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Virtual Conference on June 27 - 28
Recordings and Videos Available through July 12
All presenters will focus on the healthy social-emotional growth of our students and children as emotional, academic, digital, and mental health issues are on the rise all around us. Because most questions we are asked are about how to help, manage, and teach boys in schools and home, this Summer Training will include an emphasis on helping boys in ways that also help girls and others.
Keynotes
We are living in a complex age, one in which children are overusing digital and tech, our definitions of sex and gender are being negotiated in social media, academe, and our schools, violence surrounds us, and teachers and parents feel almost desperate for tools to help the children in their care.
In this dynamic keynote presentation, Dr. Gurian will explore how the minds of boys and girls learn and grow, including brain differences that impact K – 12 education, early childhood, family life, and social emotional development throughout the lifespan. He will provide insight into best teaching, parenting, counseling, and mentoring practices targeted to sex of the brain.
Michael’s presentation include PET, SPECT, and MRI scans that display sexual dimorphism (male/female brain differences) as he focuses on educating, raising, and counseling boys, and educating, raising, and counseling girls. He will also show brain scans that help us understand the whole gender spectrum.
Michael will lead two working lunch discussions, as well. Michael’s most recent books are Boys, A Rescue Plan, with Sean Kullman, The Storm In My Mother’s Eyes (michaelgurian.substack.com/), and The Minds of Girls. We hope you will read one or more these books at your convenience. In these working lunches, we will study and strategize the topics raised in the keynotes, and answer questions participants have from their own educational and community work.
Dr. Gurian’s second keynote continues the work begun in Part I, deepening the focus on trauma-informed education from a brain-based perspective and resilience-building at school, in the home, and in our communities. He will take a deep dive into the healthy and profound differences in the ways females and males tend to practice empathy. He will look at classrooms, playgrounds, and homes from a neurobiological lens, exploring standards of care and evaluation we use that include implicit biases, normally against males, of which we are not aware.
Then Part II will explore what Michael calls the trauma advantage: gender-specific, poverty-sensitive, and trauma-informed strategies for helping children learn resilience. Delving into the importance of trauma as a shaping tool for the brain, Michael’s memoir, The Storm In My Mother’s Eyes: A Journey of Forgiveness and Resilience, explores the science of trauma and resilience in story form. Without the journey of resilience and forgiveness interconnected, Michael argues, children and adults lack a primary building block for healing trauma and, thus, for thriving.
A product of significant childhood trauma, Michael scores a 7 out of 10 on the Adverse Childhood Experiences, ACE survey. The publication of his previous book, The Stone Boys, made public some of that childhood trauma and his memoir continued that exploration with brain science connected to story. We hope you will read The Stone Boys (available on amazon.com and other outlets) and/or The Storm In My Mother’s Eyes (available via subscription at michaelgurian.substack.com) ahead of time for a deep dive into potential trauma-responses and resilience-development.
Michael’s wife of 37 years, Gail Reid-Gurian, died in 2023 from pancreatic cancer. Her death further compelled Michael to share the walk of resilience via Michael’s My Darling, You’ve Flown Away available on michaelgurian.substack.com/. Obstacles are built into life as elemental motivators of maturity. The latter half of this keynote, focusing on trauma and the development of resilience in children, can help heal adults on their own journey.
Third Keynote, with Michael Gurian, Saving the Digital Child: Strategies for Protecting and Empowering Our Boys and Girls in the Digital World
This bonus keynote, which will be available for viewing before the weekend, will focus on how to help schools, teachers, and children use tech safely and effectively. Overuse of social media and tech is a national mental health problem, yet tech is here to stay, especially with the new use of Artificial Intelligence by children and adults. Limiting screen time–which is necessary and important–is not the whole story.
This keynote focuses on tech use as both a positive and negative in children’s lives. Dr. Gurian looks carefully at the neural connection between tech use, especially among young children, and then brain issues later. Because some schools are one-to-one, he will bring parents into the equation, who may need to cut back on child tech use at home so that teachers can use it in school. He will explore specific tech issues faced by boys and by girls.
Some schools are going to a no-phone-during-the-school-day policy, and Michael will endorse that with brain science to show why it is a good plan. Other schools are going toward more hands-on, project-driven, and nature-based learning. Michael will provide brain research that supports this direction in education.
In this dynamic and moving keynote, Michael will provide insight and tools, strategies, and real-time conversations you can have with children as their parents and teachers to help them navigate their increasingly intense digital world.
We encourage groups to come to our events because that can bring systemic change to buildings, schools, and communities. Our keynotes and workshops cover children from birth – college age.
