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 trainings 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 training for your staff for a nominal per-person fee. Register below.
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Winter/Spring 2020 Training
Strategies for Student Engagement (Grades 6-8)
Do you struggle to keep your middle schoolers engaged, focused and on task in activities? Students are undergoing complex physical, emotional and cognitive changes. For many youth, the middle school years are a wild ride, filled with insecurity, peer pressure, awkwardness and world-rocking transitions. Learn why these years are challenging for youth workers and educators as well as the kids themselves. Participants will explore the top five strategies for combatting middle school disengagement and keeping students on track.
Facilitator: Jacques Noisette
Math Games
Inserting math practice into ELT programming is often a struggle. In this training, educators will review the ways that Math Games provide engaging entry points for children to practice strong mathematical thinking. During this training, educators will review the value of math games, best practices for incorporating math games into their instruction and play a variety of games that can be brought into their program. This half-day training is designed to support educators working with students in grades 6-8.
Facilitator: Dan Levitt
Project-Based Learning
Are you seeking strategies to improve student engagement? Project-Based Learning is an educational strategy that reinforces and enriches classroom learning by structuring lessons in a way that reinforce a final project. Attendees will review the fundamentals of project-based learning and explore best practices as informed by research and program staff experiences, using a STEM experience as an exemplar. Participants will also discuss powerful ways to build support and align resources while connecting the planning process and project to academic content standards.
Facilitator: Fran Agnone
CS 101: Introduction to Creative Computing
Introduction to Creative Computing is the perfect starting point for introducing computation at your program-site. In this session, participants will be introduced to Computer Science fundamentals and 21st century skills by participating in computational thinking activities. Participants will use Scratch, a free visual programming language. Attendees will also be introduced to the Creative Computing curriculum and learn best practices in technology management.
Facilitator: Steve Roberts
Understanding and Supporting Multilingual Learners in the Afterschool Space (K-8)
How can you support Multilingual Learners (ELLs) in your afterschool program? Come learn about who Multilingual Learners are and how to meet their needs. This workshop will demystify some ideas about them and deepen your knowledge on best-practices that can be used to support their learning. You will leave this workshop with ideas for differentiated strategies and a resource packet to get started. This workshop is designed for everyone that works with multilingual learners and strongly recommended for staff in supervisory positions interested in creating a culturally-responsive classroom.
Facilitator: Adriana Oliveira
Classroom Management: Rituals Routines and Rewards
All great lessons rely on having as much time on task as possible. This session will focus on strategies 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: Dan Levitt
Trauma-Informed Care
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: Tarilyn Little
Growth Mindset
The way in which we think about our own brains and learning can have a huge impact on our future success. When students and educators have a growth mindset, they understand that intelligence is malleable. Students focus on improvement instead of worrying about how smart they are. They work hard to develop their abilities. Individuals who have a growth mindset are shown to make significant growth, year after year, in any field when compared to their peers who have a fixed mindset. During this session, participants will understand the growth mindset and its benefits. Additionally, they’ll walk away with resources and practice strategies for encouraging a growth mindset among their students.
Facilitator: Dan Levitt
Engineering Design Challenges
Looking for fun, hands-on STEM lessons 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 60 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! Note: These design challenge activities are intended for middle school students. However, some may be modified to serve a broader audience. Finally, these lessons are suitable for use during summer programming.
Facilitator: Katherine Rivera
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: Kody Melancon
Youth Services Refresher Webinar
In this webinar, 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
Character Building through Social Justice
The expanded day provides the perfect opportunity for supporting young people in developing character traits that will allow them to thrive. This is particularly important when the students we have the pleasure of working with are faced with a number of injustices that are not often discussed during the school day. In this workshop, you will gain the tools to support students’ character building process by providing examples of the many trailblazers and movements that have led to a more just society. Through these examples and activities, students gain actionable steps on their own character-building process through a lens of identity and empowerment.
Facilitator: Naa-Shorme Aidoo
Analyzing and Adapting STEM Lessons for Better Student Engagement
Looking to give your STEM lesson plans a boost? Excited to adapt or tweak lesson plans to better engage your participants? Join us for a workshop focused on learning how to adapt lessons to focus on building positive and equitable relationships with youth and fellow facilitators. Participants will explore how to update existing lesson plans and how to make relevant connections by encouraging youth voice within STEM activities.
Facilitator: Katherine Rivera and Fran Agnone
CS 201: Diving Deeper with Computer Science
In this session participants will dive deeper with CS activities by incorporating external hardware and programming. This workshop will provide hands-on training using MakeyMakey. Participants should be comfortable with Scratch and electronic devices.
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
STEM Support for Site Directors and Education Specialists
Wondering what you can do to support your staff charged with leading STEM activities? Feel like you already offer programmatic support to staff, but want to incorporate some STEM-specific coaching? Join us for this STEM support workshop! We’ll cover how to find STEM resources that can support your staff in implementing highly-engaging STEM activities. We’ll also talk about how to work with staff to prepare for successful STEM lessons, including planning time and logistical needs. Finally, we’ll focus on one of your most powerful tools as a supervisor: observation and coaching. How can you bring a STEM lens to the feedback and coaching you offer your staff?
Facilitator: Dan Levitt
Positive Communication with Youth
Learn the skills and strategies that can help you better communicate and get through to your students. This workshop is designed for participants to explore how communication directly affects student behavior and to warn against potential pitfalls. We will present tools and techniques to positively redirect negative behavior and will provide opportunities to practice reframing our language to be more impactful and effective.
Facilitator: Jacques Noisette
