Sessions
Our sessions provide a unique opportunity for attendees to learn key insights from a broad spectrum of experts and colleagues from around the country.
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School Climate & Culture Forum Orlando
Pre-Conference – Thursday,
March 26, 2020
Pre-Conference / Main Conference – Friday, March 27, 2020
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Pre-Conference Registration 6:00 am – 8:00 am
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Pre-Conference Sessions 8:00 am – 11:00 am
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Lunch (on your own) 11:00 am – 12:00 pm
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Welcome/Plenary Session 12:00 pm – 1:15 pm
Speaker: Dr. Michael Gurian
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Featured & Breakout Sessions 1:45 pm – 2:45 pm
Featured Speaker: Dr. Michael Gurian
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Featured & Breakout Sessions 3:00 pm – 4:00 pm
Featured Speaker: Dr. Russ Sabella
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Featured & Breakout Sessions 4:10 pm – 5:00 pm
Featured Speakers: Dr. Russ Sabella & Hotep Benzo
Saturday, March 28, 2020
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Plenary Session 8:30 am – 9:30 am
Featured Speaker: Julia Cook
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Keynote & Breakout Sessions 10:00 am – 11:00 am
Featured Speaker: Dr. William Noel
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Keynote & Breakout Sessions 11:15 am – 12:15 pm
Featured Speaker: Dr. John Almarode
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Lunch (on your own) 12:15 pm – 1:45 pm
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Keynote & Breakout Sessions 1:45 pm – 2:45 pm
Featured Speaker: Robert Jackson
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Keynote & Breakout Sessions 3:00 pm – 4:00 pm
Featured Speaker: Larry Thompson
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Panel Discussion 4:10 pm – 5:00 pm
25 Innovative Strategies to Engage Boys
Sunday, March 29, 2020
School Climate & Culture Forum Orlando
Marquita S. Blades, Ed.D.: POWARRful Teaching Strategies for Increasing Student Engagement & Decreasing Disciplinary Issues
Thursday, March 26th, 9:00 am – 12:00 pm
Creating a highly-engaging & rigorous classroom while trying to manage disciplinary issues can be difficult. In this workshop, participants will learn several effective strategies that can be used to create an interactive classroom that supports increased student engagement while
minimizing student disciplinary issues. This is not a “sit-and-get” workshop. Bring your best energy, because we’ll be working through these strategies, just as you will be using them with your students!
- Learning Objectives:
Learn how to use academic data to build relationships with all students. - Decrease disciplinary issues in the classroom by creating a more engaging learning environment.
- Gain several strategies for increasing student engagement while maintaining rigor and addressing the needs of all learners.
Stephanie Jensen, MS, LPC: Lost Boys: Strategies to Help Educators Navigate the World of Boys for Academic Success! Part 1l
Thursday, March 26th, 9:00 am – 12:00 pm
Boys are held back in school twice as often as girls. Boys also get expelled from preschool nearly five times more often than girls, and they are diagnosed with learning disorders and attention problems at nearly four times the rate of girls. Boys are more likely to dropout of school, and make up only 43 percent of college students. Millions of boys are being lost along the path to academic success and career achievement in today’s knowledge economy. Teacher bias regarding behavior, rather than academic performance, penalizes boys as early as kindergarten.
On average, boys receive lower behavioral assessment scores, and those scores affect teachers’ overall perceptions of boys’ intelligence and achievement. Rather than penalize boys’ high energy – as traditional classroom methods often do – successful teachers are learning to take advantage of male liveliness, curiosity and thirst for competition. Unless educators stop to consider whether traditional methods are working for both genders, boys will continue to get the short end of the educational stick.
This session will helps educators understand the structural, chemical and processing differences between boys’ and girls’ brains. It helps educators support boys’ developmental needs, while teaching them social/emotional competencies. Attendees will discover innovative strategies, as well as group and individual interventions, to help boys achieve their highest academic potential.
Learning Objectives:
In this session, you will learn how to:
- Explain how boys’ brains work including the chemistry and structure.
- Identify the differences in the ways girls and boys focus.
- Recognize the role of hormones, specifically testosterone and dopamine
- Demonstrate classroom strategies to support boys’ developmental needs
- Contrast the difference between natural aggression and bullying.
Mike Paget, M.Ed.: Positive Behavioral Supports with Students Who Are Wired Differently
Thursday, March 26th, 9:00 am – 12:00 pm
Disorganization, irritability, intense moods, emotional escalation, anxiety, perfectionism: these are some of the Top 10 Challenges faced by students who are “Wired Differently” – and by their teachers. Supporting the increasing number of students (now estimated at 1 in 5) with emotional and behavioral challenges requires an array of practices beyond traditional discipline practices.
