Monday, November 12th
Block 1
Full Block Sessions (2 hours)
Session 1.0 | 9:30 am – 11:30 am
Impacts of Trauma: How Responsive Classroom Practices Support Teachers and Students
Grade Level: Elementary and Middle School
Duration: 2 hours
We know all students need to feel a sense of belonging and significance to thrive in a school setting. Students are coming to school with trauma histories and behaviors that are often difficult to understand, let alone address. In this session, we will explore the two emotions at the root of all behaviors and how empathy, teacher language, and logical consequences can support these students and allow their brains to recognize safety when they see it and feel it.”
Responsive Classroom for the Adult Community
Grade Level: Elementary and Middle School
Duration: 2 hours
One of Responsive Classroom’s guiding principles states: How we work together as adults to create a safe, joyful, and inclusive school environment is as important as our individual contribution or competence. How is your adult community working together? Through reflection and envisioning, you’ll examine the current climate and adult community in your setting and frame an ideal for that climate and community. You’ll learn to look at key Responsive Classroom practices through the lens of the adults at your school and begin to plan how those practices can support the growth of a positive adult climate—crucial steps for creating positive, lasting change.
Participants will have the option to watch video clips via their electronic devices during this session; because of this, you may choose to bring headphones/earbuds.
Introduction to Responsive Classroom
Grade Level: Elementary and Middle School
Duration: 2 hours
In this two-hour introduction to the Responsive Classroom approach you’ll learn how Responsive Classroom practices help educators foster positive community, integrate academics with the teaching of social and emotional skills, and create the conditions for positive student behavior.
Keeping Calm: Stressors in the Middle School Classroom
Grade Level: Middle School
Duration: 2 hours
Young adolescents’ physical, social-emotional, language, and cognitive capabilities change as they grow, and they do their best learning when teachers and other school adults take the time to recognize, understand, and plan for these developmental changes. We’ll suggest ways that you can keep adolescent development in mind throughout the school day to help students develop the academic and social-emotional skills essential to learning, and provide time for you to think about how you manage your own stressors.
Half Block Sessions (1 hour)
Session 1.1 | 9:30 am – 10: 30 am
Impact of Child Development on Hopeful Thinking and Behavior
Grade Level: Elementary and Middle School
Duration: 1 hour
The psychologist Charles R. Snyder defined hope as the perceived capability to derive pathways to desired goals and motivate oneself via agency thinking to use those pathways. This session will explore some key characteristics of child development that may impact hopeful thinking and behavior.
Myths and Realities of the Culturally Responsive Classroom
Grade Level: Elementary and Middle School
Duration: 1 hour
Each classroom has its own unique culture in the midst of other cultural influences. How can we create classroom environments that are not only informed by these cultural influences but transformed as well? In this session, we’ll dispel myths about culturally informed teaching practices, define culturally informed teaching and its goals, and identify practical strategies that can be incorporated into daily practice.
Motivation in the Classroom: Strategies to Build Engagement
Grade Level: Elementary and Middle School
Duration: 1 hour
Administrators play an important role in building ways in which schools can increase student engagement and respond to those who are disengaged. This session offers practical tips on how to support teachers in maintaining student engagement and help them re-engage an unmotivated student.
Session 1.2 | 10:45 am – 11:45
Hope: One Small Step at a Time
Grade Level: Elementary and Middle School
Duration: 1 hour
Hope is an idea that often sustains us and propels us forward. What happens when students have lost their ability to hope? In this session, you’ll explore ways to restore hope in students one small step at a time, including identifying why students may have lost hope, discovering ways to help students name new hopes and set realistic small wins to realize these hopes, and reflecting with students on experiences to drive independent generation of future hope.
Who’s in Charge of Learning in Your School?
Grade Level: Elementary School
Duration: 1 hour
Who is doing the heavy lifting in your school? Often, educators are working much too hard and students are less and less motivated and engaged. In this session, we’ll examine this common challenge through the lens of learner autonomy. When students feel autonomous, they are more motivated and engaged. But how can we support students to develop the academic and social-emotional skills necessary to work toward autonomy? This session will help you consider ways to move from conductor to facilitator as students assume more responsibility for their own learning.
Giving High-Quality Feedback to Teachers
Grade Level: Elementary and Middle School
Duration: 1 hour
Giving coaching and evaluative feedback to teachers is one of a school leader’s many roles. Feedback that is specific, action oriented, and focused on the future strengthens teachers’ skills and supports them in reflecting on their strengths and identifying areas of growth. This session will explore the use of reinforcing language and open-ended questions as tools for providing teachers with high-quality feedback.
