The Gurian Institute is excited to announce our Winter Training Institute!  It will take place as a Tele-Summit on Saturday and Sunday, January 23-24, 2021 with the recorded sessions available for registrants until January 30.  For those people who would like to become Gurian Certified Trainers, there will be an additional training session on Monday morning, January 25.  This is, thus, a seven day event for a very low price.

We are proud to offer you this service to fit most or all of your budgets and funding sources.  Even in this time of strapped budgets, professional development is still crucial, and our Training Institutes provide immense value for in-person and online teaching.  GI has just finished its very successful Helping Boys Thrive Virtual Summit ( https://helpingboysthrive.org/helping-boys-thrive-tele-summit/), with more than 150 attendees from five continents, and in June we completed our Summer Training Institute virtually, which had almost 150 attendees from around the world, as well.

Please join us for our Winter Institute.  Click here to learn more and to register:  https://gurianinstitute.com/events/gurian-winter-institute-2021/.  Check out our speakers and trainers on the website.  We’ll make sure to feature them in blog posts over the next few months.   If you can sign up groups of five or more, there is a deeper discount.  To our Summer Institute Tele-Summit, one school brought 29 staff and another brought 14 staff.  Systemic change sometimes happens even more quickly in a building, school, or district when groups take home theory and strategies to help boys and girls learn and grow.

Whomever you can bring, we believe they will leave the Tele-Summit and this Professional Development with their minds blown and their toolbox filled.  Because some schools might still be providing online schooling in January, we’ll make sure to adapt our PD and programming to fit both in person and online schooling.  Again, check out this webpage for details and registration:    https://gurianinstitute.com/events/gurian-winter-institute-2021/.

Our Keynotes at the Winter Institute

Dr. Michael Gurian and Renowned Educator Joseph Moody will provide our Keynotes.  There will also be nearly a dozen workshops and other sessions over the two days.

Saturday Morning Keynote:  Dr. Michael Gurian, January 25, Protecting the Emotional Lives of Boys and Girls, with a special section on the Digital Brain (screen time, social media, video games, and smartphones)

In this dynamic keynote presentation, Dr. Gurian will explore how the minds of boys and girls learn and grow, including brain differences that impact education and social emotional development throughout the lifespan.  He will provide insight into new genetic resources available to schools and families, the impact of environmental and cultural neuro-toxins on the learning brain, best teaching, parenting, counseling, and mentoring practices for both girls and boys, and safe, effective electronics and technology standards for various stages of child development.

Michael’s presentation will include PET, SPECT, and MRI scans that display brain differences, and he will bring the latest research in his newest books, The Stone Boys (2019), The Minds of Girls (2018), and Saving Our Sons (2017),  focusing on educating, raising, and counseling boys, and educating, raising, and counseling girls.

Two primary topics will be social-emotional development tools for teachers, parents, and others, including ways to help boys open up their emotions in boy-friendly ways, and successes and implications of the digital brain on education and parenting of all children.  As Michael looks at the growing brain through the lens of gender science, he will explore themes on everyone’s mind today, including transgender questions and gender fluidity, what constitutes “toxic masculinity,” girl drama and relational aggression, girls and STEM learning, boys’ empathy development, and brain-based boy-friendly learning strategies.

As Covid 19 continues to create the need for online and hybrid schooling in some areas of the country and world, Michael will provide strategies and insight to help educators and parents create the best possible “education during Covid” for this generation of children.  The Gurian Institute has been conducting action research since the pandemic began, and now provides training and outreach on this topic worldwide.

Michael will also lead two working lunch discussions.  The books that underlie these discussions are Saving Our Sons and The Stone Boys for Saturday and The Minds of Girls for Sunday.  We hope you will read these books ahead of time.  In these working lunches, we will study and strategize regarding violence/suicide prevention, and mental and emotional health in our school communities.

Sunday Keynotes

First Keynote:  Mr. Joseph Moody, Assistant Head of Middle School for Student Life, The Lovett School, and former Juvenile Court Educator, January 24, Working Successfully with Boys and Young Men of Color

Many of our boys, especially those of color, are falling behind academically and socially.  With training and commitment, dedicated educators can make a difference by utilizing instructional strategies and methods that fit the developmental and learning needs of these youngsters.  Come to this keynote prepared to learn strategies and discuss how to best meet this challenge in your classroom and your school.

