2016 Foxborough Summer Institute

Collaborative Problem Solving (CPS) provides a way of understanding and helping kids who struggle with behavioral challenges. Challenging behavior is thought of as willful and goal oriented which has led to approaches that focus on motivating better behavior using reward and punishment programs. If you’ve tried these strategies in your classroom or school and they haven’t worked, CPS is for you!
At Think:Kids we have some very different ideas about why these kids struggle. Research over the past 30 years demonstrates that for the majority of these kids, their challenges result from a lack of crucial thinking skills when it comes to things like problem solving, frustration tolerance and flexibility. The CPS approach, therefore, focuses on helping adults teach the skills these children lack while resolving the chronic problems that tend to precipitate challenging behavior.
This session will provide a very brief introductory overview of the CPS approach to teaching and working with challenging kids (grades PreK-12).

An overview of post-secondary transition planning including brief review of key definitions and laws, the ongoing assessment process, and development of student vision. Participants will learn key factors known to make a difference in post-secondary life and discuss basic strategies for developing critical skillsets inside and outside the classroom (grades 7-12).

Are you interested in how to integrate honest youth collaborative discussions of identity that addresses the personal and difficult topics of race, gender, sexuality, privilege, and bias into your classroom? In this workshop, participants will engage in discussions and activities that compel them to question their privilege and bias and examine the barriers of talking about issues of identity. One goal is for each person to leave with ideas, questions, or strategies that expand their empathy in their personal lives, curriculums, and/ or communities. The overarching outcome is that through this reflection and conversation, educators and our youth will question our educational system and how our cultural awareness inspires ideas that influence structural changes. We believe that systems change once people change, so to tackle systemic oppression, we must start by deconstructing apathy and ignorance, and safe, honest conversation and reflection are powerful places to start (grades K-12).

Implementing the Common Core Standards for Mathematical Practice can seem like a daunting task. Teachers have many questions -- What does it look like when students are using the practices? How do I build them into an already packed curriculum? What about students who struggle in math, how do I ensure that all of my students develop the practices? This session will address those questions, offering a viable approach to placing the math practices at the center of math learning and doing for all students (grades K-12).

Collaborative Problem Solving (CPS) provides a way of understanding and helping kids who struggle with behavioral challenges. Challenging behavior is thought of as willful and goal oriented which has led to approaches that focus on motivating better behavior using reward and punishment programs. If you’ve tried these strategies in your classroom or school and they haven’t worked, CPS is for you!
At Think:Kids we have some very different ideas about why these kids struggle. Research over the past 30 years demonstrates that for the majority of these kids, their challenges result from a lack of crucial thinking skills when it comes to things like problem solving, frustration tolerance and flexibility. The CPS approach, therefore, focuses on helping adults teach the skills these children lack while resolving the chronic problems that tend to precipitate challenging behavior.
This session will provide a very brief introductory overview of the CPS approach to teaching and working with challenging kids (grades PreK-12).

This workshop will focus on creating safe and supportive classroom environments based on addressing the needs of the whole child. We will discuss integrating it with a concept of safe and supportive classrooms built on teacher/student relationships, identifying components of a safe classroom space and integrating social skill development within classroom practice. Participants will receive a summary of numerous related classroom supports for the concepts presented and discussed (grades PreK-12).

Participants of this workshop will be able to: 1. Define sensory processing; 2. Demonstrate understanding of the 7 senses; 3. Differentiate between “the power senses” and the refined senses; 4. Describe the function of the vestibular system; 5. Describe the function of the proprioceptive and kinesthetic system; 6. Develop an understanding of when sensory processing begins; 7. Demonstrate awareness of the sensory diet concept; 8. Demonstrate understanding of personal sensory needs; 9. Demonstrate understanding of students’ sensory needs; 10. Develop understanding of personal learning style, as well as student learning styles; 11. Differentiate between levels of alertness; 12. Develop strategies to move students into other levels of alertness; 13. Discuss signs of dysregulation in students; 14. Demonstrate awareness of methods to help regulate; 15. Discuss calming and alerting tools and strategies; 16. Demonstrate ability to alter sensory inputs in the classroom; 17. Demonstrate knowledge of methods that teach self-awareness and self-regulation; 18. Describe sensory rich environments and modifications; 19. Discuss and problem solve potential sensory disturbances and their effect on learning; 20. Demonstrate awareness of resources available relative to sensory processing and learning (grades PreK-12).

Participants will be introduced to ELLs and principles of second language acquisition. Patterns of expected performance of culturally and linguistally diverse children on cognitive measures will be discussed, with emphasis on degrees of cultural loading and linguistic demands. Use of assessment data to assist Teams in the determination of eligibility for special education services will be explored (grades PreK-12).