Block 2
Full Block Sessions (2 hours)
Session 2.0 | 2:15 pm – 4:15
Supporting Teachers in Growth Areas
Grade Level: Elementary and Middle School
Duration: 2 hours
To do their best work and grow in their practice, all teachers need positive, consistent support. Learn how you can use Responsive Classroom strategies to help all teachers make progress toward professional growth goals. By the end of this session, you’ll be able to analyze ways in which the practices, strategies, and domains of the Responsive Classroom approach can support teachers in achieving specific growth goals.
Self-Assessment: Students as Active Learners
Grade Level: Elementary and Middle School
Duration: 2 hours
Would you like students in your school to develop valuable lifelong skills, including the ability to think critically about their own work, know themselves and their learning styles, reflect on their strengths and challenges, and measure their progress toward goals? Would you like them to develop a growth mindset, build resilience, and become autonomous learners who take responsibility for their own learning? In this session, you’ll learn how to use envisioning language to communicate your belief in students’ abilities, open-ended questions to prompt reflective thinking, and reinforcing language to encourage students as they learn. We’ll also examine self-assessment and goal-setting tools.
Empowering Students through Responsive Advisory Meetings
Grade Level: Middle School
Duration: 2 hours
Responsive Advisory Meetings help students develop positive relationships with each other and build academic and social-emotional competencies. In this session, you’ll gather ideas and develop plans for Responsive Advisory Meetings that help students take more control of their learning, build excitement for future plans, and empower students to respectfully speak out to positively impact their school and community. When students look to the future and can see their place it in, it builds optimism for all of us.
Half Block Sessions (1 hour)
Session 2.1 | 2:15 pm – 3:15 pm
Open Panel Discussion about Parent Involvement for Middle School
Grade Level: Middle School
Duration: 1 hour
In this open panel discussion, Responsive Classroom Consulting Teachers and middle school administrators talk about achieving successes and overcoming challenges in building and maintaining parent and community support at their schools.
Reinforcing Language Reboot
Grade Level: Elementary and Middle School
Duration: 1 hour
Have you noticed that you are spending a lot of time reminding students of what they should be doing and redirecting them when they are off task? Do you go home exhausted from putting out fires all day? Does it ever feel like all you see is what your students could be doing better? If you answered yes to any of these questions, you could be in need of a language reboot! Reinforcing language is one of the most powerful forms of teacher language, yet also one of the most underutilized. We’ll examine why it’s so easy to forget about reinforcing language, when to use it, and how to maximize its effectiveness.
Supporting Students in the Art of Agreeing and Disagreeing
Grade Level: Elementary and Middle School
Duration: 1 hour
Over the course of the school day, students are asked to talk with each other about a variety of topics. Often, those conversations rely on a student’s ability to make a clear point and be able to back up the point. To be able to exchange ideas on a meaningful level and access important academic content while maintaining positive relationships, students need to learn how to agree and disagree. This session will explore the skills students need to be explicitly taught so they are able to agree and disagree respectfully in school and later in life.
Building Perseverance Through Small Group Learning
Grade Level: Middle School
Duration: 1 hour
When students work in small groups to achieve a common learning goal, they have the opportunity to experiment, voice their opinions, and build grit in a less risky environment. Small group learning gives young adolescents the opportunity to build the habit of perseverance without the pressure of whole group learning. In this session, learn how to encourage students to persevere through challenges with envisioning language, open-ended questions, Interactive Modeling, and reinforcing language.
Session 2.2 | 3:30 pm – 4:30 pm
Building a Healthy and Productive Team
Grade Level: Elementary and Middle School
Duration: 1 hour
One of the Responsive Classroom guiding principles highlights how we work together as adults and the impact that has on our learning communities. In this session, you’ll learn how to foster a sense of respect, trust, and responsibility in your adult teams while welcoming diverse voices and multiple perspectives. Learn new ways to build authentic relationships, find joy in collaborating with colleagues, and make your staff meetings engaging.Bringing Responsive Classroom Practices into Professional Development
Grade Level: Elementary and Middle School
Duration: 1 hour
Leading by example is a powerful approach to helping teachers practice new teaching techniques. In this session, we’ll explore how to adapt various Responsive Classroom practices to incorporate them into professional development opportunities you offer. You’ll have time to plan how to use these practices in your next PD session and engage with others in building a bank of ideas to bring back with you.Envisioning Language to Inspire Hope
Grade Level: Elementary and Middle School
Duration: 1 hour
Most of our professional language is aimed at helping students develop academic skills and increase their knowledge. This session will help you consider how your envisioning language can influence students’ learning behavior and inspire an academic mindset.Building Learning Strategies through Active Teaching and Student Practice
Grade Level: Middle School
Duration: 1 hour
Active teaching is an effective strategy for middle school students that plays to their developmental strengths and needs for engagement, social interaction, and fun. We’ll explore how the three phases of active teaching as well as student practice foster engaged learning for middle school students.
