Leadership and Character Development Network
- 20 days
- $15,000
- Annual Service Contract (ASC)
Nurturing Positive Character Traits and Personal Skills in Texas Schools
Positive character traits and personal skills are essential to developing a Whole Person Framework for schools. Teaching TEKS including positive character traits and personal skills is mandated in Texas. Schools have been challenged to find curriculum and to provide aligned knowledge and skills. When districts have decided on a curriculum, it is difficult to delineate universal student standards for these knowledge and skills.
The ESC Region 13 Whole Person Framework includes professional development opportunities designed to help your school support, measure, and improve instruction in the area of Leadership and Character Development (LCD).
Fostering Effective Learning and Development
Using the CASEL based competencies, professionals from ESC Region 13 can help create comprehensive, measurable, and intentional LCD by unpacking the TEKS, creating culturally responsive student standards, and accountability measures to ensure strong delivery of knowledge and skills aligned to the Effective Schools Framework levers 3, 4, and 5.
This professional development opportunity will include an individualized scope and sequence aligned to the districts’ choice of curriculum, unpacking of the TEKS with lesson planning to ensure fidelity in delivery of the curriculum, and evaluation tools.
Professional Development Opportunities
5 Professional Development Opportunities can be accessed as a complete network at a discounted price, or each session may be accessed individually. In these sessions, all 5 CASEL competencies are developed through pragmatic school-based strategies. The Schools of Thought: Leadership and Character Development Network sessions for the 2023-2024 school year are:
School Wide Behavior Builder: Leadership and Character Development Network9/13/23 9AM-12PM There is a secret formula to improving student behavior, and it is not a secret. It is actually an accessible, skill based, culturally responsive approach to creating systems and common language around expected routines and procedures. In this learning experience, we will explore the CASEL competencies of social awareness and self-management. We will learn how to create school wide structures with clearly defined roles and responsibilities. For each component of the training, we will emphasize the importance of practice-based skill building, see models of practice, and delineate the strengths in each model so that we can replicate the practice on our campuses. |
Engaging Every Learner: Leadership and Character Development Network10/11/23 9AM-12PM The student-centered instructional strategies in this Leadership and Character Development session help schools to build the most effective environment for learners, teachers, families and the entire school community. Many learners have experienced unprecedented levels of autonomy in behavioral expectations, academic learning, and time management. School personnel must create engaging environments, steeped in purpose and belonging, with the ultimate goal of building self-efficacy in academics, social competencies, and self-regulation. Are our current structures addressing student apathy, teacher attrition, or change management? Learn how to use data analysis to individualize student services. Create space for stakeholder voices to be heard and for powerful self-narratives to be created and shared. Learn how leadership is indispensable in producing learners who are global citizens ready for the college, career, military, or trade challenges of the future. |
Critical Thinking 101: Leadership and Character Development Network11/15/23 9AM-12PMHow might we create classrooms of consequence? A classroom of consequence means our students learn academic and social skills to make a difference in the quality of the lives they will live and the world they will lead. Critical thinking is an essential component of a classroom of consequence. Classrooms imbued with critical thinking teach civil discourse, empathic listening, frustration tolerance, problem-solving, and mental flexibility. The strategies we discuss in the LCDN will build the skills needed to be assessment-capable learners, self-directed thinkers, and empowered scholars. |
Behavior Management: Skill not Will: Leadership and Character Development Network01/17/24 9AM-12PM Are you trapped in the “treasure box”? Historically, our paradigm for behavior management at school has assumed students who are punished or rewarded enough will change behavior. Dr. Stewart Ablon and Dr. Ross Greene (2012) have changed the paradigm of student behavior. This new thinking emphasizes skill not will. They say if a student has skills to improve frustration tolerance, mental flexibility, and problem solving, they are able to increase pro-social behavior. Participants in this workshop will learn how to support students in these three critical skill areas. Additionally, participants will learn how to use a problem-solving discussion tool to create an immediately usable student support plan in 25 minutes or less. |
Relationship Skills and Civil Discourse: Leadership and Character Development Network02/14/24 9AM-12PM Elevating Student Voices- In this session, we learn how to elevate student voices through social awareness, relationship skills, and self-management. We will learn how to teach the rules of civil discourse in every classroom setting, and give students the skills to make their voices heard. |