COOL COMMERCIALS TO CULTIVATE CONVERSATIONS

Building a successful learning community requires constant conversation. TV commercials provide a window into tough subjects by raising an issue in a humorous way. Learn how to use commercials to promote crucial professional conversations. Leave with a list of Internet resources to support your use of commercials in your work.

NINETY SECONDS TO GET THEIR ATTENTION

Mentors, coaches, staff developers, and team leaders frequently take on the role of the 'sage on the stage' to support adult learning that will increase student achievement. Learn techniques to capture attention, captivate with information, and close with keepers. Practice strategies that enhance professional learning and foster transfer to the job.

NEW TOOLS FOR CHOOSING PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT EXPERIENCES

Use tools featured in the 2008 edition of Powerful Designs for Professional Learning to select the most appropriate professional development experiences for schools and districts. Review the NSDC Standards for professional learning and select effective strategies that help teachers help students learn.

PROFESSIONAL LEARNING COMMUNITIES FOR MENTORS AND COACHES

Join us for an inside look at the New Teacher Center’s Mentor Forum, an environment where mentors openly share challenging situations, seek feedback, and extend their skills. Experience how a structured format, collaborative processes, and specific protocols facilitate and encourage reflective mentor practice.

HAVING HARD CONVERSATIONS

As administrators, coaches, or teacher leaders, we often come up against situations where difficult topics must be addressed. What are the best strategies for those moments? Learn questions to ask oneself before speaking and what environments are best for difficult situations? Develop an action plan and acquire scripting tools for having hard conversations.

WHEN CONSEQUENCES DON’T WORK: MANAGING AND MOTIVATING DIFFICULT STUDENTS

Consequences are often the last resort and usually don’t produce results. What are the keys to developing and implementing invisible but powerful classroom management and motivational skills? Receive dozens of practical, eye-opening strategies for managing and motivating difficult students effectively, including brain-compatible ways for working with reluctant learners. Leave with your toolkit overflowing with resources you can use.

THE DYNAMIC TRAINER: ALL BRAINS ENGAGED

Energize your presentations with easy-tolearn, fun-to-use, dynamic team-building and class-building structures. Learn five proven structures that improve relationships and morale, easily transfer to the classroom, and create a positive ripple through any school. Explore how structures align with brain-based learning, multiple intelligences, and cooperative learning.

MAXIMIZING OUR DIFFERENCES

Educators today span several generations and therefore use multiple approaches to accessing and processing information. Explore the range of strengths, values, characteristics, and life experiences educators bring to the work place as defined by generational patterns. Examine striking contrasts that exist between traditionalists, baby boomers, gen-xers, and millennials, and then consider the implications for work with adult learners. Laugh out loud as we recognize ourselves and our colleagues in action. Consider how to take advantage of our diversity and work with one another more productively.

TOOLS FOR TEAMS

Practice research-based techniques that enhance leadership capacity: developing trust, resolving conflict, solving problems, and using data. Leave the session with tools to equip high-functioning teams with processes they need to assure quality learning and student success every day.