VT-HEC Mission Investment Fund Supports Development of New Series

In partnership with the Northeast Family Institute (NFI), the VT-HEC is developing a new series focusing on childhood trauma and trauma-informed schools.  NFI’s David Melnick will kick off the series with a workshop on February 16, 2017 in Montpelier, VT.  The workshop can also be taken as part of a graduate course entitled: Developmental Trauma and Trauma-Informed Schools: Theory, Practice, and Implementation.  This course will be the first in what is planned to be a series of courses that will support school personnel as they work to apply the principes of Trauma-Informed Schools.

The workshop and course will focus on the global impact that chronic traumatic stress has on the developing child. Research and clinical practice has helped clarify the expansive effects of chronic trauma, often referred to as the “Seven Domains of Impairment” (The National Child Traumatic Stress Network). Participants will examine these seven domains with an eye towards their application by educators and schools, noting the specific and often innovative strategies necessary to help children learn and develop.

For more information, see our flyer at: https://www.vthec.org/wp-content/uploads/David-Melnick-11-18-16.pdf

You can contribute to the VT-HEC Mission Investment Fund to help make quality professional learning opportunities available to meet the needs of Vermont educators. vthec.org

Matching Technology Tools with the Assessments You Need for your Students

Join Chris CichoskiKelly in an exploration of how you can use technology to design and organize assessments that meet the needs of you and your students. Over two days of workshops Chris will review over a dozen tools that will help you tailor assessments to your content and your students’ goals.

Chris will review tools that can help educators develop and manage learning scales and performance tasks and assist with proficiency-based grading. There are tools that will make learning goals and progress clearer to students and parents and help teachers and students better focus their efforts. Many of these tools can involve students in the assessment process and increase their participation and learning.

Among the tools Chris will be reviewing are: PlayPosit; Socrative; Quizlet; Plickers,  Goobric, Flubaroo and Kahoot.  You will learn how to make creative and tailored use of Google Forms and Sheets, better use Excel for graphing and help make more efficient use of checklists and rubrics. Improve your assessments and keep your date organized with the right tools.

The workshops are on February 3 and March 17 (new date) ; to get the most from this offering take it as a 3 credit course through which you will get support from Chris for the application of the tools you select to your own assessment goals. In addition, you will be able to see how your fellow students are utilizing these tools in different ways.

Chris’s workshops and courses have gotten rave reviews from past participants:

This course was amazing!! The knowledge I gained has been so incredibly useful; we can see that it is clearly benefiting the students.

So many skills and tools. all kinds of useful shortcuts and small ways I can assess and analyze assessments. This class is my favorite one I’ve ever taken as an adult!

I immediately began integrating the tools I learned about into my practice. I am so impressed by the breadth of this course.

I had knowledge of google tools before, but I would say my knowledge tripled or more, and that I have applied that knowledge daily both in my professional life and my personal life.

 It is the most applicable course I have ever taken. I used what I learned immediately.

https://www.vthec.org/wp-content/uploads/Flyer-Technology-11-21-16.pdf

If coaching executive skills were a football game, this would be the playbook

The most informative, practical guide available on the topic

Invaluable to teachers, counselors and school psychologists who work with students with executive skills deficits

Translates cutting-edge research into meaningful, practical, well-organized and easy-to-implement strategies

Smart but Scattered co-author, Peg Dawson, is coming to VT-HEC on February 2 & 3 to share her celebrated program on coaching for improvement of Executive Skills.  With co-author, Richard Guare, their books have covered the critical importance of Executive Skills for success in the 21^st Century for kids, tweens, teens and adults. They cover how to assess those skills and how to develop programs to improve them. Peg will be here for a two day workshop on how to coach improvement in executive skills with a follow-up course option where you can be coached on implementing their program by the author who wrote the books on coaching and executive skills.

What other have said of this work:

A unique and marvelous book that presents a coaching model for students with executive skills deficits including those that have ADHD. It is the most informative, practical guide available on the topic –  filled with strategies that can be readily implemented.  Russell A. Barkley, PhD, ABPP, Dept. of Psychiatry, Medical University of So. Carolina

If coaching kids with executive skills deficits were a football game, this would be the playbook.  It provides both theory and the details on how to implement a coaching program… synthesizes cutting-edge research on learning and the brain into an accessible approach. As a student of child development and the brain I strongly recommend it  Thomas (Lee) Reynolds MD,  psychatrist, North Canton

invaluable to teachers, counselors and school psychologists who work with students with executive skills deficits… provides constructive, step-by-step guidance on what it means to  have an executive skills deficit and how to implement an effective coaching program.  Peter Farrel, PhD CPsychol, FBPsS, University of Manchester, United Kingdom

for more information –  vthec.org