SEMINARS

Workshops for Teachers, Paraprofessionals, Early Child Care Staff and Administrators

Respectful Discipline
Motivating the Unmotivated
I Am Not Waving, I Am Drowning (RTI)
The Angry Smile (Passive Agressive Behaviors)
Kids Pushing Your Buttons?
Classroom Management – Back to Basics
Life Space Crisis Intervention
Dealing with Difficult Parents
Dealing With Conflict And Difficult People

Workshops for Parents

Developing Healthy Self-Esteem in Children
Respectful Discipline for Parents
Constructive Criticism…Is there such a thing?
Homework Without Tears
Helping Students Deal With Angry Feelings

Student Assemblies

Check Up From The Neck Up
How to Handle Teasing
Own Your Anger

RESPECTFUL DISCIPLINE

This seminar provides teachers with tools, insights and encouragement which will empower them to create a safe learning environment. It is filled with concrete, proven-effective techniques and ready-to-use tools for managing all classroom behavior. Teachers will learn specific and realistic strategies for setting up a prevention-based discipline system that is designed to head off most challenging discipline problems before they develop.

Respectful Discipline is for classroom teachers of all grade levels. It is organized and contains many practical examples. The goal is to maximize teaching time and minimize time spent disciplining. Society has changed and so have the youth we work with in schools. Our jobs as teachers have become increasingly more difficult as students’ behaviors are more demanding than ever. There is not any one approach that will work for all students all the time. Therefore, the goal of this workshop is to provide teachers with a variety of tools so they are equipped to handle a variety of different students with different behaviors. My goal is to help teachers become proactive in the classroom rather than reactive. Educators will leave this workshop with new tools, sharpened old tools, and renewed enthusiasm for teaching. Spend more time teaching, less time disciplining.

TOPICS COVERED:

• Practical approaches to help students become accountable and responsible for their own behavior
• Proactive ideas to avoid potential discipline problems
• Practical strategies to create a calm, respectful classroom atmosphere
• Staying calm, cool and collected while working with a disrespectful student
• Identify your response style
• Skills to avoid turning conversations into arguments
• Alternatives to yelling
• Techniques to address attention seekers and power students
• Using encouragement to inspire students
• Learn to handle students’ manipulation techniques
• Understand the difference between interventions and consequences
• Implementing consequences
• Framing choices
• Dealing with, “It’s not fair!”

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Motivating the Unmotivated

Are you tired of disrespectful, irresponsible behaviors from your students? Are you seeing an increase of apathetic, unresponsive acts? Are you noticing too many bored expressions and a lack of initiative, motivation and follow-through? Are you fed up with students acting, talking and thinking like victims without taking responsibility for their own behaviors? If so, this seminar is for you!
THERE IS HOPE AND THERE ARE SOLUTIONS! You will learn how to move your most challenging students from defiance and noncompliance to productive and engaged learners. You’ll learn strategies to help your students increase their respectful, responsible behaviors and you’ll come away with strategies to successfully deal with the negative behavior you wish to eliminate when it does occur.

MaryAnn will share successful techniques and teaching strategies to utilize with hard‑to‑reach students to motivate them to succeed in school. You will learn a wide variety of proven strategies to prevent power struggles, increase self-motivation and help students build positive and productive relationships.
Topics include:

• Help students own their behaviors rather than disown them with excuses and blaming
• Ways to develop a desire for achievement
• How to deal with a student who says, “I don’t care”
• Techniques for eliminating learned helplessness
• Respond effectively to “I can’t” language and actions
• What to say and what not to say to unmotivated, underachieving students
• Strategies for building connectedness and feelings of belonging in your classroom
• How to build a trusting relationship with challenging students
• Identify the underlying issues
• Learn to hear the real meaning behind the words/behavior
• Discover how mindsets helps and hurts us and our students

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The Angry Smile

The Angry Smile workshop is designed for anyone who lives, works, or interacts with a passive aggressive student and wants to better understand and manage the often-troubling dynamics.

