be detrimental to student achievement. Teachers will learn about the brain's emotion networks and how they affect learning, paired with specific suggestions about how to incorporate the principles of Universal Design for Learning (UDL) for classroom strategies. This includes the use of process-oriented feedback and other techniques to spark students' intrinsic motivation.

Teachers will engage in activities and discussions designed to convey information to improve curriculum, instruction, and assessment so students can achieve deep learning and understanding in all subject areas. Participants will discover the power and promise of the adolescent brain from an empathetic, strength-based perspective designed to build teacher capacity to make the most of their students' potential.

Ground Floor New Teacher Cadre Intensive Support
A new Teacher Cadre that is designed to improve student achievement by improving beginning teacher effectiveness and teacher retention. Teachers receive ongoing training and intensive support, professional development, cognitive coaching, modeling, and effective teaching practices throughout the school year as aligned with the district's needs assessment and campus goals.

New teachers meet every 4-6 weeks while taking part in extended and collaborative professional development, including cognitive coaching and learning walks that help to create a strong introduction to teaching and/or the district.

Cadre members may also have access to the additional services listed below:

Differentiation with Technology Tools Initial
Teachers will apply various differentiation strategies incorporating technology to enhance their content delivery, learning what differentiation is, practice strategies, and use technology to support learning and reflect on the use of technology in their classrooms. Teachers will leave with a free participant guide and planning notebook.

Essential outcomes:

Differentiation with Technology Tools Webinar Follow Up to Initial Training
‍These 2-hour follow-up sessions are held each month for three months; teachers will apply various differentiation strategies incorporating technology to enhance their content delivery. Webinars will allow teachers to share the experience with using strategies learned in the initial training and plan out how they will incorporate strategies in upcoming lessons. It will also serve as a Q&A session for any questions teachers may have.

Differentiation for EL Students
‍This session provides information about Differentiated Instruction and how it ties to instructional practice. It provides ways for teachers to integrate academic language in their lessons to engage EL students with lesson content in multiple ways that are appropriate to lesson objectives and responsive to student needs.

Session strategies include engaging students during the Building Background component of the Sheltered Instruction Observation Protocol (SIOP) model, engaging students during the Comprehensible Input component of a lesson, during the Practice and Application component of the SIOP model; and during the Review and Assessment component of the SIOP model.

Preparing Students Hi-Skill and Hi Wage Jobs, College and Career Readiness
Teachers will learn strategies that will help students use decision making and problem-solving skills to explore college and career planning to identify steps to help them achieve career goals. Career planning provides students with guidance for their career choice and understands transferrable skills to the workforce.

Emerging Labor Market Trends for Career and Technical Education -
This five-hour session provides information about labor market trends and how the analysis of this information impacts Career Technical Education. Participants leave with strategies that will improve the quality of the program and foster partnerships with the community.