Because Mr. Moody has taught and worked with a widely diverse group of boys from all races and socio-economic origins, he has both 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.  Joseph will bring to bear his previous experience working in the juvenile justice system to contextualize his profound sense that change is possible throughout our educational system.

Joseph Moody is an internationally recognized keynote speaker and Assistant Head of Middle School for Student Life at The Lovett School in Atlanta, Georgia.  He has been an educator since graduating from Presbyterian College in Clinton, South Carolina in 1994.  Joseph taught and coached in public high schools in Georgia for 16 years, and worked in Juvenile Court, before becoming a Middle School science teacher at The Lovett School in 2010. After three years, Joseph transitioned to the role of Middle School Dean of Student Life for the boys. Outside of his Dean role, Joseph has coached football, wrestling, and track at Lovett.  He has an MS in Psychology and is working towards a PhD in Educational Psychology.

Second Sunday Keynote: Trauma, Poverty, and Learning: Gender-Specific and Trauma-Informed Strategies for Helping Children Learn and Grow

Dr. Gurian’s Sunday keynote focuses on poverty- and trauma-informed classrooms, with a powerful eye towards empathy and resilience-building.  Michael will help teachers and others, including parents, to develop trauma sensitive classrooms and environments across the socioeconomic and school spectrum.  He will discuss the impact trauma has on the brains of children at various ages, and boys and girls specifically.  Participants will learn practical strategies for building strong relationships and attachments with traumatized children, as well as those raised in poverty.

Michael will also tell a bit of his own story.  A product of childhood trauma, he scores a 7 out of 10 on the Adverse Childhood Experiences, ACE survey.  The publication of his newest book, The Stone Boys, made public some of his own trauma.  We hope you will read The Stone Boys ahead of time for a deep dive into boys’ potential trauma-responses in particular.

What Previous Winter and Summer Institute Participants Have Said

“The sessions were diverse and the presenters kept us focused not only on scientific theory but especially on Strategies! This was so important, so powerful for me.”
“I think of myself as ‘zoomed out’ these days, but Michael Gurian, Eva Dwight, and the whole GI team really know how to translate the material to the online format. The Tele-Summit worked very well.”

“I thoroughly enjoyed these two days and learned so much about how to help my students, especially my girls in the areas of girl drama and STEM and my boys in areas of social-emotional development and motivation to learn.”

“Boys are a particular challenge in my classrooms, and this weekend training was right on point. This is one of the best professional development experiences I have ever had.”

“I am becoming a Gurian Certified Trainer so that I can keep bringing this information to my school and our parent body. This weekend prepared me very well to keep the work going!”

“Michael Gurian’s keynote and lunch sessions were profound. I am so appreciative of what he and the whole Gurian Institute are doing in communities and schools.”

“I came as a parent first and mental health counselor second, but I ended up learning a lot in both categories. I now believe this Gurian theory and strategies can change our counseling systems for the better, and I have a lot to take home with me.”

“The Gurian Institute has focused on issues surrounding children of color and children raised in poverty for a long time, and its work in this area is even more necessary now. The brain science approach of the speakers was unique and powerful.”

“This is one of the best trainings I have had with more usable strategies than I usually get at PD. Thank you!”

“This is equity work at its finest. You did not avoid the big questions. I appreciate your honesty about the many parts of equity and excellence we have to hit at once if we are going to creating thriving schools and communities.”

“The Gurian Institute consistently provides some of the best professional development I experience, and I have been teaching more than 25 years!”

“This is the best workshop I’ve been to in the last ten years! I wish it could have been longer.”

“In thirty two years as a teacher and coach, I have rarely gone to PD that did not bore me at some point. This Gurian work is not boring. I am very glad I came.”
We hope to see you virtually in January!  Click here to learn more and to register:  https://gurianinstitute.com/events/gurian-winter-institute-2021/.