Do you work with a student who:

• Denies or represses feeling of anger
• Withdraws or sulks
• Procrastinates or carries out tasks inefficiently
• Is quielty manipuliative and controlling
• Makes endless promises to change

The Angry Smile takes an in-depth look at the roots of passive aggressive behavior in children, exploring masked anger at five distinct and increasingly pathological levels. The course features the Passive Aggressive Conflict Cycle as well as eight specific skills that professionals (and anyone interacting with a passive aggressive person) can use to respond effectively to the troubling behavior.

The Angry Smile workshop trains participants in a six-step process for confronting and changing passive aggressive behaviors in the long-term, using extensive discussion, video examples, and role play.

I Am Not Waving, I Am Drowning!

80 % of classroom problems are caused by 10 % of students who challenge and undermine teacher authority. This seminar will address RTI tier three behaviors. A small percentage of students generally does not respond to either schoolwide or targeted prevention and intervention efforts. Due to trauma,these are usually students who experience severe or chronic problem behavior that regularly affects the ability to learn in a school environment, both their own learning and that of their peers. Students at the intensive level generally require a great deal of time, energy and skill. This seminar aims to go beyond management skills and deep into therapeutic skills in the hope to make lasting change.

• The impact of chronic stress and traumatic events in the lives of young people
• The brain’s role in driving repetitive and predictable patterns of self-defeating behavior
• Helping kids bring language to emotion and gain insight into their thoughts, feelings, and behaviors.
• Staying calm, cool and collected while working with a disrespectful student
• How to deal with insults from students
• Step out of the Conflict Cycle
• Effective defusing and listening skills
• The six most common patterns of self-defeating behavior
• How to conduct a complete Red Flag reclaiming intervention
• How to keep a positive attitude while working with defiant students

Dealing with Difficult Parents

Classroom teachers have discovered that not only do they need classroom management skills, they also need parent management skills to survive in teaching. A majority of parents are supportive, helpful and realistic, but there are a few that can be unreasonably demanding and even threatening toward teachers.

No single strategy will work for all situations. Dealing with Difficult Parents will provide you with an array of strategies that are proven to be successful; it will help you work with the challenging parents in challenging situations. It will provide you skills to disarm parents’ emotionally charged behavior.

This seminar is designed to provide you with a wealth of strategies for working with difficult parents in challenging situations. The focus will be on improving your ability to get your message across to passive, defensive and angry parents. MaryAnn will give you tried and true techniques for dealing with confrontational, explosive parents in ways that diffuse conflict and move parents to more cooperative relationships. You will also receive dozens of practical tips for conducting effective parent conferences with challenging parents.
LEARN WAYS TO:

• Establish and maintain positive communication with parents
• Identify parent and teacher road blocks
• Make phone calls that stop problems before they get worse
• Plan and conduct effective parent conferences
• Diffuse opposition through listening
• Disarm criticism
• Use accurate documentation
• Diffuse confrontational situations

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Kids Pushing Your Buttons?

It is difficult to learn or teach when you are feeling angry. When students  and teachers are unable to appropriately deal with their anger and the circumstances that caused it, they become victims and are controlled by the people or situations that made them angry. They do not take responsibility for their actions and never really discover what is truly under their angry feelings. The goal of this workshop is to empower students  and staff to manage their anger and resolve conflicts so they can be successful.

Most teachers are irritated by the behavior of select, challenging students. This is to be expected. Few teachers are trained to understand and acknowledge these normal counter-aggressive feelings. Problems develop when competent teachers stay angry at a student. When a conflict develops, teachers are less likely to perceive accurately, think clearly, and reason coherently. Though competent teachers rarely initiate conflicts with students, they often keep them alive though their unintended, counter-productive reactions.

This seminar will look at:

• Preventing counger-aggression and conflict in the classroom
• What is under feelings the anger
• Four of the most common reasons that teachers become counter-aggressive with select students
• How to manage your angry feelings
• The  anger communication cycle
• How to listen to your student’s angry feelings
• Specific skills to manage conflict in the classroom.

