TMI-ENVISION: The Collection
TMI-ENVISION: The Collection
Professional and personal learning to ensure safe, healthy and equitable learning spaces.
The TMI-ENVISION Professional and Personal Development Collection is intended to enhance your ability to turn your desires into reality. We think of our collection as an integrated roadmap to create and maintain learning spaces where students feel - and - are safe, connected, supported and challenged. Each of the on-demand offerings contain the recursive threads of SEL, Equity and Healing Informed practices for Trauma. Take one, take two or take them all. Think of them as the vessel to hasten your journey to become the educator you are in your heart of hearts.
All of our TMI-ENVISION SEL Professional and Personal Development Collection programs are led by Sharon McCarthy, popular TMI-ENVISION SEL Specialist/Lead Consultant, ENVISION President dynamic presenter and author.
The TMI-ENVISION Collection on-demand programs can be purchased:
- individually for $19.99.
- as a full collection for the incredibly low introductory rate of only $49.95.
- customized organizational subscriptions are available - inquire today at Contact Us.
Don’t delay! Earn your first TMI-ENVISION certificate today!
The Collection
An Introduction to…Just School. Just Growth. The Path to Student Agency
We will see and make concrete connections among SEL, Trauma-Informed, and Equity, including the “sweet spot” for students and the intersections of the three strands. Having an integrated structure/approach can quell the feeling of overwhelm.
Participants will:
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Investigate the skills and dispositions inherent in the intersections of SEL, Trauma-Informed, and Equity
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Contemplate their contribution (current and future) to hasten the journey to equitable outcomes for each student.
Educational Equity: The Skills We Need NOW!
Educational equity implies that every student has access to the resources and educational rigor they need at the right moment in their education despite race, gender, sexual orientation, ethnicity, language, disability, family background, or family income.
Currently, many are coming to terms with the realization that our current and historical place of power, privilege, oppression, resistance, empowerment, and self-determination is raced, classed, aged and gendered. Our classrooms and schools are microcosms of this society writ large. As educators, we may not have the opportunity to make the changes at policy level that are necessary, but we sure as heck can make the changes that are necessary in our classrooms, once we know how!
This learning opportunity addresses the question: What would our class/school/world be like if we saw ourselves in each other? If this question calls to you, if you practice moral leadership, please join us!
- We will share, discuss and apply:
- Using Developmental Relationships to broaden our global lens
- Connecting student’s cultural assets and references to academic concepts and skills
- Employing curricula/activities that encourage student reflection on their own lives and society,
- Supporting student cultural competence by facilitating learning about their own and other cultures
- Creating classrooms to which folks want to belong!
If this is the path you’re on – we are here for you! We are a force moving in the right direction!
Leading Adult SEL
Question: How can we ask teachers to change their practice and incorporate SEL into their classrooms while their own SEL needs are ignored?
CASEL’s research is clear. Schools are more effective at teaching and reinforcing SEL for students when they also cultivate SEL competencies in adults. This calls on schools to focus on adults’ professional growth as educators, as well as their own social and emotional learning (Jones et al., 2018).
As educators, we are asked to be sensitive to the trauma our students face in the way of Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs). What about the adults? Many adults come complete with their own ACEs. This recognition requires us to be sensitive and supportive to the adults in the system as well.
We would love to have you join us to explore concrete ways that your school/district can provide supports that help teachers to support themselves as they promote students’ SEL competence.
You will leave this experiential session with the knowledge and skills to:
- guide a reflection for adults for personal SEL skills (Learn);
- incorporate three ways to integrate SEL into Staff meetings & PLCs/Dept meetings (Collaborate);
- set the tone for positive culture by Modeling SEL competencies and skills; and
- make a difference in your life, the life of your colleagues, and the life of your community.
Response-Ability: Understanding and Supporting Students with Social, Emotional, and Behavioral Challenges
As educators, most of us never tire of helping; we tire of feeling helpless. Many students, especially those who have experienced or are experiencing trauma, make other students’ rights to learn and a teacher’s right to teach difficult. Adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) can cause students to be reactive rather than reflective.
The most sensitive way to respond is to embed SEL into our RtI (I&RS) system. Those of us who have been committed to SEL for years know that it creates learning environments that are positive, safe, and productive for the development and success of the whole child. Frustratingly, we are also aware that not every student responds in positive ways. Even in schools where SEL has grown deep roots, there are still those students who need more (just like content).
Students receive extra help in academic areas to address a lagging skill. Similarly, students who exhibit challenging behaviors often have lagging SEL skills to be reinforced. This model has the student working with a caring adult in a developmental relationship to identify the lagging skill and then establish the goals and plan to guide the work to strengthen it.
Importantly, the student is in charge of doing the change work, while the educator is in the role of a coach.
This session of practical solutions provides targeted, evidence-based behavioral supports for these students. There will be suggestions for every level of RTI (I&RS). General classroom practices; Level 2 intervention for students who need extra SEL support; and Level 3 support for those students who need intensive behavioral support.