During this session, author and nationally known education consultant Mike Paget will provide an overview of some of the emotional and behavioral challenges confronting these neuro-diverse students. Increasingly, teachers, counselors, administrators and other educators are realizing that success for these students demands an emphasis on prevention, positive skill-building and other practical supports (including practices at the universal, secondary and tertiary levels) – and that these supports actually improve the behavior of all students. Positive Behavior Interventions & Supports (PBIS) is one of the more prominent practices, but whether or not your school has implemented PBIS, this session will give helpful insights into the unique characteristics of these students and provide lots of practical supports that will help all students – but particularly those who are “Wired Differently.”
Learning Objectives:
- Discover the importance of adult attitudes & behaviors when using positive behavior supports.
- Explore how primary, secondary and tertiary behavior plans can be best employed with various mental/emotional/behavioral concerns.
- Understand the 8 elements of successful classroom management.
- Discover tools to help teach social skills to students who are “Wired Differently” within the paradigm of positive behavior supports.
- Understand the importance of collaboration between families, schools and community resources.
Susan Coleman, Ph.D.: How to Walk the Talk: The Journey to Improving School Climate & Student Engagement through Social-Emotional Learning
Thursday, March 26th, 1:00 pm – 4:00 pm
Put theory into action! In this session, participants will learn a variety of strategies to make connections with students and improve school climate. This journey will take participants through past and present discipline practices and the impact on school culture. Restorative practices and the intersection of CASEL’s social/emotional learning competencies will also be discussed. Finally, participants will explore how districts can set up systems of support to keep students in school and engaged with true stories of successful implementation practices.
Learning Objectives:
- Develop an understanding of the unintended consequences of punitive discipline.
- Explore the connections between Restorative Practices and Social Emotional Learning Competencies.
- Create an action plan to bring back home with practical implementation strategies to change school culture.
Stephanie Jensen, MS, LPC: Lost Boys: Strategies to Help Educators Navigate the World of Boys for Academic Success! Part 2
Thursday, March 26th, 1:00 pm – 4:00 pm
Boys are held back in school twice as often as girls. Boys also get expelled from preschool nearly five times more often than girls, and they are diagnosed with learning disorders and attention problems at nearly four times the rate of girls. Boys are more likely to dropout of school, and make up only 43 percent of college students. Millions of boys are being lost along the path to academic success and career achievement in today’s knowledge economy. Teacher bias regarding behavior, rather than academic performance, penalizes boys as early as kindergarten.
On average, boys receive lower behavioral assessment scores, and those scores affect teachers’ overall perceptions of boys’ intelligence and achievement. Rather than penalize boys’ high energy – as traditional classroom methods often do – successful teachers are learning to take advantage of male liveliness, curiosity and thirst for competition. Unless educators stop to consider whether traditional methods are working for both genders, boys will continue to get the short end of the educational stick.
This session will helps educators understand the structural, chemical and processing differences between boys’ and girls’ brains. It helps educators support boys’ developmental needs, while teaching them social/emotional competencies. Attendees will discover innovative strategies, as well as group and individual interventions, to help boys achieve their highest academic potential.
Learning Objectives:
In this session, you will learn how to:
- Explain how boys’ brains work including the chemistry and structure.
- Identify the differences in the ways girls and boys focus.
- Recognize the role of hormones, specifically testosterone and dopamine
- Demonstrate classroom strategies to support boys’ developmental needs
- Contrast the difference between natural aggression and bullying.
Mike Paget, M.Ed.: Disruptive Behavior Disorders: Insights and Strategies That Will Improve Outcomes for Students with ODD, CD & IED
Thursday, March 26th, 1:00 pm – 4:00 pm
You know those students who make your day super difficult? Those who exhibit an ongoing pattern of uncooperative or hostile actions – such as temper tantrums, fighting, cruelty and defiance? Typically educators slip into a pattern of coercion and punishment. Non-disruptive peers start to reject them – isolating them and driving them to associate with other disruptive students. This path can lead to academic difficulties, poor relationships, substance abuse, delinquency and crime. But, these students may actually have a Disruptive Behavior Disorder – Oppositional Defiant Disorder, Conduct Disorder and/or Intermittent Explosive Disorder.
In this session, author and behavioral consultant Mike Paget will share effective practices for working with students challenged by these disorders in the classroom. He will examine each of the disorders – ODD, CD and IED – and connect the dots between the three. What does the student challenged by ODD think and feel about authority figures? Mike will share practical accommodations that will reduce confrontation with these students. Attendees will learn why getting tough and zero tolerance do not work with students challenged by CD and IED. Discover how educators can avoid power struggles and not take the behavior personally.