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Life Space Crisis Intervention

Turn crisis situations into learning opportunities for students with chronic patterns of self-defeating behaviors. LSCI views problems or stressful incidents as opportunities for learning, growth, insight, and change. This non-physical intervention program uses a multi-theoretical approach to behavior management and problem solving. LSCI provides staff a roadmap through conflict to desired outcomes using crisis as an opportunity to teach and create positive relationships with youth. LSCI is designed by Dr. Nicholas Long and based on the work of Fritz Redl, LSCI is designed to help create lasting behavioral change.

Learn what to do when a youth:

This is a 40-hour course in which you may receive graduate credit, in-service credit, or CEU.

WHO SHOULD ATTEND?

School Counselors, Psychologists, Regular and Special Education teachers, mental health staff, Administrators and Crisis Support Staff.

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Classroom Management – Back to Basics

The goal of the seminar is to demonstrate how to set up a win-win classroom environment where both students and teachers can get their needs met. This seminar provides realistic suggestions for effectively managing a classroom, and is filled with a wealth of powerful tools for teachers to use immediately. This seminar is an enjoyable mixture of insights, humor, stories and strategies. Perfect for new teachers!
TOPICS COVERED:

• How to start the first day
• Teambuilding activities
• Procedures and directions
• How to design and teach classroom rules
• How to cut down on transition time
• Documentation
• Class wide rewards vs. individual rewards
• Interventions/behavior tracking systems

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Developing Healthy Self-Esteem in Children

Most people can think of things they’d like to change about the way they were raised. You can change them now, for yourself and your children. Children are a reflection of their parents and low self-esteem can be unintentionally passed down to children. When parents learn to value themselves, they will be better able to value their children and give them the strength to cope with challenges of life.

Healthy self-esteem refers to realistic and accurate appraisal of oneself across a variety of interpersonal situations, including the ability to cope with negative feedback. Unhealthy self-esteem, as in narcissism, refers to insensitivity to others with excessive preoccupation with oneself and one’s own image in the eyes of others. What we want is for children to achieve optimum self-esteem.

We want our children to grow up be independent, productive, caring, contributing members of society. This takes more than gratuitous praise to accomplish. Your child’s inner picture is the framework that determines how he/she treats himself/herself and others. How does your child see himself/herself? This seminar will help you become aware of the subtle and not so subtle ways adults can influence a child’s self esteem.
TOPICS DISCUSSED:

• Respecting and accepting yourself and others
• What is self-esteem and why is it important?
• How is self-esteem developed?
• Concrete ways to explain self-esteem to children
• The effects of joking and labeling
• Teaching/giving children responsibility

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Respectful Discipline For Parents

Misbehavior has a natural place in a child’s life. It is the way he/she learns about the world. Once parents realize that their child’s misbehavior is healthy and purposeful, they can approach discipline as a teaching process rather than a punishing one.

Are your children’s arguments and fights driving you crazy? Do you have a strong-willed child? Are you feeling exhausted, frustrated, or angry with problem behaviors such as teasing, tattling, back-talk, sassy talk, temper tantrums, or refusal to do chores?

This workshop will teach you key principles that will help you control your reactions to your child’s behaviors. It will provide you with skills to be more effective in disciplining and teaching your child. The goal is to raise self-confident, well-behaved children.

TOPICS DISCUSSED:

• Why children misbehave
• How to be proactive rather than reactive
• Parents response styles (passive, hostile, calm)
• Kindness and firmness
• Positive time out
• Guidelines for consequences
• Common manipulations
• Importance of encouragement

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Constructive Criticism… Is There Such A Thing?

Many of us grew up being told that we did wrong, not what we did right. We often treat our children the way we were treated, continuing a destructive pattern that breeds resentment and misbehavior. This seminar provides you with strategies to address your child’s behavior while keeping his/her confidence and self-esteem intact.