Participate in this exciting, results-oriented session to learn and share:
- Response-Able requirements
- How brain and body respond to stress and how to mitigate
- Build on Strengths (Healing-informed practice)
- Cultivate developmental relationships of healing
- Identify emotions triggers
- Plan for emotional triggers
SEL and Executive Function: A Deep Dive into Self-Management and Responsible Decision-making
Self-control is a strong indicator of future success, regardless of intelligence or social status. As educators, we cannot control our students’ SES or IQ but we do have the ability to affect their self-control. However, just telling kids to control themselves or punishing them when they don’t, does NOT lead to increased executive function.
All research shows that children who displayed greater levels of self-control were more likely to have better health, greater financial success, and more. If you think these indicators are important, please make an investment in this session. You and your team will learn several strategies that can be shared with the rest of your staff tomorrow!
This session is mandatory for all those who know that SEL is no longer “soft skills,” but an absolute must for success from the PARCC to post-secondary pursuits. School safety teams have stated that this is one of the most relevant workshops they have attended.
In this session you will:
- five concrete, reproducible interventions for increasing neural activity and connections in the pre-frontal cortex (where executive function lives);
- protocols for successful and productive group and center work; and
- tools (digital and paper) for organization and task completion.
Self-Care and Mental Health for Educators
Mindfulness/stress management strategies and interventions can help teachers develop coping and awareness skills to reduce anxiety, depression, and improved health. Recent research from the Curry School of Education, U of VA suggest that we expand our focus when considering effective professional development. In a study of of 234 teachers, representing K-12, they found that “teachers who regularly use stress-reducing strategies increase their abilities to cope with the demands of the career and are positioned to do a better job educating students” (Breen, 2016). These findings strongly suggest that by prioritizing an educator’s social-emotional learning helps him or her to be there to participate in school wide SEL practices. If you find yourself thinking it is counterintuitive to ask a professional to give so much and then to provide only professional development and not personal development (through the lens of SEL) you’re with us!
In this session you will:
- mindfulness/stress reduction practices to promote self-regulation of attention;
- non-judgmental awareness;
- how to develop a personal mindfulness practice (which is necessary to be a mindful teacher which is necessary to teach mindfulness!); and
- how to maximize the space between stimulus and response.
Mental Health: Staying Focused Under Pressure
We all did the best we could, living and learning throughout these uniquely challenging years. Most of us felt semi-paralyzed at some point(s). Not surprisingly, when we are under immense, prolonged pressure, “We don’t rise to the level of our expectations, we fall to the last level of training.” – Archilochus
Working/Living under pressure is never easy – no matter how tough or well-experienced one may be. Mastering the art of staying focused (resilience) will help one get through difficult situations.
This session explores seven ways to remain focused, even when chaos is the order of the day (or year!). Come for yourself – leave with strategies for your students and family as well:
- Control your schedule, so it doesn’t control you (and get more dopamine)
- Protocols for self-forgiveness
- Identify and employ strengths
- Ask for support (can be a life or death skill)
- Stay present
Conflict Resolution: A Deep Dive into Relationship Skills & Responsible Decision Making
Conflict is a natural part of life. When we learn and practice conflict resolution, we become better problem solvers.
A rather lofty goal of this learning opportunity is the normalization of conflict. Currently, students often learn that engaging in conflict leads to punishment. Learning to approach conflict as a healthy opportunity for growth and actively developing the necessary skillset is far more productive than punishing students for engaging in conflict or seeking to avoid or escape conflict. This shift in practice is a necessary focus of school safety teams committed to establishing and maintaining a culture of equity and excellence.
Educators who value social justice establish schools that reduce exclusionary practices and foster positive social and emotional learning for students. (PSEL #3) Conflict resolution is an antidote to bullying. Many students express that they are frustrated with the amount of attention being placed on the negative behaviors, instead of teaching students ways in which they could deal with those behaviors. And…when we listen to the negative behaviors, instead of teaching students ways in which they could deal with those behaviors. And…when we listen to our students, they will tell you, “Kindness is the key for safer schools.”
This session addresses NJDOE SEL sub-competencies, as well as the NJ Career Ready Practices. Attend this session to:
- Strategize how to tap into the “parts” of students that are empowering to support the “parts” that aren’t. (Strength-based)
- Consider communication styles
- Practice listening
- Review the concepts of conflict resolution
- Practice a problem-solving process
- Use a conflict resolution model
- Practice the language of respect
Teaching & Learning are Logical: Neuro-Logical!
Your brain is your most important tool! Your students’ brains are their most important tool! We have always known that, but how much have we truly recognized it?! We believe that having a basic understanding of the biological processes underlying the way we think, learn, and make decisions should be considered mandatory.
Neuroeducation is at the juncture of education, cognitive psychology and cognitive neuroscience. It is at this point where we adopt a “whole child” approach that ensures each student is healthy, safe, engaged, supported and challenged. Appreciating students through the lens of neurodevelopment is step one toward creating communities that value equity and social justice.
If you have a curious mind, want to understand the intricacies of the human mind and have missed thinking about thinking and learning about learning this PD session is for YOU. We will use the concepts of Neuroeducation to answer the questions, “How does the brain learn, and, importantly, how can we use this information in a way that elicits the maximum potential of each student?” This session will create a space to ask questions, start important discussions and grow your dendrites.