Tuesday, November 13th
Block 3
Full Block Sessions (2 hours)
Session 3.0 | 9:30 am – 11:30 am
Empowering Students: The Responsive Classroom Approach to Discipline
Grade Level: Elementary and Middle School
Duration: 2 hours
When school discipline is working, students feel safe, know what is expected of them, and strive to meet those expectations because they understand the reasons for them. In this session, we’ll cover ideas for empowering students’ agency and responsible autonomy through the Responsive Classroom approach to teaching discipline. By the end of this session, you’ll be able to frame school discipline as a means to empower students and analyze proactive and reactive components of the Responsive Classroom discipline framework.
Empathy and Human Connection
Grade Level: Elementary and Middle School
Duration: 2 hours
Studies have shown that college students today are less empathetic than they were in previous decades. What does that mean? How does a decline in empathy impact what is happening in our schools? In this session, you’ll examine the scope of the issue, explore ways to create conditions for empathy to develop, and identify key practices and strategies to build human connection and foster empathy.
Responding Culturally for Engaged Academics
Grade Level: Elementary and Middle School
Duration: 2 hours
One of Responsive Classroom’s guiding principles states: What we know and believe about our students—individually, culturally, and developmentally—informs our expectations, reactions, and attitudes about those students. Let us bravely examine our own beliefs and attitudes related to culture and how those beliefs impact students and affect student learning. You’ll learn how to view key Responsive Classroom practices through a cultural lens while supporting developmentally responsive teaching.
Interactive Modeling: More Than Routines
Grade Level: Elementary and Middle School
Duration: 2 hours
Interactive Modeling is a powerful teaching tool that shows students exactly what we expect them to do and how we expect them to do it. In this session, you’ll gain an understanding of Interactive Modeling and explore ways to connect it to the teaching of academic content and social-emotional skills.
Half Block Sessions (1 hour)
Session 3.1 | 9:30 am – 10:30 am
Inclusive Teacher Language
Grade Level: Middle School
Duration: 1 hour
This session will uncover how microaggressions in language can damage community-building. Inclusive language is a tool used to improve relationships and the classroom environment. You’ll leave with a better understanding of microaggression in language and proactive practical strategies.
Using Student Progress to Build Confidence and Academic Mindset
Grade Level: Middle School
Duration: 1 hour
Celebrating students’ progress toward achieving their goals builds confidence and strengthens students’ conviction that their effort improves performance. In this session, you’ll learn how to guide students in creating SMART goals that are personally meaningful to them and examine ways to make time for students to monitor and evaluate their progress toward those goals.
Leading Inspirational Professional Development
Grade Level: Elementary and Middle School
Duration: 1 hour
Providing high-quality, efficient professional development is one of the best ways to improve both teacher performance and feelings of hope, satisfaction, and competence. We’ll review key principles of adult learning and then explore how to structure short, effective professional development sessions that will engage, excite, and educate your staff.
Session 3.2 | 10:45 am – 11:45 am
Building Learning Strategies through Active Teaching and Student Practice
Grade Level: Middle School
Duration: 1 hour
Active teaching is an effective strategy for middle school students that plays to their developmental strengths and needs for engagement, social interaction, and fun. We’ll explore how the three phases of active teaching as well as student practice foster engaged learning for middle school students.
Closing the Day with Hope
Grade Level: Middle School
Duration: 1 hour
Closing the day is a purposeful structure that allows students to end their day on a positive note, reflect on the day, and feel motivated about tomorrow’s learning. It is an opportunity for students to safely voice concerns and reflect on progress while looking ahead to upcoming successes and challenges. In this session, you’ll learn about the practice of closing the day with meaningful reflection questions and inclusive activities.
Motivation in the Classroom: Strategies to Build Engagement
Grade Level: Elementary and Middle School
Duration: 1 hour
Administrators play an important role in building ways in which schools can increase student engagement and respond to those who are disengaged. This session offers practical tips on how to support teachers in maintaining student engagement and help them re-engage an unmotivated student.
