Workshops for Educators
Teachers, administrators, counselors—in fact, all school personnel, whether public and private, from city, suburb or small town, are feeling the pinch. The job is far more complicated and demanding than in the past, and educators need new and different kinds of support in order to continue to support the students with whom they work and, critically, continue to support themselves. My workshops deliver creative, practical solutions, based on solid psychological principles, to educators’ real-world problems. Here are a sampling of my workshops:
Helping Kids, Helping Ourselves: An Innovative Approach to Keeping Kids in the Classroom
Educational leaders find that many more students are placing increasing emotional demands on faculty and staff. Even bright, motivated students are facing unprecedented challenges in their personal lives as our culture becomes more complicated.Because of this, bright, talented and dedicated people are more difficult to find and retain. The school’s sense of community, including staff morale, can falter.
In the Helping Kids, Helping Ourselves program, educators find practical solutions to working with students of all descriptions and, in so doing, discover effective and practical ways to increase their own well-being and effectiveness professionally and personally. From this platform of contentment, educators learn valuable life-coaching skills to employ with students and themselves.
This personal and professional growth develops hand in hand with the increasing stability, happiness and productivity of all students, but particularly those who were previously the most troubled and/or disruptive.
Workshop benefits:
- Unproductive and/or disruptive students grow academically and personally – behavior steadies and improves
- Staff feel happier and more productive
- Educators enjoy increased unity and morale
- Staff no longer fall prey to students’ emotional “button pushing”
- All students and staff benefit from a healthier school climate
- District operates in a far more cost-efficient manner.
Leadership Team-Building provides those in charge at school or in the district an opportunity to create new, vibrant team energy through powerful, didactic and experiential activities. The focus is on deepening connections, communication and inter-reliance, all based upon the development of a leadership team mission statement. That statement evolves during the workshop to include people’s core values and essential talents and desires for the school community.
Right-Brain Rehab: Writing Your Own Prescription for Creativity & Joy
Working in education, parenting and living today can be enormously demanding, and in the sway of professional and family responsibilities, important dreams can be lost along the way. The Rehab workshop will provide you with proven methods to re-connect with personal creative goals and energy. Is it the saxophone you’ve always wanted to play in lieu of those oppressive piano lessons you were forced into as a kid? The paint brushes you never found the time to pick up? Do you yearn to spend more time in the natural world? Whatever your creative/personal/spiritual desires, this experience will help you set your priorities, organize your time and invigorate your personal and professional lives as you begin to fulfill your deeper creative strivings.
You can expect:
- To leave with a concrete plan for increased joy and creativity
- To make a strong commitment to the specifics of that plan
- To feel increasing energy, passion and positive self-regard
- To begin right away actualizing your long-held and perhaps long- shelved creative, personal or shared family plans and dreams.
Self-Coaching
The powerful, energizing techniques of life coaching can be applied to oneself very effectively. You will emerge from the day with:
- A crystal clear sense of your deeply held values
- A series of resolutions that set the stage for personal change and growth
- A “Why Bother” list that informs and propels that change
- A specific action plan with checkpoints and techniques to stay on the path.
This workshop is taught with an eye towards inspiring participants to live to their highest potential: it is only by reaching towards our own vision and modeling that kind of courage that we can help kids in the most powerful way.
Coaching Challenging Teenagers
If you work with teens, you viscerally understand both the joys and satisfaction they can bring and their potential to engender frustration, anger, disappointment and even despair. Teens can really push our buttons! This workshop takes an in-depth look at the developmental challenges young people face, particularly in today’s climate of massive societal change and cultural “bombardment.” We will discuss ways the powerful techniques of life coaching can be used with specific children with whom you work (or live!) on a daily basis: the angry boy, the disaffected girl, the insecure bully, etc. Coaching is wonderfully non-threatening and action-oriented. Kids want to feel good about changes they can make, and with this set of life-coaching tools, you can be a powerful agent of transformation in teenagers’ lives.
Coaching for Creativity
Without tapping into the soulful, creative sides of ourselves and helping our children and students do the same, life is clearly lacking. This workshop shows you how to employ life-coaching concepts to raise your personal creative bar and overcome those stumbling blocks that have prevented – sometimes for many years – you from being maximally creative, inspired, joyful and alive.
In addition, we will discuss ways in which you, as a parent, educator or counselor, can use life coaching with kids and teenagers to inspire them to access and act on their own creative stirrings. Be prepared to stretch and break some bonds that have been holding you back both from personal growth and from the ability to inspire others.