For Teachers
The core of our program focuses on teachers and staff. Teachers are exhausted. And when we are exhausted, we aren’t able to do our best work. The Empowered Classroom helps teachers become more aware of their own stressors, behaviors, triggers, and emotions as well as implement strategies to restore their energy, build trust, and create safe spaces for students, parents, and staff – even during the middle of a disruptive event in the classroom.
Psychological Safety Series: Creating the Conditions for Learning
DESCRIPTION:
This 3 part series is designed to build Psychological Safety in classrooms and amongst teachers to create a school culture centered around learning, high engagement, and wellbeing. Designed by teachers, for teachers, this series is full of quick and easy strategies that can be implemented in the classroom the very next day. The series includes:
1) Back-to-School Professional Development: Preparing for a Year of Psychological Safety – This full-day training helps teachers create an environment where it is safe to learn right from the first day of school! Starting with brain science and core components of Psychological Safety and ending with concrete strategies to implement in the first weeks of school, participants will walk away with a concrete plan for the start of the year.
HOW IT’S DELIVERED:
- Live
- 6 hours of content
OBJECTIVES:
- understand Psychological Safety and how it impacts the classroom culture and group learning
- identify key barriers to fostering Psychological Safety in their classrooms and implement behaviors to overcome those barriers
- implement a plan of specific strategies in the first few weeks of school that optimize a learning environment
- implement communication strategies
2) Empowering Your Classroom Training – This half-day training builds on the learning from the Back-to-School session, providing strategies around managing conflict in the classroom, developing rapport with difficult students, and most importantly, empowering student leaders. This is a working session designed to share several immediately actionable strategies in the classroom.
HOW IT’S DELIVERED:
- Live
- 3 hours of content
OBJECTIVES:
- implement communication strategies to maintain Psychological Safety
- manage classroom conflicts in a way that increases Psychological Safety
- better develop rapport with difficult students
- empower student leaders to promote Psychological Safety
3) Empowering Your Teachers Training: Psychologically Safe PLCs – This half-day training optimizes the learning environment for teachers. Both deepening the learning from the Back-to-School Professional Development and applying it to create a model that develops a learning community full of teachers empowered to learn, grow, try new things, and share their experiences with their colleagues!
HOW IT’S DELIVERED:
- Live
- 3 hours of content
OBJECTIVES:
- apply “frames” to their PLC meetings for increased learning
- increased individual safety around contributing to group learning
- engage more deeply in group learning with their peers
The Drama-Free Classroom
DESCRIPTION:
Reducing drama isn’t just about the big blow-up moments or changing what you do when things start to go wrong. It’s about the everyday moments: the small moments that make the biggest shifts. Everyday classroom drama comes from habits, the patterns that develop and the unconscious ways in which we relate to each other. This course will help teachers transform the daily challenges in the classroom.
HOW IT’S DELIVERED:
- Live or virtual
- 8 hours of content delivered based on your needs
OBJECTIVES: Teachers will…
- Develop awareness of their own and their students’ behavior habits and thinking patterns
- Identify the patterns that are keeping the drama cycle going
- Learn when and how to shift into “Creator Mode”
- Break the “Hero Habit”
- Increase self-awareness for themselves and their students
- Create healthy mental habits and patterns
- Increase their confidence and build resilience in themselves and their students
- Learn brand new tools to help get a perspective on the situations causing frustration and overwhelm
Mind of a Student
DESCRIPTION:
With a framework of bias training, understanding the brain science behind cognitive empathy, and student perspective gathering, this interactive learning experience will introduce your teachers to the tools and strategies they can take back with them into their classrooms that can help create the necessary breakthroughs with their students and each other.
HOW IT’S DELIVERED:
- Live or virtual
- 4-6 hours of content delivered based on your needs
OBJECTIVES: This course will equip teachers to…
- Understand how specific cognitive biases shape their classroom culture and how to leverage them with purpose
- Apply findings from neuroscience research to their relationships with students and management of the classroom
- Build cognitive empathy skills in themselves and their students
- All will leave with practical, science-based knowledge about their thinking patterns and a new, self-reflective mindset that will:
- Improve day-to-day interactions with students
- Encourage better conflict resolution
- Build school culture
- Improve teacher and staff retention
- Improve student participation, attendance and performance
- Change the way each team member sees themselves, their team and their students
The Empowered Classroom curriculum is designed to provide support for your entire school community.