Through experiential learning, participants will learn how to apply:
- The learning structures of the brain that impact student learning & engagement and how to hack them
- Brain-based strategies to sustain attention, control focus, and direct input to the thinking brain
- Mental models that connect the concrete to the abstract
- Concrete ways to keep the “gate” of learning open
- Activities that help students relax in order to improve alertness
- Protocols of organization to ensure student success in the student-led classroom
- Cognitive structures necessary to formulate rules that make processing automatic
The culminating activity will be to identify a challenging lesson (where students typically have difficulty with attentive focus and or memory) and “tweak” it, using the brain-based strategies shared that day.
Just School. Just Growth: The Path to Student Agency - Intersection of SEL & Trauma: Healing Relationships for Resilience
Why?: Children in every community are carrying trauma caused by the health and political events of the past 16 months and a successful academic recovery can only happen when the emotional and mental health needs of students and educators are taken care of.
Folks who have experienced trauma, violence, or chronic stress struggle to regulate their emotions. They are more likely to be stressed or upset due to emotional dis-regulation. Due to their brain chemistry, when someone who has experienced trauma becomes stressed or upset, they are unable to de-escalate at a typical rate, which then causes more problems (Van der Kolk, 2014).
Add Van der Kolk’s assessment to the fact that schools have academic and behavioral expectations that can be very difficult, even impossible to meet for a child who has experienced trauma and you have the recipe for lack of success in students and burn out in educators.
Solution: In this session, we practice what it takes to create a safe and reliable environment where students who have experienced adversities and trauma feel supported, are welcome to explore their strengths and identities, exercise their agency, and can develop meaningful, positive relationships with adults and peers in their learning community. This is a non-negotiable for this school year.
Participants can expect to acquire the knowledge, skills and dispositions to:
- Recognize trauma and respond skillfully
- Become familiar with biology of stress (Response-Able)
- Discover and utilize a student’s strengths to foster resilience
- Create developmental relationships
- Identify emotional triggers and make a plan (Respond rather than react)
Just School. Just Growth: The Path to Student Agency – Intersection of Trauma & Equity: Activism & Action is Empowering
Why?: Inequity in school can cause or worsen trauma. Additionally, many classroom/school practices cause inequities for students who struggle with the impact of trauma. Scholars emphasize that the structural inequality in schools seldom leads to contexts where students have agency (Donnor & Shockly, 2010). Agency is not an isolated action where students exist in a vacuum, rather, agency is co-constructed in communities of practice (Lave & Wenger, 1991) as students adopt various identities in complex social situations and experiences. Think of a typical learning space – what internalized identities are being adopted by marginalized populations?
Solution: Our focus here is to create spaces in which folks can adapt and heal, thereby strengthening resilience. As Learning spaces adopt healing-informed practices and experiences that allow for students to share their voice, histories, cultural identities, experiences, languages, and interests, learning and change accelerates rapidly. Racism and inequity are integral aspects of historic trauma and have intergenerational consequences. Our classrooms need to change our response patterns personally and systemically – using practices for healing-informed care. Trauma is a lens, not a label. Healing -informed practices should fix learning spaces, not kids! True trauma-informed education is anti-racist and against all forms of oppression. Building true resilience requires equitable learning learning spaces – Teaching marginalized groups to be resilient in the face of discrimination isn’t equity. Ending discrimination is.
Participants can expect to acquire the knowledge, skills and dispositions to:
- Establish common language of trauma-informed & equity
- Build critical consciousness in students
- Collect relevant data and its accompanying narrative (data is only numbers)
- Understand & practice restorative practices rather than punitive practices
- Consider distinctions of Equity – CRE; Social Justice Standards; Multicultural Education
Just School. Just Growth: The Path to Student Agency – Intersection of SEL & Equity: Close Opportunity Gaps
Why?: SEL is only successful in systems where Equity is valued and present. Equity is only possible when compassionate members of the system check their power, privilege and implicit bias, which is accomplished through the SEL competencies and sub-competencies.
Solution: The promise emerging out of the chaos is our deep understanding that All learning is social and emotional. And, importantly, that all learning is mediated by relationships that occur in schools – which is a socio-political, racialized context for EACH child, not just those who are black and brown, of differing cultures, religions, sexual orientations, or cognitive ability. SEL are cognitive skills that, in an equitable and just space, foster student agency by requiring students to make decisions in the face of perceived obstacles as well as having an understanding of themselves in terms of their wants and strengths that create optimal learning opportunities.
Participants can expect to acquire the knowledge, skills, and dispositions to:
- reflect on Adult SEL competencies to examine one’s power/privilege and implicit biases;
- use SEL approaches to draw out and build on student assets to facilitate understanding and learning;
- explore the concept of culturally relevant education (CRE) by strengthening students’ sense of identity & promoting equity and inclusivity in the classroom;
- learn about the neuroscience of learning; those signals that trigger a “threat” response as well as strategies explicitly designed to decrease stress and generate a sense of calm and well-being; and
- make normal the practice of speaking about race and understanding events and experiences through the lens of race, culture and power.