Helping students to perform at their highest academic level, we must be attuned to their social/emotional needs. Research is very clear that a child’s brain is not able to process academic and new learning if the child is experiencing high levels of stress or anxiety. Add to that information that many children come to school having experienced major trauma that has left lasting impressions. This training teaches schools how to implement policies and procedures through a lens of responding to and taking care of the social/emotional needs of all children with an additional focus on how to meet the needs of those children who suffer from previous trauma.

With more and more classrooms moving to the virtual world, it is essential we maximize the tools and strategies needed to still build real and important connections with our students so they feel invested in their own learning via the all important student/teacher relationship. This session will provide specific and practical strategies to help in meeting this goal.

At this time when we are all under greater amounts of stress in taking care of our family and friends and our professional colleagues and students, we often neglect ourselves leaving us vulnerable to not being able to do the job we so desperately hope to do for those we care about. This session will provide simple, but important, strategies that every educator can begin implementing to make a difference in their self-care habits. Looking at our daily routine, as well as important tips for better sleep, this session will help us to not only survive, but thrive during the times of our greatest challenges.

Although our brains continue to develop well into our twenties, the early years of birth to eight years old are especially important in brain development. In this session we will understand how early stressors and supports build a healthy brain or limit a brains development. Participants will work together in a team-building exercise to build the strongest, most stable brain.  Additional learning focuses on continuing brain development through the high school and young adult experience

Many educators still think of 21st Century skills in the classroom as related to technology. While technology is an important part of 21st century learning it is only one of four very important parts. This session focuses on the other three areas – the 5 21st Century themes that are to be integrated through the Common Core Curriculum, the 9 Life and Career Skills and the 5 Learning and Innovation Skills.

Critical Thinking & Problem Solving are one of the five learning skills expected in 21st Century learning, but many teachers struggle with knowing how to incorporate these skills on a daily basis in the classroom. This session breaks down many critical thinking skills and provides examples on how to use them with students across grade levels.

Students who come to us from a living situation of poverty have unique needs in the classroom. This course will give teachers specific strategies designed to address the needs of students with extremely limited resources. Strategies will be for academic needs as well as the social and emotional needs these students may have as a result of their living environment.

Almost all schools have set aside time for PLC meetings, but unfortunately there has often not been adequate training on how to implement the PLC’s for effectiveness and efficiency. This session offers guidelines on how to maximize the effectiveness of a PLC so teachers feel the time is valuable and not simply another meeting to attend.

Rigor has become one of the most used buzz words, but do we really know what rigor is and how to identify it in a classroom? This session helps teachers and administrators understand rigor and offers practical strategies for making every classroom rigorous for all learners.

It is absolutely imperative that we move past the traditional ways of building cultural awareness and intentionally develop antiracist policies, practices and curriculum that will move our classrooms and schools forward in the essential work of understanding the negative impact of previous, often hidden, racist messages communicated to our children. This work will begin the process of moving a classroom or school invested in this issue forward toward their goals.

Teaching Standards 2 and 3 require teachers to incorporate teachers to integrate diversity and global awareness into their classrooms regularly. This session provides strategies on how to do this through the current content being taught.

The latest brain research tells us that a student’s comfort level and connection to content are important factors in the success of the student learning new material. Teaching through culturally relevant teaching makes the needed connections for students to feel comfortable, cared for and related to the content so that new learning can happen and material transfers to a permanent foundation.

Global awareness is an important 21st Century theme. Additionally, our life skills of ethics, social responsibility and people skills require us to understand other perspectives. This session will examine the important parts of 21st century learning that require skills with cultural awareness and diversity so we can make them a part of our everyday classrooms.

In order for us to create classrooms free of bias and open to culturally relevant teaching, we must first know and understand ourselves. This session is designed to build your capacity to look inward and discover our own prejudices and attitudes. We cannot appropriately create an environment that is accepting of all diverse perspectives if we remain unaware of the hidden biases we all develop from our everyday experiences in the world.

While it is valuable to recognize cultural celebrations (Black History Month, Holidays Around the World, Cinco de Mayo, etc.) these celebrations alone are not sufficient for developing the culturally relevant classrooms and schools that are required to meet the needs of our students in our care. This session helps us examine how to have daily experiences with looking at our regular content through a cultural lens allowing us to make connections and create an environment respectful of our diverse learners.

Differentiation is a teaching skill that will improve a teacher’s performance across all of their teaching standards probably more than any other skill. Yet, many teachers are challenged to be able to address so many varied needs of students. This session provides additional ideas on how to be successful with this challenge.

We know that educating students and keeping them engaged in their work is more challenging now then it has ever been. Teachers and administrators leave this session with many practical strategies for tackling the problem of boredom in our classrooms.

As we have begun to change how we teach our students, it is necessary to also examine how we grade our students and hold them accountable for succeeding with learning targets. The use of effective rubrics will help teachers and students with these challenges.

Lesson Planning needs to look very differently in order for us to prepare the lessons that will meet the needs of all of our students. This session examines how we need to plan differently, what should be included in a lesson plan and how to use our PLC’s to support our planning.

