This course equips educators with essential tools to recognize behaviors and support students who struggle with anxiety. Discuss effective strategies for cultivating an anxiety-friendly environment, emphasizing open communication, fostering acceptance, and empowering students through choice. Explore the impact of CoVID in-person learning and its consequences on attendance and well-being. Participants access invaluable resources, literary works, engaging activities, and a platform for sharing concerns and successes. Join us on this transformative journey of instilling resilience and empowering students to overcome anxiety. **SEE SYLLABUS FOR BOOKS

Prior to the pandemic educators often struggled to find enough hours in the day. Now, with the increased stress and the constant changes impacting the lives of educators and students, work and life balance has become even more important. Supporting the social and emotional needs of students is a focus of all school districts. But, to support students, staff members must also be ale to take care of themselves. This session will focus on self-care and time management strategies and skills to help you give the most to your students and family while maintaining a healthy you!

Participants are introduced to the world of children's and young adult multi-cultural literature and explore works by authors of various cultures and ethnicities, and through a multicultural lens, will examine and explore common themes found within genre. Participants will ultimately focus their attention on the impact using multicultural literature has on promoting a better understanding of others as well as ourselves.

Would you like to explore Project-Based Learning? Would you like to develop a new and engaging unit? Would you like to enrich your animal science unit? Would you like to explore how the KC Zoo could help do this? Join us as we visit the KC Zoo for a day to explore all of the rich resources that it offers to teachers. Learn how you can bring the world of animals back to the classroom. After engaging with the animals for a day we will return to the classroom to learn the power of using observation and inquiry to promote content learning. Think about the possibilities of enriching lessons on conservation, nature, the animal kingdom and more. Learn how you can incorporate the world of animals into your standards-based curriculum and invite students to go deeper with their learning.

Google Sheets can be used in hundreds of ways in the classroom, from data analysis to interactive student projects! Learn the basic elements of spreadsheets and graphs, how to manipulate student data, and ideas for using spreadsheets in the classroom! Students will learn the necessary skills to create spreadsheets that include titles, columns, rows, formulas, graphs and more. This course is an online course and will not have any face-to-face meetings. Students will retrieve assignments, participate in discussions and post projects online using Blackboard.

Investigate aspects of what makes a good presentation for the classroom. Consider how planning slides and presentations work in the classroom environment. Realize the tools that can be incorporated to create slides that can also assess student learning. Transfer your learning to create engaging, interactive Google Slides while addressing and measuring the standards associate to learning outcomes. This course is an online course and will not have any face-to-face meetings. Students will retrieve assignments, participate in discussions and post projects online using Blackboard.

The presence of television in the lives of Americans is ubiquitous - it is verywhere! Because of this, no one can argue with the idea that television makes profound connections to the institutions it portrays in our households day after day, year after year. The question remains, though - Does television reflect our culture, or does it steer our culture? As a medium, television has the advantage of reaching and representing the very latest in cultural trends and dissecting our beliefs, values, and ideologies as a society.
Because of its far-reach, television can play a role in helping us to understand the institutions of school systems and classrooms of a given time period. What television chooses to focus on and how television depicts schools can impact our own attitudes about the classroom, teachers, administrators, and schools.
This course will take a panoramic look at the depictions of teachers, classrooms and schools over the past 7 decades. By critical evaluation of the messages and mores communicated in the "school-based television show," participants will be able to better understand the influence television has had on our evolving views of education overall.

Utilizing technology, discussion, and investigative tools, participants will actively engage in training and collaboration to create resources for use in the classroom. Attention to educator and student SEL and intellectual needs are addressed through various topics and participant-driven initiatives. Research-based strategies will be utilized as participants review current resources and tools to determine best practices within instruction and assessment.

Utilizing technology, discussion, and investigative tools, participants will actively engage in training and collaboration to create resources for use in the classroom. Attention to educator and student SEL and intellectual needs are addressed through various topics and participant-driven initiatives. Research-based strategies will be utilized as participants review current resources and tools to determine best practices within instruction and assessment.

Social Emotional Learning is the process through which all young people and adults acquire and apply the knowledge, skills, and attitudes to develop healthy identities, manage emotions and achieve personal and collective goals. They learn how to feel and show empathy for others, establish and maintain supportive relationships, and make responsible and caring decisions. This is a form of character building that is often misinterpreted by our community. We lack the understanding of how to accomplish this properly in a school setting and why it is important. We are now realizing more chilren are experiencing anxiety, bullying and other issues across the board starting in elementary school through high school. There has also been a rise in issues associated with anxiety, substance abuse, lack of school attendance, bullying and stress over social media. It is important that teachers have the skills to manage situations when anxiety or bullying presents itself in or around the classroom. This course will discuss and provide effective strategies that can safely be implemented in the classroom to promote a respectful and socially aware atmosphere. We will focus on communication, acceptance and promoting choice among students, so they feel more in control of their world. Participants will learn the basics of social emotional learning and how it can change their classrooms for the better. Everyone will be provided with useful books, activities and an opportunity to share their concerns. *NOTE: Books needed for class see syllabus.

Join us for a look at strategies that support the Social Emotional Learning of students. We'll share fun ways that storybooks can be used to help learners practice building relationships, gain decision making skills, and so much more. Integrating SEL into your classroom can help students make personal connections with the world around them, so plan on being exposed to lots of activities to promote the idea of "All Feelings Matter"! Along with using bibliotherapy strategies, we'll investigate helpful resources that promote calm, collaborative classrooms...from Calm Corners to published curriculum to games/activities, we'll cover it all!

While girls may have overcome the gender gap in STEM related subjects at school, research from around the world continues to show that boys continue to struggle in literacy tasks, causing new concerns that they could trail behind in reading and writing for the rest of their lives.
This workshop will place a spotlight on the problems and issues related to boys and literacy, focusing on the reasons related to pedagogical practices and cultural standards. Participants will also explore solutions for raising our expectations for boys in their literacy achievement. Hands-on strategies will be introduced that engage boys in literacy practices and motivate them to become enthusiastic readers and writers.

This course is designed for teachers who would like to have a better understanding of adolescents and their challenges today with digital footprints and social media. This course will cover how complications with relationships and social media can consume teens. We will discuss how we can better understand this in order to be a supportive teacher and provide students with appropriate social emotional guidance.

Course encourages educators to use community resources to engage learners in social studies and science topics. The Ernie Miller Nature Center and The MaHaffie Farmstead visit will help teachers to return to the classroom with developed content area lessons. Teachers are immersed in their communities and are actively engaged in relevant learning. Participants will create meaningful lessons and project-based learning units for all ages.