Learning Objectives:
- Know the risk factors for and symptoms of Oppositional Defiant Disorder, Conduct Disorder and Intermittent Explosive Disorder.
- Discover classroom accommodations and strategies for dealing with Disruptive Behavior Disorders.
- Gain strategies for de-escalating confrontational situations in your school or classroom.
- Learn why it’s important to avoid lectures, interruption, yelling and arguing.Learn to use more successful approaches including brevity, listening, neutral tone of voice, honesty and humor.
- Discover how to build self-management through strength coaching, generosity and re-framing
Tracie Berry-McGhee, M.Ed., LPC, NCC: Girl Drama: Best Practices to Help Educators Reduce Relational Aggression & Cyberbullying
Friday, March 27th, 8:00 am – 11:00 am
Girl friendships are intense and all-encompassing from early elementary years on; but cliques, power struggles and an intense desire to belong create a ripe field for relational aggression. Describing the emotional milieu girls face as they grow, bestselling author Lisa Damour, Ph.D. reminds us that a girl’s “key support system – her tribe – consists of peers who are also as reactive and erratic as they will ever be. (She) works hard every day to harness powerful and unpredictable emotions so that she can get on with doing everything else she means to do.”
Teachers, counselors and administrators can help guide girls to define what makes a healthy friendship. As a family therapist and Founder of the SistaKeeper organization, Tracie Berry-McGhee has focused much of her career on working with girls. In this session, she will discuss the impact of social aggression and the factors that motivate relational aggression. She will share tools to develop a trauma-free space to promote girl empowerment. The benefits of gender-specific programming that promotes strength and resiliency in girls will be explored. Discover tools for promoting pro-social behaviors like kindness, sharing and empathy in girls K-12, while improving their attitude toward school and reducing depression.
Learning Objectives:
- Integrate the latest research-based insights into your bullying and relational aggression prevention program.
- Identify online communication and social media trends affecting today’s girls.
- Discover how to instill social/emotional connections among girls.
- Implement individual, small-group and classroom strategies and activities.
- Design or revise your own action plan for addressing female relational aggression
Robert Jackson: Salvaging Our Sons: Helping Educators Reach, Teach & Empower Young Men
Friday, March 27th, 8:00 am – 11:00 am
This workshop will address issues that all male students face, as well as issues related to adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) and/or trauma — including violence and divorce, incarceration or death of parents. How males process stressors influences their behavior, motivation and desire to learn. All students experience negative moments inside and outside of school, however boys process them differently.
During this interactive session, administrators and educators will gain insight into how to help male students overcome life’s challenges with ready-to-use strategies.
Learning Objectives:
- Identify key components for motivating males.
- Discover proven strategies for engaging and motivating boys who have experienced trauma and/or adverse childhood experiences (ACEs)
- Demonstrate key relationship, communication and community-based strategies to reach all male students
- Recognize underlying causes of male student misbehavior and utilize the de-escalation tactics
Eric Clark, M.Ed.: Defiant, Manipulative & Attention-Seeking Students: How to Unlock Their Potential & Survive the Process
Friday, March 27th, 8:00 am – 11:00 am
Working with difficult, demanding, and disruptive students is not a new challenge for educators. However, there are current concerns being voiced regarding the changing nature and intensity of the behaviors of these students. Some educators are reporting increases in selfish, manipulative and hostile behaviors while others are noticing more students who are overly anxious and/or difficult to engage. Even well-seasoned, award-winning master educators can sometimes have their “feathers ruffled” by certain students in certain situations.
Responsibility-Centered Discipline is designed to assist all educators with identifying and addressing challenging student behaviors that affect the academic and behavioral progress of the students with whom they work. This power-packed seminar will provide you with up-to-date insights and strategies for reaching and helping those young people who seem to evoke the strongest feelings of frustration, hurt and sometimes discouragement in professional educators.
Learning Objectives:
- Implement do’s and don’ts to address specific behaviors
- Gain integral key strategies for migrating from an obedience-centered approach to a responsibility-centered approach
- Develop innovative ways to support positive behavior
- Apply strategies for preventing the escalation of difficult behavior
- Identify the underlying causes of difficult behaviors in students
John Almarode, Ph.D.: How We Learn: Five Essential Practices for Successful Learning
Friday, March 27th, 8:00 am – 11:00 am
“I don’t know” and “I don’t remember” are phrases that haunt every classroom teacher and learner. How do we create experiences that lead to better learning for all students so that they will “know” and “remember”? Over the past fifteen years, the science of learning has provided many insights into how we think. Furthermore, these promising principles provide a starting point for inspired and passionate teachers to build the capacity in learners to see themselves as their own teachers. This workshop shows you how! The body of research on how we learn provides well established principles and practices that enhance the learning outcomes for each of our students. Moving beyond performance on a test, this workshop links these essential principles to the everyday instructional decisions you make in your classroom.
