Since 1997, the Gurian Institute has been certifying trainers to provide professional development and consulting in schools, organizations, and communities.  You can meet some of our trainers on https://gurianinstitute.com/trainers/.   We hope every school to have at least one certified trainer to train faculty, staff, and parents in brain-based teaching and whole child growth.

Have you considered becoming a Gurian Certified Trainer?  Do you know someone at your school or in your organization who does?  Check out https://gurianinstitute.com/trainer-certification/ for more and to apply.  Our Virtual Summer Training Institute in June is the perfect time to become certified.

To learn more about this exciting June event and to register, click here:  https://gurianinstitute.com/events/gurian-summer-institute-2023/.   When you register, send an email to Gail at info@gurianinstitute.com that mentions your desire to be a trainer, and please fill out the trainer application on https://gurianinstitute.com/trainers/.

The Benefits of Becoming a Certified Trainer.

Now more than ever, local trainers are needed in schools and communities.    As you may know from your own experience, and can confirm on our website’s Success page at https://gurianinstitute.com/success/, when schools, communities, and parents receive science-based, research-driven, and strategies-focused training in how boys and girls learn and grow:

*Student engagement increases

*Teacher quality and teacher effectiveness improve

*Test scores and student grades rise

*Parent involvement and confidence improve

*Discipline referrals to administrators decrease

*Bullying and child distress decrease

*Social-emotional learning improves

*Child self-esteem rises; and

*Mental health markers improve.

Why does this happen?  Because schools, communities, and families become safer, happier places.  As the whole child is understood through the three lens of human development–nature, nurture, and culture–schools and families adjust to nurture the nature of the child.  This brain-based approach is a powerful way to buck constantly changing social trends and engage with what is fundamental and crucial to child success.

Accomplishing the Goal

To help the whole child, our GI team has understood that few things are more crucial to learning and life-success than who our children are as females and males.  Boys and girls learn and grow differently.  As Michael Gurian has shown in his work (e.g. Saving Our Sons, The Minds of Girls, Boys and Girls Learn Differently), wherever children are in socio-economic range, race, or other social markers, X and Y chromosomes compel our brains to become female and male on a gender spectrum.

“Female and male brains” are crucial to our culture, our homes, and our schools.  When we stop accounting for them, we create social systems in which millions of boys and girls fail, fall behind, and even, in some cases, turn against us.   The Gurian Institute has been battling against this possibility, one system at a time, for decades.  We began our trainer certification program twenty-five years ago to help every school and community gain the tools it needs to create a safe, equitable, gender diverse, and successful system for all children.

Why Should You Have a Trainer in Every School?

Most of us, as professionals and parents, came through our own high school, undergraduate, and graduate education without seeing the brain scans that Michael and our GI trainers show participants and audiences; thus, most of us didn’t realize how important “boy” and “girl” are to improving literacy, STEM, and other academic performance, battling against negative school culture, ending school-to-prison pipelines, grappling with child mental health issues, lowering digital stress and increasing digital success, and helping all children succeed in immensely diverse environments.

We didn’t know what we didn’t know.

When most of us were getting our teacher certifications and degrees, the political landscape of many academic environments prohibited brain-based education in “boys” and “girls,” especially “boys and men,” despite the plethora of gender neuroscience available to the Schools of Education, Psychology, and Sociology.   Almost 40 years ago, Michael Gurian began researching brain science in order to get beyond this impediment.  More than 30 years ago, he began training educators and parents, and since 1998, our Gurian Institute trainers have helped create successful brain-based programs in thousands of schools.

In the words of our First Executive Director Emeritus, Kathy Stevens (1949-2011), co-author of Boys and Girls Learn Differently and The Minds of Boys:  “The initial pilot study at the University of Missouri-Kansas City proved the Gurian theory and strategies in six school districts there, and now we are expanding out into every possible school and community because every school administrator and every teacher we work with either intuits the issues boys and girls face, or has dis-aggregated data and seen issues up close.  Schools are looking for research-based training that is grounded in neuroscience to help them adapt curriculum, pedagogy, and cultural systems for best success.”

When Michael Gurian and Kathy Stevens began working together more than 20 years ago, only a few Trainers were certified at one event in Colorado.  Now, however, because of online training technology, GI has the foundation and framework to equip every school with access to the training.  Especially as more and more of our work in education goes online, the GI online pedagogy can work very well for you and your school.  The expense of certifying a trainer in your school is low, as you’ll see at https://gurianinstitute.com/trainer-certification/.   If your school or organization chooses the In-House Trainer option, costs are lowest.

To certify trainers, schools have used school-based funds, donated parent funds, Title and other Federal funds, State, Municipal, Grant, Foundation, and nearly every other form of funding available for professional development and training.  Upon certification, the certified trainer will be able to use the GI resources (targeted power points, organized video clips and presentations, and numerous other training tools) to provide PD in the school.  Trainers will also have the option of signing up for our Membership/Subscription Service, which is exclusive for GI Trainers. At our Summer Institute this June, trainer certification includes the two general days of learning, and then the Monday morning certification session.  If you would like to become certified online before June, you can begin that process at any time.

How to Start the Process

The steps for certification are detailed here: https://gurianinstitute.com/trainer-certification/.  The prospective trainer can fill out the Trainer Application and once the trainer has been accepted, the new steps will begin.

We hope you and your school will take part.  For those who wish to become certified at our Summer Training Institute, you can register here: https://gurianinstitute.com/events/gurian-summer-institute-2023/.   Once you register, please send an email to Gail at info@gurianinstitute.com to let her know you want to become a Trainer.

Please email Gail, as well, with any questions you may have about the event, training, or bringing GI’s services and products to your school and community.  Thank you.