One of the most frequent statements students make after reading a math word problem is “I don’t get it!”. One reason for this is that students read the problem like they would read any other piece of writing. It turns out that reading in math is different. Instead of reading to understand context, characters and conflict, mathematicians read for quantities and uncover relationships between those quantities to solve problems. In this session, participants will not only learn what makes reading in math difficult and what to pay attention to when reading a word problem, they will learn a powerful instructional routine, called the Three Reads, they can use to teach their students to read like mathematicians. This session is especially relevant for those SPED and ELL educators supporting student learning in math (grades PreK-12).

Do you have students who struggle to plan, organize and self-monitor successfully in the classroom? If so, they may have executive functioning weaknesses. This workshop will help you identify these students and offer grade level/subject specific interventions to help them reach their potential as learners in your classroom (grades PreK-12).

This workshop will focus on creating safe and supportive classroom environments based on addressing the needs of the whole child. We will discuss integrating it with a concept of safe and supportive classrooms built on teacher/student relationships, identifying components of a safe classroom space and integrating social skill development within classroom practice. Participants will receive a summary of numerous related classroom supports for the concepts presented and discussed (grades PreK-12).

Behaviorally challenging students can exhibit intense temper outbursts, oppositionality, and verbal and physical aggression. Behavioral difficulties like this in the classroom are the leading cause of teacher stress and burnout as well as the primary reason for departures from teaching the academic curriculum. Yet, traditional school disciplinary strategies tend not to work with the students to whom they are most applied and are often associated with significantly increasing risk for dropout and juvenile justice involvement.
At the same time, there has been renewed interest in the effects of chronic, overwhelming stress and trauma on children’s development, learning and behavior. Schools and classrooms strive to provide a trauma-informed teaching and school discipline. Yet, educators, counselors and school safety officers often still struggle to understand the impact of trauma on brain development in a concrete and tangible way and long for concrete strategies that operationalize what brain science tells us will be helpful to facilitate development arrested as a result of complex developmental trauma.
Dr. Stuart Ablon, Director of Think:Kids at Massachusetts General Hospital and Associate Professor of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, will provide an alternative conceptualization of the difficulties of these students; namely, that their difficulties are a byproduct of lagging skills in the domains of flexibility/adaptability, frustration tolerance, and problem-solving. Based on this conceptualization, he will introduce an approach to transform school discipline called Collaborative Problem Solving (CPS). CPS provides replicable guideposts for adults to build helping relationships with children while fostering a relational process that develops flexibility, problem solving, and emotion regulation skills. The CPS model has helped adults teach these lagging cognitive skills while reducing the frequency and intensity of challenging behavior in diverse settings, including families, schools, group homes, and inpatient and juvenile detention facilities. In the course of this training, Dr. Ablon will make complicated neurodevelopmental concepts accessible and provide a practical evidence-based process for trauma-informed teaching and school discipline that everyone at school can follow (grades PreK-12).

Participants will be introduced to ELLs and principles of second language acquisition. Patterns of expected performance of culturally and linguistally diverse children on cognitive measures will be discussed, with emphasis on degrees of cultural loading and linguistic demands. Use of assessment data to assist Teams in the determination of eligibility for special education services will be explored (grades PreK-12).

The purpose and scope of this workshop will be to examine the relationship of CCSS and WIDA. We will examine Model Performance Indicators and (MPIs) and discuss how they can be integrated in to the educator’s classroom as support for the teaching of ELLs at various proficiency levels. Familiarity with WIDA ELD Standards will be helpful but not necessary (grades PreK-12).

Do you have students who struggle to plan, organize and self-monitor successfully in the classroom? If so, they may have executive functioning weaknesses. This workshop will help you identify these students and offer grade level/subject specific interventions to help them reach their potential as learners in your classroom (grades PreK-12).

Participants will be introduced to ELLs and principles of second language acquisition. Patterns of expected performance of culturally and linguistally diverse children on cognitive measures will be discussed, with emphasis on degrees of cultural loading and linguistic demands. Use of assessment data to assist Teams in the determination of eligibility for special education services will be explored (grades PreK-12).

One of the most frequent statements students make after reading a math word problem is “I don’t get it!”. One reason for this is that students read the problem like they would read any other piece of writing. It turns out that reading in math is different. Instead of reading to understand context, characters and conflict, mathematicians read for quantities and uncover relationships between those quantities to solve problems. In this session, participants will not only learn what makes reading in math difficult and what to pay attention to when reading a word problem, they will learn a powerful instructional routine, called the Three Reads, they can use to teach their students to read like mathematicians. This session is especially relevant for those SPED and ELL educators supporting student learning in math (grades K-12).

Do you have students who struggle to plan, organize and self-monitor successfully in the classroom? If so, they may have executive functioning weaknesses. This workshop will help you identify these students and offer grade level/subject specific interventions to help them reach their potential as learners in your classroom (grades PreK-12).