Do your words get the results you want? Without realizing it many adults destroy a child’s creativity and confidence through criticism. Their intent is to help or correct, but the result is resentment and failure. Criticism becomes so habitual that many adults are virtually unaware they are doing it. This seminar will give you more effective ways to criticize without shaming or blaming.
TOPICS DISCUSSED:

• The purpose of criticism
• The long term results of destructive criticism
• Three steps to handling destructive criticism from your parents
• Guidelines to giving constructive criticism
• How to listen to your child’s concerns
• Hearing the real meaning behind the message
• Expressing your concerns so they can be heard and acted upon

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Homework Without Tears

If you are exhausted from the long nightly battles with your child about doing homework then this workshop is for you. Learn how to get your child to spend less time arguing about homework and more time doing it. Homework Without Tears for parents offers simple, practical ideas so that parents can effectively improve their children’s motivation regarding homework.
TOPICS COVERED:

• How to stop the arguing over homework
• How to motivate your child to do their best work
• How to get homework completed on time
• Setting up a proper study area
• What to do with “speeders and forgetters”
• Long range assignments

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Helping Students Deal With Angry Feelings

It is difficult to listen, learn or love when you are feeling angry. When children are unable to appropriately deal with their anger and the circumstances that caused it, they become victims and are controlled by the people or situation that made them angry. They do not take responsibility for their actions and never really discover what is truly under their angry feelings. The goal of this workshop is to empower children to manage their anger and resolve conflicts so they can succeed in personal relationships and in school.
TOPICS DISCUSSED:

• How self-esteem and stress affect the way you deal with anger
• Facts about anger
• What is under feeling the anger?
• Your bodies reaction to anger
• How to deal with your angry feelings
• The cycle of anger communication
• How to listen to your child’s angry feelings
• How to get you needs met without anger

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A Check Up From the Neck Up

With increasing self-esteem comes improvement in academic performance which, in turn, enhances self-esteem. Further, above-average levels of self-esteem are associated positively with better adjustment, more independence, less defensive and deviant behavior, and greater social effectiveness and acceptance of others. A healthy self-esteem motivates kids to be outgoing, and to act in their own best interest in school and with friends, while an unhealthy self-esteem often leads to self-destructive behavior, lower grades and loss of friendships.

How do you raise self-esteem?

Students can start by changing the negative self-talk in their head. This program will help students take control of that inner voice and learn realistic strategies for improving self-esteem.
TOPICS DISCUSSED:

• What is self-esteem? Why is it important?
• How big is your I.A.L.A.C.* sign?
• How does Stinkin’ Thinkin’ affect your:
• Energy Level
• School work
• Friendships
• Success

For grades 2- 5

45- 50 minutes

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How to Handle Teasing

Sticks and stones can break my bones, but words will break my heart.

Parents and teachers spend a great deal of time dealing with the issue of teasing. Adults often tell children to just ignore the teasing. This is hard for a child to do because they do not feel that they stood up for themselves. This seminar will provide new ideas on how to handle teasing. The techniques taught will empower children to handle teasing on their own and be able to walk away with their self-esteem intact.
TOPICS DISCUSSED:

• How does Stinkin’Thinkin’ affect your response to teasing
• Why do kids tease?
• Who has your remote control? **
• “Comebacks” to teasing that are not hurtful
• Stay cool under fire

This assembly is the follow-up to Checkup from Neck Up. Remote control – represents the self-control we have over our emotions and not letting others “push our buttons”.
Time: 45 minutes
Grade: 2-5

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Own Your Anger

My Life is in the hands of any fool who ‘makes’ me lose my temper. – J Hunter

Poorly handled anger can undermine self-esteem and lead to feeling powerless. This assembly helps students differentiate between angry feelings and angry behavior. Students realize that they are responsible for their own anger and how they choose to react is up to them. This workshop provides specific techniques for identifying the source of their anger and mastering anger-management skills that can lead to better relationships.
TOPICS DISCUSSED:

• What is anger?
• Why you get angry
• Your body’s response to anger
• A variety of strategies to “cool off”
• How to control your anger
• Stinkin’ Thinkin’ and anger
• Displaced anger
• Discover what is really under your anger

Time: 45 minutes
Grade: 3-12

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Dealing With Conflict and Difficult People

Content coming soon.

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