We have group registration discounts available for 5 or more or 20 or more. For more information on the group options or with any questions, please email us at info@gurianinstitute.com.
Dr. Fletcher will focus on classrooms as dynamic environments with a powerful eye towards empathy and resilience-building. She will help teachers and others, including parents, to develop effective environments across the socioeconomic and school spectrum. She will also include information and inspiration from her book, He Is Not A Gladiator (2026).
Dr. Fletcher will tell her own story: A product of childhood trauma, she scores a 10 on the Adverse Childhood Experiences, ACE survey. She works practically with kids at risk and in trauma to help them build resilience and success. Hearing her keynotes is an experience of deep practical inspiration.
Dr. Glynetta Fletcher (“Fletch”) is a strategist, educator, and advocate retired from LA Unified School District who is dedicated to reshaping how we support boys and girls in today’s complex world. With a background in organizational leadership and educational equity, Fletch brings twenty-five years of experience working in schools supporting students that deserve the most yet too often receive the least.
As Program Director of the Gurian Institute, Fletch’s work focuses on teaching teachers how boys and girls learn differently so that they can move beyond surface-level solutions into lasting impact. Known for blending research with lived experience, Fletch is not afraid to name hard truths or ask the uncomfortable questions that lead to transformation.
At the core of her work is a belief that supporting boys and girls isn’t about fixing them—it’s about creating environments that allow them to be seen, heard, and challenged in the right ways. Fletch speaks nationally on topics such as the emotional development of boys, school culture reform, trauma-informed systems, and leadership accountability and does so with the clarity, humor, and depth this work demands.
To learn more about Dr. Fletcher, check out her profile on www.gurianinstitute.com.
Diane Roberts, Bonus Keynote, Solving the Classroom Management Puzzle, Including a Special Emphasis on Working with Diverse Learners
For more than two decades, Diane Roberts was a teacher and administrator in public education. She recently retired and is trained in restorative practices, AVID, positive behavior intervention and supports, and youth mental health first aid. Her specialties are Classroom Management and Inclusive Teaching Practices.
Diane served as a member of the Charles County Public Schools Equity Task Force, the Superintendent’s Task Force on the African American Employee Experience, and was group facilitator and pilot school leader for the Task Force on Achieving Academic Equity and Excellence for Black Boys for the Maryland State Department of Education.
As a Gurian Institute Certified Trainer, she has provided Boys and Girls Learn Differently training as well as Classroom Management training for Pilot schools in the Maryland Initiative. A dynamic and inspiring presenter, Diane will explore the challenges teachers face, how to leverage the science and strategies in classrooms and buildings, how to focus compassionately on the needs of diverse learners, and how to increase parent involvement in student self-management.
To learn more about Diane Roberts, please click https://gurianinstitute.com/member/diane-roberts/
Bonus Panel: What Boys Need School from an Asian Perspective, with Dr. Mark Ryan and Four Students at Army and Navy Academy
We asked four boys from Asia, who are students at Army and Navy Academy, a boarding school for boys on the Pacific Ocean in Carlsbad, CA, to discuss what boys need in school from their perspectives both as young men and also young men born and raised in Asia. Dr. Mark Ryan, Dean of Academics at Army and Navy Academy, led this panel, asking questions and engaging the young men in dialogue on key themes. This recorded video is illuminating.
Hanliang (Jack) Niu (China) Grade 12, Nam Nguyen (Vietnam), Grade 9, Renya Suzuki (Japan), Grade 12, and Mingjun (Jarvis) Wang (China), Grade 11 join Dr. Mark Ryan for this Panel discussion.
Register Now!
Pay via Pay Pal or Credit Card here. After paying, please send your preferred email address to info@gurianinstitute.com so that we can send you a registration/welcome email. This button only handles individual early bird payments of $295.00 per person: if you would like to send a group, please contact Dakota Hoyt at info@gurianinstitute.com. Let her know the number of people you would like to register. She will arrange a group registration with you.
What Participants Have Said About Summer Training Institutes
“Mind blowing! Our schools brings a team to this event every year to learn the newest brain-based research. The Gurian Institute emphasizes strategies we can apply in classrooms immediately. This is some of the best PD I have ever been involved in.``
``For more than ten years, the Gurian Institute has been working in early childhood programs, including ours. The strategies and the training on the brains of boys and girls has changed the way we do things. Our teachers are more successful now, especially with the boys who can sometimes confuse early childhood educators.``
``Thank you for making this work possible! Every year our teachers leave with leading edge theory and a huge toolbox of strategies they can use right away. As a school principal, I also appreciate including parents in the groups we bring to the zoom event: The school/family connection is so important for helping our children learn best.``
“I am that guy who hates to sit for an PD of any kind. The GI Summer Institute is an exception to my self-imposed rule (and I don't just sit...I wander around the room as I watch and listen). The use of brain scans by Michael Gurian and GI taught me why I and my students, especially my boys, do what they do. This is some of the best training I have ever had and I've been a teacher and administrator for 31 years.”