For School Leaders
The Empowered Principal
DESCRIPTION:
Educating children is complex, at best! Today’s principals are often in uncharted territory – under pressure to perform at high levels while navigating a teacher shortage, mitigating the impact of the pandemic on children, and managing more and more complex behavior challenges, and dealing with unpredictable situations every day. Today’s principals need a new set of tools to lead effectively in this environment – their thinking must be more agile, their teams must be more collaborative, and their ideas must be more innovative than ever in order to thrive.
Empowered Principal is designed for current principals who are ready to take their school to the next level. It takes key concepts like navigating conflict, creating an economy of feedback, and communication and flips them on their head to match the demands of today’s world. It helps principals create the culture needed for everyone to learn at high levels in and out of the classroom, do their best work every day, and push for new, collaborative, and innovative solutions to problems.
Designed for flexibility, Empowered Principal is provided virtually over two periods of 4 months each (Empowered Principal I and Empowered Principal II) and includes videos, readings, and small group experiences. One-on-one coaching can be added and is recommended for deep implementation and application to each school’s unique situation.
HOW IT’S DELIVERED:
- Virtually over two periods of 4 months each (Empowered Principal I and Empowered Principal II) and includes videos, readings, and small group experiences
- One-on-one coaching can be added and is recommended for deep implementation and application to each school’s unique situation
For Families
The Empowered Family
DESCRIPTION:
Reducing drama isn’t just about the big blowup moments, or changing what you do when “bad things go down.” It’s about the everyday moments that happen, the small moments that make the biggest shifts. It’s not about lacking intelligence, abilities, or love. Everyday family drama comes from habits, in the patterns that develop, the unconscious ways in which we relate to each other. This course will help families to transform the daily challenges of home life, during and beyond this pandemic.
HOW IT’S DELIVERED:
- Asynchronous modules accessed by parents on their own time; or
- Facilitated by school staff through a series of parent learning nights (we supply you with a facilitator’s guide, worksheets, and videos)
OBJECTIVES: Families will…
- Develop awareness of their own and their children’s behavior habits and thinking patterns
- Identify the patterns that are keeping the drama cycle going
- Learn when and how to shift into “Creator Mode”
- Break the “Hero Habit”
- Increase self-awareness for themselves and their children
- Create healthy mental habits and patterns
- Increase their confidence and build resilience in themselves and their children
- Learn brand new tools to help get a perspective on the situations causing frustration and overwhelm
For Students
Path to Resilience
DESCRIPTION:
Aligned to the CASEL Framework, this course helps students understand failure from a neurobiological framework so they can observe how they make sense of failure and rewire their relationship with it.
HOW IT’S DELIVERED:
- Comprised of 6 modules, each including a 5-minute video and 20-30 minutes of activities that can be facilitated by your teachers
- Full facilitator guide is included
OBJECTIVES: Students will…
- Understand the term “resilience”
- Identify how resilient behaviors might be helpful in their own life
- Understand the brain science behind our threat and reward states
- Increase self-awareness of your behaviors and thinking in “above and below the line” states
- Increase self-management by understanding when you might apply “above the line” strategies in real-life scenarios
- Understand how the brain processes and uses failure
- Increase self-awareness and self-management during failure experiences
- Practice strategies to climb out of Fear Traps through self-management
- Understand “To Me” and “By Me” thinking and mindsets
Curious to learn more?
Schedule a consultation with Denise or Tara to find out how The Empowered Classroom can support your school community.
Funding
Rooted in research, our practical tools and strategies align with the standards developed by the National Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning (CASEL), centered around neuroscience, and based on adult development theory. The Empowered Classroom is aligned with several federal funding sources including: Title I, Part A—Improving Basic Programs; Title I, Part D—Prevention and Intervention Programs for Children and Youth Who Are Neglected, Delinquent, or At-Risk; Title II, Part A—Supporting Effective Instruction (Teacher Training and Teacher Retention); Title IV, Part A—Student Support and Academic Enrichment (SSAE) Grants; and Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief (ESSER) Funds I, II, and III.
About Thought Design
Thought Design is a one-of-a-kind experiential learning company. We combine our deep knowledge and experience in education, business and not-for-profit organizations with incredibly practical tools and structures to enable our clients to lead, work and thrive in our increasingly complex world. Drawing upon our training and experience in applied neuroscience, adult development theory, and organizational leadership, we create powerful learning experiences that result in deep, sustainable growth for people and organizations. Did we mention fun? Whether in our 4000 s.f. learning studio in Rockford, MI (which includes a gorgeous riverfront culinary space), at our client’s locations or in a virtual environment, we create unique, memorable opportunities for people to learn how to do their very best thinking. We believe that our world needs and deserves the very best thinking people can do.