Block 4
Full Block Sessions (2 hours)
Session 4.0 | 1:00 pm – 3:00 pm
Keeping Calm: Stressors in the Middle School Classroom
Grade Level: Middle School
Duration: 2 hours
Young adolescents’ physical, social-emotional, language, and cognitive capabilities change as they grow, and they do their best learning when teachers and other school adults take the time to recognize, understand, and plan for these developmental changes. We’ll suggest ways that you can keep adolescent development in mind throughout the school day to help students develop the academic and social-emotional skills essential to learning, and provide time for you to think about how you manage your own stressors.
Empowering Students through Responsive Advisory Meetings
Grade Level: Middle School
Duration: 2 hours
Responsive Advisory Meetings help students develop positive relationships with each other and build academic and social-emotional competencies. In this session, you’ll gather ideas and develop plans for Responsive Advisory Meetings that help students take more control of their learning, build excitement for future plans, and empower students to respectfully speak out to positively impact their school and community. When students look to the future and can see their place it in, it builds optimism for all of us.
Energize Your Professional Development Meetings
Grade Level: Elementary and Middle School
Duration: 2 hours
Enhance any professional development session by incorporating easy-to-use learning structures that will engage and energize your staff. Book studies, collaborative problem-solving groups, all-staff meetings—no matter the type of meeting or the topic, these structures will ensure that staff maximize their learning and leave feeling invigorated.
Responding Culturally for Engaged Academics
Grade Level: Elementary and Middle School
Duration: 2 hours
One of Responsive Classroom’s guiding principles states: What we know and believe about our students—individually, culturally, and developmentally—informs our expectations, reactions, and attitudes about those students. Let us bravely examine our own beliefs and attitudes related to culture and how those beliefs impact students and affect student learning. You’ll learn how to view key Responsive Classroom practices through a cultural lens while supporting developmentally responsive teaching.
Half Block Sessions (1 hour)
Session 4.1 | 1:00 pm – 2:00 pm
Reinforcing Language Reboot
Grade Level: Elementary and Middle School
Duration: 1 hour
Have you noticed that you are spending a lot of time reminding students of what they should be doing and redirecting them when they are off task? Do you go home exhausted from putting out fires all day? Does it ever feel like all you see is what your students could be doing better? If you answered yes to any of these questions, you could be in need of a language reboot! Reinforcing language is one of the most powerful forms of teacher language, yet also one of the most underutilized. We’ll examine why it’s so easy to forget about reinforcing language, when to use it, and how to maximize its effectiveness.
Let’s Get Moving: Energize Your Students for Deeper Learning!
Grade Level: Elementary and Middle School
Duration: 1 hour
In this session, you’ll learn about the importance of giving students opportunities to get up and move during academic periods. You’ll explore how and when brain breaks or energizers are most useful, as well as how they can be introduced and scaffolded so students can be successful. Plan on moving as we will try out several!
Inclusive Teacher Language
Grade Level: Middle School
Duration: 1 hour
This session will uncover how microaggressions in language can damage community-building. Inclusive language is a tool used to improve relationships and the classroom environment. You’ll leave with a better understanding of microaggression in language and proactive practical strategies.
Session 4.2 | 2:15 pm – 3:15 pm
Giving High-Quality Feedback to Teachers
Grade Level: Elementary and Middle School
Duration: 1 hour
Giving coaching and evaluative feedback to teachers is one of a school leader’s many roles. Feedback that is specific, action oriented, and focused on the future strengthens teachers’ skills and supports them in reflecting on their strengths and identifying areas of growth. This session will explore the use of reinforcing language and open-ended questions as tools for providing teachers with high-quality feedback.
Building a Healthy and Productive Team
Grade Level: Elementary and Middle School
Duration: 1 hour
One of the Responsive Classroom guiding principles highlights how we work together as adults and the impact that has on our learning communities. In this session, you’ll learn how to foster a sense of respect, trust, and responsibility in your adult teams while welcoming diverse voices and multiple perspectives. Learn new ways to build authentic relationships, find joy in collaborating with colleagues, and make your staff meetings engaging.
Closing the Day with Hope
Grade Level: Middle School
Duration: 1 hour
Closing the day is a purposeful structure that allows students to end their day on a positive note, reflect on the day, and feel motivated about tomorrow’s learning. It is an opportunity for students to safely voice concerns and reflect on progress while looking ahead to upcoming successes and challenges. In this session, you’ll learn about the practice of closing the day with meaningful reflection questions and inclusive activities.