Boys and Girls Learn Differently – Two-Part Strategies Session, with Rob Kodama, Gurian Institute 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.

Becoming a Man:  What Does it Mean to Boys, and How Do We Teach it?  For almost 20 years, Rob has worked as a teacher, coach, and Director of Admissions at Crespi Carmelite High School for Boys in Encino, CA.  With his colleagues, he has developed a leading edge “Becoming a Man” course for the young men.  In this workshop, Rob will explore the experience of masculinity and manhood the boys are living and trying to live, and how adults can help boys live it wisely, empathically, and successfully.  Because Rob has taught the course to a widely diverse group of boys from all races and socio-economic origins, he has developed both a culturally sensitive and universally applicable wisdom on masculine and male development.  This workshop will include strategies, anecdotes, stories, and action plans you can use right away.

The Human Brain:  Setting the Stage, with Eva Dwight and Michael Gurian. 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.

Using Brain Science to Improve Classroom Management, with Certified Positive Discipline Coach, Eva Dwight.  Brain science can give us profound and practical insight into why we experience classroom management challenges with both girls and boys.  It also holds powerful clues and best practices for setting kids up for success in both learning and social-emotional development.  In this workshop, Gurian Certified Trainer and Certified Positive Discipline Coach, Eva Dwight, brings more than two decades of school- and parent-coaching experience to a solution-oriented hour of best practices.   She presents similarities and differences between what boys and girls often need and strategies and tools for making classrooms and playgrounds into positively managed learning environments.

Soothing the Stress Response in Girls and Handling Girl Drama, with Eva Dwight.  Our girls are under constant stress today and “girl drama” can be difficult to navigate.  When is it normal, when is it bullying?   Eva Dwight has three decades of experience in this field and provides positive discipline and girl-friendly tools for soothing stress responses and activating processing mechanisms.  Because individual children often respond to stress differently, this workshop’s focus on the nexus of nature, nurture, and culture make it immensely practical—its tools can be used immediately in schools, home, and neighborhood environments.

The Pressured Child:  Helping Students Navigate and Heal Their Worry and Anxiety, with Abigail Wald.  Often, not only is a child worried and anxious, but so are we.  Indeed, whether educators or parents, mentors or friends, we can feel somewhat at a loss today as we deal with rising anxiety rates among children.  In this dynamic and often touching workshop, Abigail Wald shares some counter-intuitive thinking about what actually cause fear and worry, and introduces concrete tools to help children, educators, and parents build resiliency. This workshop provides a powerful and practical new take on turning fear into focus.

The Digital Child:  Helping Them Take the Best and Leave the Rest, with Abigail Wald. This workshop will focus on where tweens are in their brain and social development, how we can help them create with tech rather than just consume it, and why this shift is protective of both their self-esteem and their future work life.  Tech is here to stay, and more than just limiting screen time–which is necessary and important, but not the whole story–we need strategies for making homes and schools safe havens for tech.  As Abigail presents relationship strategies that make this safety possible, she will provide a new framework for equipping children to master tech as a healthy rite of passage into adolescence.

Why Did You Do That? I…Uh…Don’t Know! with Joseph Moody, Dean of Student Life at Lovett Middle School, Atlanta, GA.  Students must deal with discipline, student communities, peer groups, and personal relationships with teachers, while simultaneously coping with the physical and emotional changes they experience during puberty and adolescence.  Their lives are in turmoil, and they need our help understanding who they are and what they are doing.  In this workshop, Joseph will outline evidence-based strategies that improve the student-teacher-administrative relationship from a brain-based perspective.  He will further explore factors that impact behavior, and ways to both set measurable goals for students and help them become leaders in school culture, even through distress.  Joseph will also provide strategies you can use to increase your visibility in the twin roles of advocate and disciplinarian.

Tim Wright, Raising and Educating Boys in a #MeToo World.   The landscape of romance, sex, consent, and basic male/female relationship is going through great upheaval.  Author of Raising Boys in a #MeToo World, Tim and his daughter, Alycia, an attorney who works in Tim’s church, Community of Grace, have developed practical strategies for teaching boys direct paths to healthy maturity in both sacred and secular settings.  A long time partner with Michael Gurian on the Rites of Passage Programs and The Wonder of Parenting Podcast, Tim is an inspiring community leader.  A pastor for more than thirty years, he is also an internationally recognized speaker for his dynamism and fearlessness.  This workshop is a practical and powerful look at what we can do to help both boys and girls become adults of character and emotional depth in a #MeToo world.

Friday June 21, 2019

6:00 – 8:00 pm All guests are welcome to join us for a reception at the Rec Hall

Saturday June 22, 2019

8:00 a.m. Registration and Continental Breakfast

8:45 – 9:30 The Human Brain: Setting the Stage, with Eva Dwight and Michael Gurian

Brain Break

9:35 – 11:30 Keynote, Michael Gurian, Protecting the Emotional Lives of Boys and Girls

11:30 – 12:30 Lunch, Discussion of the Boy Crisis in America, Saving Our Sons, and Suicide/Violence Prevention led by Michael Gurian

12:30 – 1:30 First Afternoon Workshop, Concurrent Sessions

The Power of Diversity:  Teaching and Mentoring Latino Boys and Girls, with Hicxell Wester

Boys and Girls Learn Differently, with Rob Kodama, Part I.  For individuals becoming certified trainers, it is a required course.

