Raising Healthy Learners: Improving student health can reduce absenteeism, improve physical fitness and increase learning capacity.
The purpose of this course is to help teachers, staff, schools and communities self- assess and identify health programs, policies and criteria that promote student and staff health. Free, web-based curriculum integrating nutrition education and physical activity into the classroom routine will be researched. Academic and health enhancing school celebrations and fundraising events will be identified. Upon completion of this course, participants will have the knowledge and skills to develop School Health Teams, implement the School Health Index, and promote health literacy.
K-12
The Developing Brain
How many times have you confronted problematic behavior or a poorly constructed assignment from your students and wondered, "What were they thinking?" New science on the developing brain supports the conclusion that our students may not in fact approach that social situation or conceptualize that assignment in the same way that we adults would! Frontal lobe executive functions, particularly in the areas of inhibition and reflection, continue to develop through adolescence and provide the basis for greater self control and more mature reasoning and decision making. In this course, we will review current research on the developing brain and explore educational programs that can support further brain development. Because developmental neuroscience has been popularized by the press, we will emphasize separating brain fact from fiction in our exploration of sound educational practice.
K-12
Financial Literacy in the Classroom
Recent studies have shown that many teens and young adults struggle with personal finance issues and have never been taught basic skills in financial literacy. Without the training on aspects such as how to properly balance a checkbook or manage credit card debt, many young Americans start their adult lives with a very uncertain financial future. It is important that young people are exposed to all aspects of financial literacy, especially in the earlier years, so that we can ensure a healthy financial future for all Americans. We will explore ways in which all subject areas and grade levels can support the effort to make our students become responsible consumers. By using online resources such as The Council for Economic Education and The Federal Reserve Education, teachers will be provided with resources and instructional materials to utilize in their classrooms.
K-12
Food For Thought
This New York State Standards-based course will explore current issues in nutrition, including the latest research on obesity in America 's youth. Teachers will utilize the Internet to enhance and expand lessons on healthy eating habits and physical activity. Finally, the course will delve into the online information database through the USDA regarding the new food pyramid and develop a nutrition unit to use in the classroom.
6-8
The Four Literacies for Classrooms of Today and Tomorrow
Literacy has taken on many dimensions in recent years. Along with reading comprehension, literacy has crossed the curriculum with today's instruction coupled with today's technology. While the tenants remain the same, their application must be modeled in newer formats. This course will introduce textual literacy, numeric literacy, visual literacy, research literacy and their application for the emerging cross curricular multimedia classrooms.
K - 6
Sloan Course
Grantwriting for Educators: Effective Proposal Writing
The purpose of this online course is to demystify the proposal writing process by providing educators with a basic overview of how to write a proposal. It will examine the components of the standard proposal format as well as provide examples and feedback that will familiarize the writer with successful, narrative techniques. Although each individual grant may pose different requirements, the proposal itself contains the same basic components. The need statement, program design, timeline, budget, assessment, and executive summary will all be explained and exemplars will be evaluated. Each participant should have a class-critiqued, effective proposal completed by the end of the course.
K-12
Improving Proficiency in the Second Language Classroom
Do your students struggle to remember vocabulary words? Do they sometimes remember the words but are unable to use them meaningfully? Are you in search of effective ways to help improve your students' proficiency? This class is geared to facilitate the exchange of strategies to promote vocabulary acquisition. Participants will read and discuss literature on second language acquisition, be introduced to methods to help facilitate vocabulary learning, share strategies which have been successful in their respective classrooms, and, develop practical ways to implement strategies in their classrooms.
