February 11 Staff Development Day

Topics Include:
Begins with us, Identity Development of Systems Change
What Educators Need to Know about Race, Class, Gender, and Other Systems of Inequality
What can teachers do? Strategies for teaching for Equity in the Classroom and Beyond

• -Learn about Hattie’s educational research
• -Examine various effect sizes of educational practices
• -Reflect on practices used in the classroom (No blame, no shame). 
• -Evaluate high-leverage instructional strategies
• -Develop plan to incorporate one new high-leverage instructional strategy.

Recap Hattie, Level 1: The effect sizes
Effect Sizes: Which of these surprised you?  Why do you think the effect sizes may not have been what you anticipated?

• When Belief Intrudes on Reality
• The Top 10 Evidence-Based Teaching Strategies
• The 10 Mindframes for Educators
• Reflection and Planning

Quality co-planning and effective instructional design begins with the power of deeply-rooted, well-defined collaborative practices.  This workshop will introduce participants to the foundational design elements of a purposeful and productive PLC.  It is a great jumping “on” point for staff looking to begin PLC work or to realign their PLC practices for heightened effectiveness.
“A professional learning community is an ongoing process in which educators work collaboratively in recurring cycles of collective inquiry and action research to achieve better results for the students they serve.” The foundation of PLC rests upon four essential questions: 

• What is it that we expect all students to learn? 
• How will we know they are learning?
• How will we respond if they don’t learn?
• How will we respond if they already know it?

When teachers and administrators have reached consensus on their collective positions on those questions, they have built a solid foundation for a PLC.”

Participants will:
Understand the difference between UDL and Differentiated Instruction
Understand how variability impacts the classroom
Recognize barriers in the classroom
Understand the basic tenets of the UDL framework

The Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) study is the largest study investigating how childhood stress and trauma impacts health and well-being across the lifespan. Understanding the role of trauma provides a new perspective on seemingly intractable challenges including high-risk behaviors, mental illness, health challenges and social problems. As an understanding of ACE impact increases, many schools are looking to become “trauma-informed”. But what does that really mean? Trauma-Informed Schools are all the talk, but a key concept is often missing. Complex problems, like impact of ACEs, cannot be fixed inside the walls of a school. To effectively respond to a complex problem, we need to change the conditions that are holding the problems in place. Therefore, we need a different framework than traditional models of collaboration and program planning. Learn how our community is wrapping around and partnering with schools to Create a Resilient & Trauma-Informed Community.
 
Participants will:

• Learn how ACEs impact health and well-being across the lifespan
• Increase understanding of what trauma informed looks like in action
• Become an agent of change within their workplaces to build resilience
• Explore the role of schools as one player on a community team
• Gain insight into the community-wide effort to build a Resilient and Trauma-Informed Community (RTIC)