Each fall and spring semester, we offer an online book study on a best practice topic in education. Each course is completely asynchronous, allowing you to participate at times most convenient for you while interacting weekly with your classmates and the facilitator. Through readings, course discussions, and feedback from the facilitator, you will be challenged to apply the content to your work.

Please see below for this semester’s offering. Questions? Please contact us at 616-245-8388 or by email if you have any questions.

Registration for this semester’s online book study has closed and is already under way. If you’d like to join, please email facilitator Megan Cooke at mcooke@allbelong.org.

Please feel free to email Megan with any questions or to request further information as well!

Spring 2020 Online Professional Development Book Study

Responding to Challenging Behaviors: Helping Lost Students Find Their Way

Our Spring 2020 Book Study, in tandem with Calvin University, focuses on understanding student behavior and considering practical social-emotional tools for proactive and responsive care.  Lost and Found explores the truths surrounding one central understanding: why a student is exhibiting challenging behavior is one of the most important factors in helping him or her.

Specifically, Lost and Found demonstrates how through the knowledge of lagging skills, teachers and school-leaders can empower students in problem solving that is collaborative and includes the student’s voice.  As readers and as professionals, we are gifted the opportunity to grapple with our incorrect assumption that we can modify student behavior.

The content of this book will be edifying for anyone working with students, and especially timely for anyone who has felt lost in responding to a student who seems to lack motivation, seek attention, test limits, or make bad decisions.  How does your school respond when a student is withdrawing, pouting, sulking, whining, crying, hitting, spitting, swearing, kicking, screaming, breaking, throwing, lying, stealing, or worse?  Are you feeling supported in thinking proactively about the next challenging behavior, and/or feel that you have the necessary tools to do so?

Various educational stakeholders will learn new and applicable insights regarding challenging behaviors through the expertise and insights of the Collaborative & Proactive Solutions model.  Research-based tools that can be applied immediately will provide hope and confidence to all stakeholders and will prove relevant for every student including the most well-behaved.

Full of illustrative stories and extensive examples, Lost and Found provides instruction and information along with descriptions of first-hand experience written by teachers, principals, superintendents, and school counselors.

Some of the issues and concepts addressed in this book study include:

• Considering the students who have difficulty meeting social, emotional, or behavioral expectations, and the motivation and skills required for a student to behave adaptively.
• Exploring key themes surrounding kids doing well.
• Naming the factors that stack the odds against educators and make it more difficult for them to help.
• Asking and answering: why are challenging kids so challenging?  What occurs when the demands of the environment exceed a kid’s capacity to respond adaptively?  
• Gaining helpful verbiage to use with students and to add to your growing social-emotional learning (SEL) toolbox.
• Acquiring practical points of application for the school and classroom through assessment tools, strategies, and problem-solving plans.
• Troubleshooting the inevitable pitfalls of implementation and organization.
• Remembering the other students in the classroom and realizing that the framework is fostering social-emotional learning for all.

In summary, participants will explore the mindset and moments that make up a Collaborative and Proactive Solutions approach to lagging skills and unsolved problems.

This workshop will be formatted as a twelve-week online book discussion. Participants will read assigned chapters each week, discussing the content and its application to school and to their work. The workshop will be facilitated by Megan Cooke, Adjunct Instructor in the Education Department at Calvin University and All Belong Teacher Consultant.

Course Dates:  February 24, 2020 – May 10, 2020

Registration for this semester’s online book study has closed and is already under way. If you’d like to join, please email facilitator Megan Cooke at mcooke@allbelong.org.

Please feel free to email Megan with any questions or to request further information as well!

Required Material (participants are responsible for purchasing):

Greene, R. (2016). Lost & Found: Helping Behaviorally Challenging Students (and, While You’re at it, All the Others). San Fransisco, CA: Jossey-Bass
ISBN: 978-1118898574

Registration and Credit Options (paid directly to All Belong):

• All Belong registration: $190
• All Belong registration + 25 State of MI SCECHs: $230
• All Belong registration + 1 Calvin University Grad Credit: $340

Meet Your Instructor:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Megan Cooke
Teacher Consultant, All Belong

• B.A. Calvin College, 2003: Education, Cognitive Impairment
• M.A. Calvin College, 2010: Learning Disabilities

We’re glad you’re interested in our online book study!

This semester’s book study is already under way.  If you’d like to join, please email facilitator Megan Cooke at mcooke@allbelong.org.

Please feel free to email Megan with any questions or to request further information as well!