THE GURIAN SUMMER TRAINING INSTITUTE
VIRTUAL AND ONLINE
Ensuring Academic and Social-Emotional Success for All Children
To register, scroll down to the button.
To register groups of five or more, email info@gurianinstitute.com
Boys and Girls Learn Differently Training
The Human Brain: Setting the Stage, with Dr. Glynetta Fletcher and Dr. Michael Gurian (for Saturday Morning, June 27). Body, mind, and soul are not three isolated systems. Intricately woven together, they give us the human experience. In our culture now, our children’s bodies, minds, and souls are experiencing significant stress. This opening session of the conference will link our weekend of training to the deep issues of our time in schools and neighborhoods, and provide a primer on the amazing human brain–both its natural resilience and its potential fragility.
Boys and Girls Learn Differently – Two-Part Strategies Session, with Dr. Glynetta Fletcher, Gurian Institute Program Director and Master Trainer. This two-part session will give participants a tool box full of practical strategies that can be adapted for use in any classroom to increase teacher effectiveness and make sure the needs of both boys and girls are being met. The workshops will model the strategies as if in a classroom setting. This two-part session is a requirement for applicants for Gurian Institute Trainer Certification and includes specific innovations for coeducational classrooms and for single sex classrooms and academies.
Strategies these sessions will help you inculcate into classroom, school, home, counseling office, and community organization include:
–Integrated physical movement for every 10 – 20 minutes of sitting
–Project-based learning
–Literacy strategies across the curriculum
–Math strategies across the curriculum
–Use of graphic organizers and utilization of graphics before writing
–Use of multi-sensory approaches for transitions
–Culturally sensitive strategies for inclusion
–Adaptation of evaluation techniques and tools in light of boys’ learning differences
–Ways to challenge girls toward leadership and resilience
–Dozens of strategies for increased teacher effectiveness and enhanced school climate
This Training occupies Saturday afternoon and continues on Sunday morning.
On Sunday afternoon, Part III of the Training will feature How the Boys and Girls Learn Differently Training works in One School, with Army and Navy Academy Staff, Teachers, and Students (see below)
The Conference will then conclude with a dynamic action planning session led by Dr. Fletcher.
How the Boys and Girls Learn Differently Training works in One School, with Barry Shreiar, Dr. Mark Ryan, and Army and Navy Academy Staff, Teachers, and Students
Barry Shreiar and Mark Ryan are President and Dean of Academics, respectively, of Army and Navy Academy in Carlsbad, CA. The Academy is a Gurian Model School and Gurian Center for Educational Excellence. Mr. Shreiar, Dr. Ryan, and the Gurian Institute team have asked GI Certified Trainers and staff at the Academy to videotape Gurian strategies being used in classrooms and in the school community. These staff and teachers will appear in the penultimate session at the Summer Training Institute to show their strategies, via short videos, and discuss how they utilize the strategies and take questions from conference participants on rationale, technique, and impact.
By registering for this Zoom Event and its video recordings, you are agreeing to the following:
- I will not share the videos, links, or materials unless the other person has paid for the event.
- I will not record any of the sessions in any way (screen shots, personal video or audio recordings, and/or similar capturing of content, people, or discussions).
- I understand that the Gurian Institute is not responsible for my connection to the internet.
- I understand that my face or image may be used without compensation by GI e.g., via a group screen shot used in the future on its website.
Training Schedule
Welcome to our 2025 Summer Training Institute!
All times listed are Pacific Time.
Saturday, June 27
8:30 – 9:00 The Human Brain: Setting the Stage with Dr. Glynetta Fletcher and Dr. Michael Gurian (Pre-recorded).
9:00 – 10:15 First Keynote, Michael Gurian, The Minds of Boys and Girls: A Science-Based Approach to Social Emotional and Academic Education.
Bonus Keynote, Watch Anytime. Saving the Digital Child: Strategies for Protecting and Empowering Boys and Girls in the Digital World, with Michael Gurian.
Break
10:30 – 11:45 Second Keynote, Michael Gurian, The Trauma Advantage: Gender-Specific, Poverty-Sensitive, and Trauma-Informed Strategies for Helping Children Learn Resilience.
