Thinking Outside The Box
A series of high-quality workshops that are flexible, customizable, and
designed to give teachers the skills they need to meet the challenges of
educating today's students.
Available Workshops on These Topics:
Service Learning
Educating the Heart & Mind with Service-Learning
Intended Audience: K-12 Educators, Administrators, Pre-Service Teachers, Parent Groups
Description: Service-learning is a teaching and learning strategy that integrates meaningful community service with instruction and reflection to enrich the learning experience, teach civic responsibility, and strengthen communities. This session will explore the concept of service-learning, how it connects to community and provides a context for learning, and how to plan for a service-learning project.
Service-Learning in the Alternative School
Setting
Intended Audience: Secondary Alternative Educators
Description: Service-learning is an interesting and meaningful
activity that is relevant to students' lives and involves cognitive,
social, and affective components of learning. There is an
opportunity for every student to be successful and assists
students in transferring the knowledge and skills acquired into
real life applications. This workshop examines using the
service-learning teaching method in the alternative classroom.
Curriculum Connections: Connecting
Service-Learning to Your Curriculum
Intended Audience: K-12 Educators, Pre-Service Teachers
Description: Service-learning is an approach that moves
beyond the concept of "community service" to a higher,
more academically-integrated type of instructional practice.
Students learn how to apply their academic skills, while at
the same time becoming contributing members of society.
In this workshop, you will learn about the process and tools
needed to give students the opportunity to demonstrate
and practice skills directly related to their core curriculum.
Using Service-Learning to Impact Student
Achievement in the Elementary Classroom
Intended Audience: Preschool-5th Grade Educators
Description: With service-learning student learning is more
active and meaningful. Opportunities for developing
comparative and critical thinking skills increase. Ample
opportunity to develop basic skills of reading, writing and
computation exists. Both cognitive and affective growth is
strongly promoted. Classroom learning gains relevancy as
students process and reflect upon new information while
exploring the relation between school content and real life.
New concepts are related more readily to curriculum
standards when teachers refer to concrete examples familiar
to students. In this workshop learn how to create effective
service learning activities that are academically and
developmentally appropriate for K-5 students.
Service Learning: Teaching Academics &
Citizenship
Intended Audience: Administrators, K-12 Educators
Description: High quality service learning is a powerful
tool for schools in meeting their mission-educating
students to high standards, connecting with the
community and preparing students to be active
participants in the world around them. This workshop
examines service-learning as a deliberate educational
strategy in your school.
Service-Learning as a Dropout
Prevention Strategy
Intended Audience: All Educators
Description: Service-learning has been shown to be a
promising strategy for dropout prevention.
Service-learning activities address various components
or strategies identified as important to dropout
prevention such as engaging teaching and curricula,
connections between school and work, adult and
student relationships, communication skills, and
community engagement. This interactive workshop
will examine using service learning to tap into
students' interests and strengths promoting ownership
of their education, community, and future.
Using Service-Learning in the Secondary
Classroom
Intended Audience: Secondary Educators
Description: Service-learning helps students develop
skills such as creative problem solving, effective
communication, decision making, and information
synthesis. A recent report found that service-learning
participants scored signifcantly higher on measures of
personal and social responsibility, acceptance of cultural
diversity, and service leadership. Participants also had
higher grades in social studies, math, and science, and
higher educational aspirations. This workshop will
provide project ideas that connect curriculum and service.
Service-Learning & Global Collaboration
Intended Audience: K-12 Educators
Description: Integrate cross-cultural competencies and
21st century skills into your curriculum through
service-learning projects that are both local and global.
This session will share ways to partner with organizations
such as Heifer International, Peace Corps, iEARN, RESPECT
Refugees International, Nyaka School, and others to create
projects that are meaningful, incorporate diversity, and
link to your curriculum. Many project examples and lots of
great resources will be shared.
Service-Learning as an Educational Strategy
in Today's Classroom
Intended Audience: Administrators, Board Members, K-12 Educators
Description: Engaging students in the community has been
shown to be an effective strategy to help students learn,
develop critical thinking skills, increase job preparation skills,
and improve civic attitudes and behaviors. It has been an
effective model to build capacities in communities and
improve K-12 educational achievement. Through
service-learning and civic engagement, students have the
opportunity to experience working with others from
different socioeconomic backgrounds, cultures, and sets of
beliefs. In this workshop you will learn how curricular and
co-curricular service-learning projects, if done well, can
transform students' learning and better prepare them for a
changing world while also creating signifcant change in
community capacity and conditions.
Using Technology as a Reflection Tool in
Service-Learning
Intended Audience: K-12 Educators
Description: This session will explore a variety of technologies
that may be used as reflection tools in service-learning
projects in the classroom. Practical tips and examples will be
provided.
Using Classroom Discussion to Encourage
Engagement, Refection & Deeper Learning
Intended Audience: K-12 Educators
Description: Learn as teachers to use discussion as a tool for
building student engagement and learning in content areas.
Discussion provides students a place to learn skills for
participating in a community—a worthy educational goal in its
own right because it moves students beyond academic
discourse to democratic discourse.
Meaningful Service-Learning
Intended Audience: K-12 Educators, Pre-Service Teachers, Youth Developers
Description: This will be a highly interactive session that will
explore the definition of meaningful service-learning and how
to successfully implement a project based on research and
practical methods. Participants will have an opportunity to
increase their knowledge and understanding of "meaningful
service-learning" for implementation in their classroom.
Using Service-Learning in the Social Studies
Classroom
Intended Audience: K-12 Educators
Description: Students involved in direct service projects in
their communities are often in an ideal position to examine
historical precedents of the problems being addressed and to
consider what types of efforts might be needed beyond direct
service to lessen the problems being witnessed firsthand.
