WHY WILLPOWER MATTERS: Improve Health, Happiness, & Productivity

In today’s increasingly polarized educational landscape, curiosity is a powerful tool for connection and understanding. This course invites educators to explore how fostering curiosity can transform classroom dynamics, strengthen relationships, and build inclusive school cultures.

Grounded in the work of Mónica Guzmán and her book I Never Thought of It That Way, this course equips participants with practical strategies to:

Listen deeply and engage across differences

Model and facilitate respectful, open conversations

Navigate challenging dynamics with students, colleagues, and families

Through reflection, practice, and application, educators will gain tools to bridge divides, foster civil discourse, and create more compassionate, connected learning environments. This course is designed for PK–12 teachers, counselors, instructional coaches, and school leaders seeking to strengthen their impact and cultivate inclusive communities.

Are you ready to take your social studies lesson to the next level? Revitalize and recreate social studies for today’s students. Bring social studies alive by integrating culture, history, economics, civics, and geography while discussing current events and high interest topics. Find out what you can do with maps, cultural exploration, and STEM through the social studies lens. 

Cyberbullying affects everyone from children to adults. Anyone who uses the internet could become a victim of online harassment. This course will explore the roots of the problem with cyberbullying and examine solutions on how to handle cyberbullying when it happens. The course includes multiple activities that can be used with children in a classroom or homeschool setting. 

Writing is an invaluable skill for our students. Literacy directly correlates with better student outcomes, including higher wages and more formal education (AAFP). Unfortunately, educators are rarely taught how to make writing engaging for their diverse classrooms. As a result, teachers struggle to motivate students who have internalized failure at writing.

When discussing written composition, the terms sentence fluency, syntactic fluency, syntactic maturity, and syntactic complexity are all used to describe text containing sentences with varied structures that underscore, enhance, and contribute to meaning while tying together ideas so readers progress easily from beginning to end. Sentences that possess these attributes are not only easy to comprehend, but they often have a pleasant, rhythmical quality when read aloud. This course considers the above terms interchangeable and has been designed to help teachers improve their students’ sentence fluency/syntactic maturity. But, more than being a “how to teach” course, this is a “what to teach” course. It strives to fill in the knowledge gap left by most teacher training programs when it comes to understanding the fluency errors students make and the remedial strategies they can apply.

According to the Dyslexia Center of Utah, one in five students, or 15-20% of the population, has a language-based learning disability. Dyslexia is the most common of language-based learning disabilities.

This course will introduce you to some practical ways you can help your struggling readers become proficient readers!

Through self-regulation, students of all ages can take charge of their effect and behavior towards their learning. Teaching kids to control themselves involves providing skills and strategies for students to be able to engage in their learning; knowing when and how to take a break, how they feel and think about each activity, and be able to be confident with assignments that they take home. In the assigned text, Dr. Richard Cash has compiled research-based theories and strategies that can easily be implemented in your K-12 classroom. Supporting videos and articles will enable you and your school to be able to foster a culture of self-regulated learners in your classroom.

It’s harder than ever to know where the truth can be found today in public media. Since the 2016 presidential election in the United States, both the political as well as social polarization in America has sunk to new lows. While this reflects historic social, political and ideational differences, the widening gulf in media reporting, including fake news, is a main contributor to the breakdown in finding the “truth” as bias pushes narratives on different sides further apart, each side claiming fact-based truth.  Common ground and bipartisanship is all but lost. In this course for secondary teachers we will explore fake news and bias in all media platforms and its effects on public attitudes and actions. Participants will develop the tools, skills, and strategies to help students be able to break through the barriers of disinformation to find the truth within the agendas being pushed by governmental, and outside powers of influence. Our text, Fact vs. Fiction: Teaching Critical Thinking Skills in the Age of Fake News, is $24 on amazon.

Many students lack the social and emotional skills that lead to success in work, community, and family life. Infusing Social Emotional Learning (SEL) practices is about how you teach what you teach and not something added on to the required curriculum. Through videos, articles, and our text by Dr. Bobbi Hansen (The Heart & Science of Teaching: Transformative Applications that Integrate Academic and Social-Emotional Learning)  participants in this course will cover:

• What does SEL encompass and why is it important
• What various SEL classrooms can look like
• Creating an emotionally safe environment
• Resolving student conflicts using peer mediation
• How to tap student assets
• Content accommodations for special needs
• Cooperative and collaborative learning
• Fostering community and world connections through service learning
• Nurturing students to become self-directed learners
• Cognitive and emotional engagement through projects 

Generation Z comprises students born since 1995 into a digital world made up of the Internet and cell phones. They are enmeshed in social media and criticized for lacking social skills. However, they are the future and we need to teach them in a manner that will lead to their success. To do that, learn how to best meet the unique needs of Generation Z and how to engage them in the K-12 classroom. Learn about what they think, where they are going and how they may change the world.

How often do we get to simply read for pleasure and inspiration in ways that enrich our lives and our work?  In this course you will choose from a wide range of reading  that suit your personal and professional needs.  You will also reflect on the importance of engaging your students in productive reading.