A hallmark of our training and research are our success strategies.  When I first began studying classrooms, I looked immediately for natural innovations that teachers were using to reach, teach, and manage boys and girls most effectively.  As a research team developed around my original theory, the group of us at the University of Missouri spread our research further.   Over the years, this effort expanded to homes, communities, counseling offices, child care facilities, corporations, and businesses.  Wherever there were females and males–including everyone on the gender spectrum–we worked to study, research, innovate, and strategize.

Katey McPherson, who is providing two Strategies for Teaching Boys and Girls sessions at our Summer Institute, has become a master at teaching these strategies.  When she and I met, we had daughters in common (me, two, she, four) and also an understanding that boys were more mysterious than people might immediately think.  Katey told me:

“I am a teacher and assistant principal and I realized one day that 80 -90 percent of the people sent to me were boys.  Many of the boys sent to me had done nothing wrong.  Something was awry in what we were doing school- and district-wide, I saw.  We needed new new ways of understanding and helping all our kids.  This is what brought me to the GurianInstitute.”

–Michael Gurian

Here’s more from Katey.

In the last 23 years, I have listened to colleagues, friends, and family members struggle with the concept of classroom management from both a teaching standpoint or and as parents wondering how to help their child with behavior.

In 2013, I attended the Gurian Summer Institute, and was immediately taken with the research. As a school administrator at the time I was constantly wondering how to engage our high risk learners and how to reach all students more effectively.

The strategies I learned through working with Dr. Gurian and The Gurian Institute helped me immensely in connecting with our students.  These same strategies brought forth a new understanding about the neurological and biological implications in our classrooms, which then translated to a deeper understanding of students’ instructional needs.
Our children are wired to move, and need to do so. In addition, they flourish in environments that foster hands-on experiential learning.  The Gurian Institute deploys various, many of which will be featured in the Summer Institute, from Brain Breaks to physical movement, altered student seating, room temperatures, visual-graphic organizers and storyboards, spatial tools, STEM teaching techniques, reading and curricular adjustments, social-emotional learning tools, and many more.

After using these strategies over the last 5 years, both in the classroom and assistant principal’s office, then serving as a Gurian certified trainer, I have been able to assist parents, teachers, and administrators in closing achievement gaps and creating classrooms that invite innovation, collaboration, and relationship building between teacher and student.

The Gurian strategies allow students to become both vulnerable and resilient in their learning environments, which validates them as people and brings them into true connection with their teachers, peers, and learning community.
I am excited to share and model the strategies at the Gurian Summer Institute in Carlsbad on June 23-24.  I hope I’ll see you there!

–Katey McPherson