Practicing what we preach, you will take part in an edge-of-your-seat learning experience that translates these principles to practices across multiple content areas and grade-levels. You will leave with strategies that will make learning stronger for all of your students.
Learning Objectives/Success Criteria: Today we are learning about how our students engage in their learning and the implications this has on our teaching and learning.
- I can describe four principles of how we learn.
- I can give examples of practices that support greater learning outcomes.
- I can develop practices in my own classroom that maximize learning outcomes.
- I can describe ways to assess my impact on student learning.
Brad Chapin, MS, LCP, LMLP: Teaching Self-Regulation: Avoiding Classroom Chaos
Friday, March 27th, 8:00 am – 11:00 am
When a student can’t read, we teach him how. When a student struggles with algebra, we give her skills to help. When a student has trouble behaving, what do we do?
Self-Regulation skills can be taught. Not all students have the same ability to regulate emotions, behaviors and responses to difficulties. And those who have not mastered Self-Regulation can be very disruptive to instruction time. When educators include lessons on Self-Regulation as part of the curriculum, everyone can benefit from the training on how to recognize triggers and how to manage responses to them. Rather than trying to modify behavior and/or removing the stimuli that results in unacceptable behavior, Self-Regulation training gives students control over their responses.
During this insightful session Brad Chapin will share strategies that have helped students develop skills necessary for success in academic performance, relationships and overall wellness. Brad will demonstrate that personal responsibility for behaviors and self-discipline are stronger predictors of academic success than IQ.
Learning Objectives:
- Master engaging approaches to use with individual students and the entire class that you can employ immediately.
- Learn how to give students the tools to manage their behavior by recognizing triggers and controlling how they respond.
- Explore the 3 skill-training areas.
- Discover how to target the core and address a broad spectrum of behaviors and performance issues.
- Understand how Self-Regulation skills affect social interactions, academic and athletic performance, aggressive behaviors, physical wellness and future happiness and success.
- Learn how to incorporate Self-Regulation training into your classroom curriculum.
School Climate & Culture Forum Orlando
Pre-Conference Sessions for the School Climate & Culture Forum Orlando will take place on March 26 and the morning of March 27. The main Conference will begin on March 27, 2020 at 12:00 pm.
School Climate & Culture Forum Orlando
Coming Soon!
School Climate & Culture Forum Atlanta
To Be Announced
Coming Soon!
School Climate & Culture Forum Atlanta
Coming Soon!
Pre-Conference Sessions for the School Climate & Culture Forum Atlanta will take place on June 24 & 25. The main Conference will begin on June 26, 2020 at 8:30 am.
School Climate & Culture Forum Atlanta
Coming Soon!
School Climate & Culture Forum Atlanta
Coming Soon!
School Climate & Culture Forum Las Vegas
To Be Announced
Coming Soon!
Coming Soon!
School Climate & Culture Forum Las Vegas
Pre-Conference Sessions for the School Climate & Culture Forum Las Vegas will take place on July 6 & 7. The main Conference will begin on July 8, 2020 at 8:30 am.
School Climate & Culture Forum Las Vegas
Coming Soon!
School Climate & Culture Forum Las Vegas
Coming Soon!
School Climate & Culture Forum
Orlando
March 26-29, 2020
5 Conferences for the Price of 1!
School Climate & Culture Forum
Boy Brains & Engagement Conference
School Discipline Conference
Innovative Teaching Strategies Conference
Counseling Strategies & Resources Conference
School Climate & Culture Forum
Boy Brains & Engagement Conference
School Discipline Conference
Innovative Teaching Strategies Conference
Counseling Strategies & Resources Conference
March 26-29
Atlanta
June 24-28, 2020
4 Conferences for the Price of 1!
School Climate & Culture Forum
At-Risk & Struggling Students Conference
School Discipline Conference
Girl Bullying & Empowerment Conference
School Climate & Culture Forum
At-Risk & Struggling Students Conference
School Discipline Conference
Girl Bullying & Empowerment Conference
June 24-28
Las Vegas
July 6-10, 2020
6 Conferences for the Price of 1!
School Climate & Culture Forum
Innovative Teaching Strategies Conference
School Discipline Conference
Boy Brains & Engagement Conference
Wired Differently Conference: Trauma Informed Schools
NextGen School Safety Conference
School Climate & Culture Forum
Innovative Teaching Strategies Conference
School Discipline Conference
Boy Brains & Engagement Conference
Wired Differently Conference: Trauma Informed Schools
NextGen School Safety Conference
July 6-10