Combining the study of societal issues with high quality
service-learning projects, students question societal issues,
consider diverse perspectives and make decisions about ways
to effect change. This workshop examines the students'
decisions and gives students an opportunity and a framework
to reflect on their experience.
Youth Voice-Getting Youth to Talk on
Target
Intended Audience: K-12 Educators
Description: Young people need time and opportunities to express their ideas, opinions, and make
decisions. Service-learning provides the opportunity
for students to take initiative, make decisions, interact
with community representatives, learn about the role of
government in social issues, develop critical-thinking
skills, and put their ideas into social action. Students
are allowed to meet age-appropriate challenges that
require thinking, initiative, problem-solving, and
responsibility in an safe environment that allows for
mistakes and success. Come and learn how to get
students to talk on target.
Creating an Educational Community
Inspired to Transform Lives
Intended Audience: Administrators, Board Members
Description: Service-learning provides youth an
opportunity to use their passion, creativity, and
initiative to lead change initiatives that create
systemic improvements in their communities and
schools. This workshop examines components for
creating an educational community that supports
high quality, successful, sustainable service learning
inspired to transform students, districts, and
communities.
Integrating Curriculum &
Service-Learning
Intended Audience: K-12 Educators, Pre-Service Teachers
Description: Instruction that is clearly relevant to
today's rapidly changing world is at the forefront of unit
design. Content knowledge by itself cannot lead all
students to academic achievement. Classes and projects
that engage student interest and provide a rationale for
why the content is worth learning enables students to
make connections between what they read and learn in
school, their lives, and their futures. An engaging and
effective curriculum provides opportunities for
exploration and exposure to new ideas. Real-world
experiences through service-learning provide students
with opportunities to transfer and apply knowledge in
new, diverse situations. In this workshop, learn about
the process and tools used to work with teachers on
creating high quality service-learning units with the
state curriculum.
Train-the-Trainer
Intended Audience: K-12 Educators
Description: This workshop provides an introduction to
service-learning and covers each of the eight K-12
Quality Standards for Service-Learning. It uses "the box"
service-learning professional development toolkit. This
can be done as a one or two-day workshop to train and
support educators in service-learning. Ideas are shared
for creating service learning projects in areas like health,
career development
Create a Career Development Plan for
Your School
Intended Audiences: Middle and High School Teachers, Administrators
Description: This workshop takes a look at the career
development process and the steps that students will
use throughout their lives as they prepare for their first
career and make transitions to future careers. It also
identifies important skills and processes to help students
be ready for their post-secondary plan. Participants will
take a look at their curriculum and identify potential
areas for integration of career development elements
into their existing class structure. Various tools,
resources, and ideas are shared to inform and inspire
educators.
True Colors for Personal Success
Intended Audience: Administrators, Teachers, Staff, Students, Parents
Description: True Colors® is a simple model of
personality identification for people of all ages that
improves communication through recognition of a
person's true character. Understanding the similarities
and differences of all people leads to developing
improved communication skills, greater appreciation of
the uniqueness of self and others, more meaningful
relationships, and creating a healthy climate for working,
teaching and learning.
True Colors School Program Goals:
- Encourage Participation
- Increase Attendance
- Improve Grades
- Resolve Conflict
- Enhance Self-Esteem
- Achieve Higher Test Scores
- Lower Dropout Rate
True Colors has been used successfully for over
twenty-eight years in education, to gain higher levels of
self esteem, academic achievement and improved
personal relationships in school and in families.
marketing
Learn How to Create a Strategic Marketing
Plan
Intended Audience: District Teams
Description: No matter what you are trying to sell,
whether it's a positive image to attract additional
enrollments, a vocational program or a new technology
center, you need a strategic marketing plan. In today's
competitive environment the question of how to
successfully market your school on a shoestring budget
without specialized knowledge is a key consideration.
Learn to: Identify your target audience; Define your goals;
Select your channels of communication; Plan a budget;
Draw a yearly plan; and Evaluate your plan.
global education
grant writing
Grant Writing
Intended Audience: Administrators, Educators, Others
Description: Successful grant writers are those who
carefully prepare their proposals, not just crank them
out. How do you go about this process in an
organized and business-like way? You can attend this
workshop to find the answers. This workshop is a
combination of lecture and hands-on practice in the
craft of grant writing. Learn how to develop an idea,
research possible funding sources using the Internet
and traditional sources, and actually create a proposal
for funding. Grant writing is a process. This
workshop will help you develop a systematic process
for identifying what is being funded, which is willing
to fund your proposals, and how to find this
information for submitting your carefully prepared
proposals. Most agencies, foundations, or
corporations require the same generic elements. The
exact details may vary, but the basic elements tend to
be similar whether it is a multimillion-dollar proposal
to a federal agency or a mini-grant to your local
foundation. Come explore those elements and spend
time creating a well-written proposal.
Project Planning: Learn How to Plan a
Project for Grant Funding
Intended Audience: Administrators, Educators
Description:
Learn to build the framework of your project,
including:
- Why you are undertaking the project
- For who you are undertaking
- What you want the project to achieve
- How you will achieve it
- When you will achieve
To develop the framework, you need to take certain
foundation-building steps. These steps will help
ensure the following:
- Your project will meet the needs of at least one of
your organization's audiences.
- Your project is in line with your organization's goals
and priorities.
- You can make a good case for your project to
stakeholders who can provide support.
- You have a starting point for measuring the success
of your project.
Successful grant writing means well-defined project
plans. Come learn how to plan a project for
successful funding.
