Working with Challenging Students

The latest research on resiliency encourages the development in students of autonomy, problem-solving, social connections, and a sense of purpose. This workshop explores how each of those characteristics can be integrated into the day-to-day workings of a class and school.

The drive to include students with diverse special needs in the mainstream comes with as many challenges as the students have. In this workshop we’ll look at current best practices, typical obstacles, and develop plans to improve systems already in place.

People don’t change; they grow. Students with challenges grow in idiosyncratic and often unpredictable ways. In this workshop we will consider the diverse ways students learn, the opportunities to stretch the environment for atypical learners, and share many tools to help teachers hang in through the ups-and-downs of student development.

Schools are at the intersection of infinite need and finite resources. Everyone feels the pressure. This workshop will look at the institutional stress experienced by students and by staff, and offer tools, protocols and concepts to help build support, relationships, and a more successful learning environment.

The last thirty years of brain research have given us a much better idea of how students gain knowledge and skills. In this workshop participants will be given a short review of that research and be shown simple ways to adjust pedagogy to improve student learning.

We can inculcate in students a belief that they all have immeasurable intelligence, and that each of them can learn and grow through a lifetime of pursuits. This workshop moves participants from theory to classroom practices. Workshop participants will become versed in the latest brain science, and how to bring that amazing and wondrous knowledge to their students in every day conversation. We will investigate daily rituals and routines that deepen student beliefs that their thoughts are worthy. We will examine ways to set up lessons and units that expand the possibilities for students to know themselves as learners by building strategies of effort. We will consider the critical opportunities throughout the day to give students feedback that enhances their confidence. This workshop is not about a lesson or a trick to get students to try harder; it’s about the very meaning of teaching and learning, and how schools and classrooms can be transformed.

There is a little bit of magic when co-teachers combine their strengths in a classroom. Co-teaching magic is more likely to happen when teachers, and their leadership team, share terminology, best practices, and expectations. This workshop provides a dive into co-teaching models, lesson plan objectives, shared interests, and ways of handling student difficulties.