Professional Development Workshops

Every moment is an opportunity to build social emotional skills as students move throughout their day - engaging with others, experiencing a variety of emotions, and making decisions. Everyday moments can become teachable if the leader senses and seizes the opportunity. Walk away from this session with tangible tips and tools for intentionally developing students’ social emotional skills in real-time.  

Topics Covered:

• The importance of a common language for social emotional skill development
• How to integrate social emotional skill-building language in everyday interactions with students
• Practice incorporating language that builds social emotional skills 

At the end of this workshop, participants will be able to:

• Identify real-time opportunities to build students’ social emotional skills
• Construct an environment conducive to social emotional learning
• Develop a toolbox to integrate social emotional skill-building into everyday interaction

Supportive, psychologically safe learning environments that are conducive to healthy development and happy students don’t happen overnight. It’s up to us – the adults – to cultivate them over time through consistency and intentional relationship building. Creating a psychologically safe learning environment will enable students to experience high-trust relationships and allow them to bring their full identities into these relationships. Proactive strategies will help to reduce the likelihood of negative behaviors occurring and in turn create a more positive culture. Proactive approaches provide students with the tools they need to make good choices both in the moment and in the future. 

Topics Covered:

• Cultivating a psychologically safe environment
• Building meaningful relationships with students
• Proactive behavior management strategies

At the end of this workshop, participants will be able to:

• Recognize a psychologically safe environment and create one for students
• Form more profound relationships with students
• Utilize proactive behavior management strategies to build a positive climate

We work hard to be culturally relevant with elementary students in afterschool programs across the country. The WINGS curriculum, organizational culture, professional development, and assessments are intentionally rooted in cultural relevance in order to:

• Support student academic excellence
• Support student cultural competence
• Facilitate critical thinking about the world around us

Topics Covered:

• The foundations of social emotional learning
• Where and how to start with culturally relevant social emotional learning

At the end of this workshop, participants will be able to:

• Reflect on the role you play as a youth development professional
• Actionable steps to make a difference
• Resources to continue the work with your students

We all have good days and bad days where our emotions run wild. This workshop will provide you and your staff with a comprehensive tool-kit of concrete proactive and corrective behavior management strategies you can implement the next day. 

Topics Covered:

• Review of essential proactive techniques to avoid negative behaviors, and corrective behavior management strategies to de-escalate a situation once negative behavior has occurred
• Additional strategies to add to the resource toolbox
• Practice and application

At the end of this workshop, participants will be able to:

• Utilize a resource toolbox of strategies including; M.E.S.S, Disregard & Divert, G.E.T P.A.S.T, DDADA, and Positive Reinforcement
• Incorporate behavior management strategies into existing program structure