K-12
Improving Student Performance with Self-Esteem Raising Techniques
Teachers, you can make a difference in your classroom with awareness, responsibility and structures that support increasing the performance of your students. This course will explore how raising the self esteem of students helps to produce a well functioning learning environment that generates purpose and success. It will focus on the learning process, especially in situations where students have had repeated failures and don’t believe they can learn. With accents on how you can use differentiated instruction, brain theory and management styles; we will explore how self-esteem is the key to releasing empowerment, participation and development in students. Using fun activities this course will help you to identify attitudes, employ thinking out side of the box strategies and improve your classroom’s sense of community—by increasing attention on the whole student- their culture, character, innate abilities, and interests. The resources from this course will help establish a foundation of class pride and productivity. These strategies and activities will add the element of change in your classroom that everyone will be excited about.
2-12
MarcoPolo Field Trainer Training
This course will provide participants with the requisite knowledge and training skills necessary to use the New York State Education Department Virtual Learning System (VLS) and MarcoPoloNY resources aligned to the NYS standards, key ideas, and performance indicators. Participants will explore the MarcoPolo national website, the ArtsEdge, EconEdLinks, and Edsitement partner sites with their high quality lessons and resources.
K-12
The Mindful Classroom
With the increased standards and demands of our education system, as well as a faster-paced lifestyle, teachers and students are incurring greater stress. Stress has been proven to negatively affect concentration, behavior, performance and overall health. Therefore, it grows increasingly important for teachers to practice and model effective ways to prioritize and deal with stressors. In this course, teachers will learn mindfulness-based stress reduction techniques which will prevent stress, promote a calming atmosphere in the classroom and improve students' concentration. Students who are relaxed have been shown in studies to earn higher grades, get sick less, and have better behavior. Using mindfulness-based stress reduction techniques will enhance teachers' own job satisfaction and greatly improve their ability to manage the classroom and promote academic success.
K-12
On-Line Child Exploitation and Child Protection: Online and Offline
This course will provide a basic understanding of the problem, the signs of sexual exploitation, and a profile of the sexual predators as well as suggest ways to protect children.
K-12
Putting Character in Your Content: Integrating Character Education into Secondary Content Areas Using Internet Content for Classrooms
Participants will learn to effectively integrate character education into the content area curriculum, design and develop appropriate Internet-based instructional activities in their content areas, use the Internet to locate exemplary online resources and evaluate the validity/accuracy of these resources for a web-based project, apply technology resources to develop students' higher-order thinking skills, identify and use technology resources that affirm diversity, connect their classroom activities with situations and experiences in the outside world, think critically about character education issues and utilize Internet-based resources for addressing real world problems, and participate in meaningful communication within and outside of an electronic learning community.
K-12
Supporting Our Newest Teachers-
Mentoring Tools for Experienced Colleagues
Research indicates that one fifth of new teachers abandon the
profession after their first years in the classroom. High quality mentoring, provided by an
experienced colleague has been proven as a strategy to stop this exodus from occurring.
In this course, we will delve into the research base to determine what the needs of new
teachers are as well as how mentors can most effectively support those needs. In
addition, we will review and practice the art of interaction as a mentor- through coaching,
collaborating and consulting conferences. We will explore scenarios that require a
mentors’ intervention- and formulate a plan to most appropriately handle them. Finally,
each participant will develop a mentoring tool box of resources and strategies that they
can employ with their protégée’s. (The term “new teacher” for this course, implies
anyone new to your particular building or district. As experienced teachers move from
position to position, there is still a learning curve associated with acclimating to a new
district’s culture and routines. Mentors are equally as valuable in support of these
individuals as with inexperienced teachers.)
K-12
Sloan Course
The Co-Teaching Experience
This online course is for teachers who are interested in learning how to successfully co-teach in the classroom and understand co-teaching practices that lead to a successful collaboration. This course will teach you how to develop meaningful and appropriate lessons to help enhance and implement an effective co-teaching experience. This is a basic course and it is designed for teachers who want to have a more meaningful experience when working with their colleagues. During this course, we will also explore how technology can assist in promoting successful co-teaching experiences and how technology can be integrated into the co-teaching experience. The course will review the main concepts of co-teaching with reference to technology as a means of facilitating the co-teaching process.