In this time of strong accountability and with the focus on master of learning rather than delivery of content regular and strong formative and summative assessment is essential to student success. This session looks at models that help teachers to use data and feel a bit less intimidated by all that information being sent our way.

Providing choice in lessons increases student engagement. Even a forced choice of two items a student doesn’t like will yield a more positive learning experience that being asked to do a task that allowed for no personal choice. Additionally, projects that allow our students to collaborate together and work on tasks over time, such as with Project Based Learning, also lead to greater engagement and success. This session will develop skills for teachers to engage in either (or both!) of these effective teaching strategies.

As our students find it more and more challenging to remain engaged and attentive in large group lessons, more effective teachers are growing their skills with small group instruction and utilizing project based learning to keep all students engaged in meaningful learning. This session will support teachers in growing their skills with both aspects.

Creativity is one of the 5 21st Century Learning Skills that we are expected to incorporate into our classrooms on a regular basis. Creativity is a skill that can be developed. Mistakenly people often think this is about a natural talent, but we can teach our students how to be creative. This session will increase teacher’s ability to develop creativity in all students.

Standard 1 requires all teachers to develop leadership skills in their classrooms, their schools and their profession. Additionally, this session takes a close look at the ethical guidelines and code of conduct for which teachers are held accountable.

Now that all teachers are responsible for incorporating literacy skills into their content areas, it is important to focus on the most effective strategies to increase literacy skills for students. This session looks at the most highly effective literacy skills in the classroom.

Standard 2 asks teachers to establish an environment that is supportive, nurturing, flexible and inclusive. Standard 1 asks teachers to have an environment that is safe and orderly. This session gives teachers many more strategies to establish an environment that will maximize student learning and ensure a teacher is proficient on each of these standards.

It is becoming more and more important for teachers to learn strategies that allow students of all ages to take responsibility for their own learning. As long as the teacher is the primary person establishing the goals, measuring progress and checking for on task behavior, the students continue to be passive participants in their own learning. This session helps teachers share the accountability for learning directly with the student involved.

More and more of our special needs students are being included in the general education classroom. The special education and general education teacher are expected to work together to meet the needs of these students. However, most teachers have had little training to prepare them for this type of collaborative, inclusive partnership. This session is designed to build these skills for both general education and special education teachers.

The School Improvement Plan should be the lesson for the entire school. All administrators and teachers need to use the plan to move the school forward. However, often times the responsibility for the development of the plan, as well as the implementation, falls on just the SIP committee. This training increases the effectiveness of developing and implementing a high quality school improvement plan for everyone.

These sessions examine in detail exactly what standards teachers and school administrators are responsible for exhibiting as aligned with their evaluation instruments.

The new evaluation model for teachers is a growth model in which the administrator is to serve as a coach/mentor to the teacher throughout the year until they become the evaluator to do the teacher’s evaluation at the end of the year. However, many administrators have not had proper training in how to coach their teachers because their skills have largely been for the purpose of evaluating. This session teaches administrators how to be effective coaches and grow their teachers to their greatest potential.

This session has three parts: understanding the standards in relationship to the expected teacher behaviors, practicing identifying teacher skills in the rubric and practice videos to ensure consistency among administrators. At this time, the teacher evaluation instrument is being used more and more for important decisions regarding contracts and possibly pay incentives, thereby making it essential that administrators within a district are marking their teachers in a similar manner.

One on one building level support with teacher evaluations and professional development. This time is used to support the needs of the principal. This may include reviewing principal goals and evaluations, doing teacher observations side by side for immediate feedback, reviewing and developing SIP strategies, analyzing school data (benchmark, EOG/EOC, Teacher Working Conditions survey, discipline data, student and staff attendance data, etc), developing PDP’s or Mandatory Improvement Plans, participating in PLC’s and providing feedback, etc.

One on one and small group support mentoring Beginning Teacher’s in their first three years.

A neutral observation with follow-up meeting and written report for recommendations to support a teacher or work toward a fair and appropriate path toward dismissal of a teacher.

Given the needs of a district or school, I will develop appropriate PD if it is an area of expertise for me. Please just contact me for more details.

This training will help University faculty, mentor teachers and candidates themselves understand and use the NC evaluation rubric to support student teacher growth across all areas. A detailed understanding of the levels of the rubric and the expected behaviors help candidates securely reach a proficient status and, in many areas, excel to the accomplished level.

The relationship between mentor and student teacher is one of the most important aspects to a candidate’s future success as a teacher in the classroom. While mentor teachers are exceptional in their work with students, mentoring a college student uses a different set of skills and this session will allow mentor teachers to maximize their impact on the candidate.

While college students are now young adults, they still need learning to happen in meaningful and engaging ways. The long ago tradition of lecture and note taking no longer produces the highest degree of understanding and application of material, but instead the classroom needs to engage the students in critical thinking, creativity and meaningful discussions that result in personal and academic growth. This session offers many practical strategies to help meet this goal.

This session allows people to learn more about themselves and those with whom they work. By classifying our personality types into four colors, participants learn easy and quick ways to know what approaches will help ourselves and others to be the most successful and minimize conflict in the workplace. This training is a wonderful opportunity for building cooperation, reducing conflict and understanding perspectives that may differ from our own.