Why Did You Do That?  I…Uh…Don’t Know! with Joseph Moody

Break

1:45 – 2:45 Second Afternoon Workshop, Concurrent Sessions

The Pressured Child:  Helping Children Navigate and Heal Their Worry and Anxiety, with Abigail Wald

Raising and Educating Boys in the #MeToo World, with Tim Wright

Boys and Girls Learn Differently, with Rob Kodama, Part II.  For individuals becoming certified trainers, it is a required course.

Break

3:00 – 4:00 Meeting with Michael Gurian, Eva Dwight, and people interested in becoming Gurian Certified Trainers.  Renewing Trainers are also welcome.

Sunday, June 23, 2019

8:00 – 9:00 a.m. Tour of Army and Navy Academy, and Q & A with Student and Faculty.

9:00 – 10:15 Keynote, Dr. Glynetta Deshon Fletcher, Trauma and Learning:  Gender-Specific, Trauma-Informed Strategies for Helping Children Learn and Grow

Break

10:30 – 11:30 Featured Workshop, Dr. Glynetta Deshon Fletcher, Working with Children of Color in the Classroom and in Their World

11:30 – 12:30 Lunch, Discussion and Action Planning on The Minds of Girls, Girl Drama, and Girls and STEM, led by Michael Gurian

12:30 – 1:30 Afternoon Workshops, Concurrent Tracks

The Digital Child:  Helping Them Take the Best and Leave the Rest, with Abigail Wald

Becoming a Man:  A New Approach to Masculine Development, with Rob Kodama

Using Brain Science to Improve Classroom Management, with Eva Dwight

Break

1:45 – 2:45 Afternoon Workshops, Concurrent

Raising and Educating Boys in a #MeToo World, with Tim Wright

Soothing the Stress Response in Girls and Handling Girl Drama, with Eva Dwight

The Power of Single Sex Classrooms and Environments, with Amy Coe

Break

3:00 – 3:30  Closing Activity for Conference Participants.

All keynotes and workshops highlight gender-friendly theory and strategies applicable to both coeducational and single sex classrooms, schools, and academies.

Schedule is subject to changes and additions.

Monday Morning, Certification of Trainers Session, 8:00 – 11:30, for those individuals becoming Gurian Certified Trainers

Transportation: If you are flying into the San Diego airport, Uber or Lyft can bring you from the airport to Carlsbad. It’s about a 40-minute drive, depending on traffic. Also, your hotel may have shuttle services.

Address:

Hotels:  There are multiple hotels to choose from in Carlsbad, many of which are close to the beach.  We suggest you plan ahead to make your reservations while the hotel prices are lower.  As time gets closer to summer, the hotels raise their prices.  Here are three in close proximity to the conference.

West Inn and Suites, 760 448-4500.

Best Western, 760 729-1151.

Hilton Garden Inn, 760 476-0800.

There are many other hotels in Carlsbad.  If you Google, “Hotels in Carlsbad, CA” a number of others in various price ranges will be featured and listed.

Meals, Snacks, and Beverages

Lunches for both Saturday and Sunday are provided, as well as snacks on Friday evening and snacks and coffee/water during Saturday and Sunday.

Certificates of Participation

Upon request, participants who complete the two days of training will receive a Certificate of Participant for 14 hours; participants who also complete Monday morning’s certification training will receive 17 hours.

Learning and Training Objectives

Describe how the field of gender neuroscience is altering what you know about the psychology and education of children and adolescents.

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 girls and boys.

Identify new logic models and strategies for motivation, learning, and behavioral intervention.

Summarize key stressors and social-emotional factors that differ between girls and boys.

Demonstrate new strategies for learning, counseling, and assessment, including strategies for working with highly sensitive girls and boys.

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.

More Workshops

The Power of Single Sex Classrooms and Cultures, with Amy Coe, Assistant Dean of Academics, Army and Navy Academy.  This workshop is designed for teachers, administrators, counselors, and all those interested in developing a deeper understanding of what works in single sex school cultures, and why.  The workshop is divided into three sections: useful brain-based sex differences based on Michael Gurian’s work; practical classroom strategies for teacher and student mentoring of boys and girls; and strategies to nurture the nature of boys and girls in single sex school “emotional” cultures (the hidden worlds of both boys and girls). 

The Power of Diversity:  Teaching and Mentoring Latino Boys and Girls, with Hicxell Rodriguez-Wester, Young Oak Kim Academy, Los Angeles Unified School District. At this pioneering STEAM-oriented school in L.A., Hicxell and her colleagues have created a boy- and girl-friendly school culture with special attention to the learning needs of the mainly Latino and Latina student and parent base.  Hicxell has been working with Latino populations for over 12 years and is herself a first generation Mexican-American citizen and college graduate. In this workshop, Hicxell will share strategies for social-emotional and academic learning development in a STEAM and single sex context.  Her talk will explore the barriers of language and culture on both the student and teacher and ways to address the needs of our Latino population.  Participants will learn techniques for reaching and engaging students in a culturally diverse learning community.