Trainings for ExpandED Schools Partner Sites
ExpandED Schools provides engaging, effective professional development for schools and community organizations on the following topics:
- Program Quality Development
- Staff Fundamentals
- Social-Emotional Learning
- STEM
- Literacy
These training are intended for after-school program staff members — from front-line workers to supervisors of multiple ExpandED Schools programs serving elementary, middle and high schools. These workshops are offered at no charge to staff serving in our ExpandED Schools Partner Sites as a benefit of your involvement.
If your program is not currently an ExpandED Schools Partner Site, you can still access our trainings for your staff for a nominal per-person fee or through one of our professional development packages. Register below.
 | For technical assistance with ExpandED Schools trainings: |
Winter/Spring 2019 Training
Working with Students with Special Needs
What do you do when you find out a child in your program has an IEP or a paraprofessional during the school day? Activities in this workshop will cover brain differences, Individualized Education Plans (IEP’s), and the types of disability classifications. We’ll also practice making accommodations together so you can best support a child with special needs in your program.
Facilitator: Debbie Blas and Domingo Cruz
Youth Development 101: Ages and Stages
To effectively support and work with young people in after-school spaces, we must understand their needs. During this session, participants will explore factors that impact how youth develop, discuss physical, cognitive, emotional and psychological changes and needs at different stages and identify practices for supporting positive youth development in their programs.
Facilitator: Tarilyn Little
Relationship Building with Youth
The number, consistency, and intensity of positive relationships in young people’s lives are linked with a range of positive academic, social, and emotional outcomes. This workshop will evaluate the factors that lead to and best practices for nurturing sustainable, positive relationships with students. Using the Search Institute’s Developmental Relationships framework, participants will explore strategies for building, sustaining, and repairing relationships.
Facilitator: Marissa Badgley
Vocabulary Games
Vocabulary is a critical literacy skill for all students, and, luckily, it never has to be boring! Attend this workshop to learn how to teach and reinforce word learning through games. Participants will experience multiple vocabulary games for younger and older students, and by the end of the workshop will have designed a game for use in their program. Come to this workshop with a competitive spirit and your inner word nerd!
Facilitator: Rachel Roseberry
Trauma Informed Care and Self Awareness
Trauma can have different meanings for different people. What one person may see as a minor event may be a major trigger for another. After all, we only have our own set of experiences to draw upon to make judgments. Participants will deepen their understanding of the core concept of trauma and how it can impact one's brain and behavior. Participants will also learn how to identify, track, and properly address trauma with their students while also helping youth increase self-regulation. Participants will be encouraged to exercise empathy and self-awareness as they navigate through scientific and emotional examples of how trauma can affect a person
Facilitator: Debbie Blas
Engineering Design Challenges
Looking for fun, hands-on STEM projects that support middle schoolers in planning, building, and testing their own designs? Join ExpandED Schools for an exciting workshop exploring design-based learning, the engineering design process, and strategies to get kids moving, thinking and building during STEM activities in afterschool. Participants will leave with over 30 design challenge lesson plans that connect school-day science content with youth development practices, useful strategies to improve the quality of STEM instruction, and handy materials lists that make sourcing STEM supplies less challenging. Ready, set, engineer!
Facilitator: Emma Banay
CS 101: Introduction to Creative Computing
Thinking about introducing students to computer science? In this session, participants will gain baseline experience with computational concepts by participating in activities that use Scratch. Attendees will also be introduced to the Creative Computing Curriculum and receive introductory resources to begin building out their library.
Facilitator: Steve Roberts
Family Engagement
Engaging families is critical to the success of the students in your program! In this workshop, participants will learn strategies for meaningfully engaging families at their program site. Featured strategies will include creating a welcoming environment, building relationships with families, communicating with families through a family newsletter, and hosting family learning nights. Participants should expect to participate in a rich learning community and to leave with a variety of resources for increasing family engagement at their site.
Facilitator: Tarilyn Little
Supporting English Language Learners
Students who are learning the English language for the first time require focused language, literacy, and social-emotional support. In this workshop, participants will learn how to design a culturally-responsive classroom, how to differentiate activities to make them more accessible for ELLs, how to teach vocabulary, and how to engage students in creative storytelling and arts-based projects to build their language skills.
Facilitator: Rachel Roseberry
Classroom Management: Rituals, Routines, and Rewards
All great lessons rely on having as much time on task as possible. This session will focus on strate¬gies that help after-school educators maximize the amount of time their students spend on task. Participants will review strategies for effective directions, examine the importance of structure throughout the lesson and create routines to institute in their classrooms. Participants should expect to leave the session with plans to institute routines into at least two sections of their lessons and the skills to create new routines in the future.
Facilitator: Naa-Shorme Aidoo
Growth Mindset 201
This half-day workshop is intended for educators who already have a general understanding of growth mindset and are looking for ways to more intentionally infuse growth mindset strategies into their instruction. During this workshop, participants will explore how to frame lessons with growth mindset conversations, review intentional lessons designed to teach malleable intelligence, and create plans for growth-mindset-based goal setting.
Facilitator: Dan Levitt
Youth Services 101
In this half-day training, participants will learn about the YouthServices.net database management system used to collect enrollment/attendance data for internal/external review and research purposes. Attendees will learn to utilize the system functions, manage and interpret the data to make programmatic decisions, and discover ways to accurately reflect program schedules. This training will ultimately prepare users with the necessary skills to navigate efficiently through the system and manage their program data effectively.
Facilitator: Mark Herreros
CS 201: MakeyMakey
Already using Scratch to implement computer science with students? This session helps participants take the next step by incorporating the MakeyMakey, an external hardware prototyping component into their programming. *Interested participants should be comfortable with Scratch.
Facilitator: Steve Roberts
Behavior Management: Conflict Resolution and De-Escalation
Even with proactive and positive behavior management practices in place, conflict is bound to arise when working with youth. The ability to intervene in and resolve conflict effectively is critical to maintaining after school spaces that are physically, mentally and emotionally safe and empowering for youth participants. In this session, Youth Development Workers will explore the sources and stages of conflict cycles when working with youth, strategies for intervening in the cycle before it escalates and steps for de-escalation when a young person has reached a state of crisis. Youth Development Workers will also practice engaging youth in coaching conversations to foster problem-solving and self-regulation skills.
Facilitator: Tarilyn Little and Naa-Shorme Aidoo