11:45 – 12:30 Lunch Hour and Q & A – Questions answered by Michael Gurian on his keynotes and subjects related to raising, educating, and counseling boys and girls, including questions about the gender spectrum.
12:45 – 2:45 Training Session. Boys and Girls Learn Differently: Strategies Part I, with Dr. Glynetta Fletcher. This session will include a stretch break. It will go in depth on strategies and applications with numerous successful strategies explained and discussed.
Break
3:00 – 3:30 Meeting with Michael Gurian, Glynetta Fletcher, Dakota Hoyt, and people interested in becoming Gurian Certified Trainers. Renewing Trainers are also welcome.
Sunday, June 28
8:45 – 10:00 Keynote, Dr. Glynetta Fletcher. He Is Not A Gladiator: Strategies for Helping Boys and Girls at Risk.
Bonus Keynote, Watch Anytime. What Boys Need in School from an Asian Perspective, with Dr. Mark Ryan and four Asian students from Army and Navy Academy.
Break
10:15 – 11:45 Boys and Girls Learn Differently, Part II. This session will continue the in depth work on strategies and applications with numerous successful strategies explained and discussed.
11:45 – 12:30 Lunch Hour and Q & A – Questions answered by Dr. Fletcher and Dr. Gurian based on their keynotes and session topics.
12:45 – 2:00 Afternoon Workshop with Army and Navy Certified Trainers and Barry Shreiar, Dr. Mark Ryan, Dr. Glynetta Fletcher, and Dr. Michael Gurian.
Break
2:15 – 3:00 Action Planning Based on Theory and Strategies with Dr. Glynetta Fletcher.
End of Day 2.
Logistics for the Recordings
You will be sent an email that includes a password protected website on which recordings of the presentations will be housed. These recorded sessions and this website are only for use by paid registrants of the SI. Please make sure we have your best email address (i.e. one that will not go to your spam folder!) for correspondence and access.
The sessions over the weekend will be recorded then available once uploaded for viewing through July 12, 2026. Thus, you won’t have to miss a single session. Some sessions will be prerecorded and available from June 22 – July 12.
All keynotes and workshops highlight sex and gender-friendly theory and strategies applicable to both coeducational and single sex classrooms, schools, and academies.
Schedule is subject to change.
Monday Morning – June 29 – Certification of Trainers Session, 8:00 a.m. – 12:00 p.m., via Zoom, for those individuals becoming Gurian Certified Trainers, with Dr. Glynetta Fletcher. To begin the process of becoming a GI Certified Trainer, please visit the Trainer page on www.gurianinstitute.com.
Please send any questions to info@gurianinstitute.com.
Certificates of Participation
Upon request, participants who complete the two days of training (all sessions over the two weeks) are eligible for a Certificate of Participation for 16 hours via email; participants who also complete the Certification training on Monday can receive 20 hours. After you have completed your participation and viewing of the Training Institute Content, please email info@gurianinstitute.com to request your certificate.
Learning and Training Objectives
Describe how the field of gender neuroscience is altering what you know about the psychology and education of children in early childhood, K – 12, and later adolescence.
Discuss specific needs and issues of boys and girls from birth to adulthood, including analysis of the gender spectrum, with focus on both academics and social-emotional development.
Assess how generally institutionalized educational, counseling, and parenting models do or do not fill the specific developmental needs of preschool through high school age girls and boys.
Identify new logic models and strategies for motivation, learning, and behavioral intervention beginning at birth and proceeding into emerging adulthood.
Summarize key stressors and social-emotional factors that differ between girls and boys beginning in early childhood.
Demonstrate new strategies for learning, counseling, and assessment, including strategies for working with highly sensitive girls and boys of all ages.
Implement new strategies and practical tools beyond the training institute, in your own curricular areas and environments.
Target Audience: educators, administrators, counselors, social workers, early childhood specialists, coed and single sex educators, parents, mentors, coaches, government agency professionals, and policy makers working with children and young adults.
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Early Bird Registration Prices:
$295.00 per person.
$265.00 discount price for 5 or more.
$235.00 discount price for 10 or more.
This button handles individual payments. If you would like to send a group, please contact Dakota at info@gurianinstitute.com. Let her know the number of people you would like to register, and whether you would like to pay via credit card, check, or PO. She will arrange a group registration with you.
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Phone: 509 624 0623
Fax: 509 624 4647
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GURIAN SUMMER TRAINING INSTITUTE 2026 - GURIAN INSTITUTE