Dear Principals & Teachers,
Dear
Schools,
Professional Development and In-Service Days
Targeted Teaching workshops have been presented at K-12 schools across the country and internationally, to rave reviews from participants and principals alike.
Most workshops are associated with optional parent and student extension workshops. For example, a workshop on teaching adolescents has an optional parent’s workshop, so that parents and the school can operate from a shared understanding. In addition, these workshops include an optional student extension, so that students can participate in a separate workshop that introduces them to the same skills. Dr. Koslowitz will frequently offer all three options at the same school, so that all stakeholders (teachers, parents, and students) can operate from a shared set of assumptions.
Topics include (but are not limited to):
Targeted Teaching: The SCIENCE of Teaching Adolescents
Targeted Teaching: Experimenting With Conflict
Targeted Teaching: Bravery Beyond Bullying
Targeted Teaching: Good Fences Make Good Neighbors
Targeted Teaching: Temperament Based Teaching
Targeted Teaching: The Four Most Common Diagnoses in the Elementary School Classroom
Targeted Teaching: Common Disorders of Adolescence
Targeted Teaching: The Disorganized/Distractible Child
Targeted Teaching: The Moody Child
Targeted Teaching: The Highly Reactive Child
Targeted Teaching: The Cautious Child
Focus on Friendship
Don’t Lose Your Marbles: Self-Regulation in the Elementary School Classroom
Professional Development and In-Service Days : Administrators
Workshop topics include (but are not limited to):
Engaging the Challenging Parent: The CARING Approach for Working with Stressed Systems
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- This 2 hour interactive workshop will help administrators work with challenging parents and stressed family systems. Some situations are so overwhelming, it feels like any intervention is trying to empty to ocean with a teacup. How can principals engage the parents of a family like this? Sometimes, the parents are hostile or completely apathetic. Frequently, they are so overwhelmed with other concerns, their children simply fall through the cracks. How can school administrators work with parents like this?
- The CARING approach focuses on six points of action: Connection, Assessment, Resourcing, Integration, Normalization, and Generation to gain compliance from these parents. We will first discuss the bio-psycho-social model for understanding child problem behavior. We will then focus on techniques for helping to create consensus with difficult parents, and how to co-opt their concerns so that they are on the same team as the school. Finally, we will work on including parents in collaborative assessment, response production, integrating the plan into the child’s day, normalizing the child’s needs and the school’s response, and generating a stable plan for the next steps.
Socially Effective and Effectively Social: Integrating Social and Emotional Learning Into the Curriculum
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- One of the most challenging areas that teachers and administrators face is dealing with the pre-curricular, hidden-curricular and non-curricular areas of children’s’ lives.
- Pre-curricular areas include things like executive functioning skills, time management, task planning, and remaining focused on the lesson.
- Hidden-curricular areas include social expectations, such as whole body listening, respect for authority, and conduct expectations.
- Non-curricular areas include social skills, nonverbal communication, conflict amongst peers, friendship, and bullying.
- Although these areas seem only tangentially related to the actual priority of educating children in curricular areas, these are also the areas that directly impact motivation and readiness to learn.
- By creating a school culture that emphasizes social and emotional learning and pro-social behavioral expectation, administrators can avoid many of these problems, distractions, and disciplinary incidents. In addition, educating children to practice emotional intelligence is the single greatest gift a school can bestow. Emotional intelligence can only be learned by enacting it and practicing it in the real world.
- One of the most challenging areas that teachers and administrators face is dealing with the pre-curricular, hidden-curricular and non-curricular areas of children’s’ lives.
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First Do No Harm: Crisis Intervention in the Schools
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- It’s no secret – we live in a much scarier world than we used to. Children today are growing up knowledgeable about so many frightening topics, from divorce to terrorist attacks. Information that used to be withheld from children is pervasive today. In some ways, this is a good thing – a family dealing with a terminally ill child doesn’t have to hide it – but in some ways, children are more insecure.
- If you are an administrator, eventually you will be dealing with a crisis situation. Either there will be a story that directly impacts children in your school – the death of a child’s parent, a car accident involving a child, etc, or children will come to school having heard about a devastating event, such as a terrorist attack.
- At the same time that there has been a seismic shift in children’s ability to access frightening information, there has also been a shift in parental attitudes and capabilities. Many young parents today don’t have the proper tools to help their children understand frightening events. Increasingly, this responsibility falls on the school. Research tells us that the initial impression children receive about frightening events will shape their ability to cope with adversity for the rest of their lives. Principals and school administrative personnel are on the front lines of shaping the narrative about these events. In addition, children who are directly affected by traumatic events require support and specific types of accommodations from the school administration.
How Can Targeted Parenting Classes Help The Students In Your School?
If you’re like most principals, you are working with a group of mothers who are sometimes misinformed about their children’s needs and how to help them. In particular, children who either have a mental health diagnosis, or are at-risk for developing one are challenging to parent. Wouldn’t it be nice if the mothers could get together and learn everything they need to know about their children in an efficient and effective manner? It can be frustrating and time-consuming to tell parents the same things over and over. Often, parents make similar mistakes, and don’t really take the school’s guidance until the situation is reaching unmanageable proportions.
Enter Targeted Parenting™.
Developed by Dr. Robyn Koslowitz during her fifteen year research and clinical career, Targeted Parenting™ classes exist specifically for issues like these.
Do Any of these Sound Familiar?
Below is just a sampling of the classes we offer. There’s also the Moody Child, the Bold Child, the Trauma Survivor Child…….and many more.
The Cautious Child
A shy second grader in desperate need of help, but her parents say she’s fine at home? A boy who is terrified when the teacher says anything “scary?”
Targeted Parenting™: The Cautious Child will help these mothers learn how to work with the school to help them, before therapy is indicated.
The Highly Reactive Child
An aggressive preschool child whose parents are convinced would not act up with a different teacher? A child who “freaks out” when anything doesn’t go her way?
Targeted Parenting™: The Highly Reactive Child will help these mothers learn to teach their Target Child to control his strong reactions and instinctive aggression, and will help her learn to work with, and not against, the school.
The Distractible Child
A disorganized/distractible fourth grader who is starting to lose friends because the other children get annoyed by the mess and his spaciness when he talks to them?
Targeted Parenting™: The Disorganized/Distractible Child helps parents create specific, structured plans to keep this type of child organized, teach him executive functions, and work collaboratively with the school.
The Socially Ineffective Child
The child who just doesn’t “get it.” The other children don’t like him or her, and the Socially Ineffective Child just doesn’t understand why. You don’t want to blame the victim, but this child does tend to alienate his or her peers. The parents blame the teacher, or the other children in the class.
Targeted Parenting™: Teaching Social Effectiveness helps parents understand the bases of social thinking and works on how to teach social skills at home and in collaboration with the school.
Confused about a thorny situation in your school?
Dr. Koslowitz offers in-person school consultative services.
Services include:
Helping to write socially, emotionally, and developmentally informed policies, rules and procedures
Helping teachers learn to deal with challenging or confusing situations in their classrooms
Mediation between parents and the school, helping to resolve any disagreement as to the best way for the school to support a particular child
School-wide social and emotional learning curriculum design, instructional support, and ongoing teacher mentoring