Our Introductory Programs
The Education Network’s introductory programs are designed to empower people to produce extraordinary results in their direct accountabilities in classrooms, committees, schools, and communities.
Access to Breakthrough Teaching
Leadership for Education
How can I provide the kind of leadership that brings about a real, long-lasting change in the quality of education in my community?
The Future by Design
How can all the stakeholders in education work together and produce results consistent with their vision?
Access to Breakthrough Teaching
Effective teachers convey a love of learning, give their students more confidence and inspire their best efforts, and interact effectively with colleagues, administrators and parents. They consistently produce remarkable results no matter what the circumstances – students with a history of low achievement, limited resources, lack of support from others, or drastic policy changes.
Virtually everyone who chooses a career in education envisions being this kind of teacher. But they may not intuitively know how to consistently approach teaching with a spirit of invention and utilize their own brilliance, nor is this included in traditional staff development curriculum. And there is a tendency to regard the effective educators as people who were lucky to be born with the right qualities, or who have somehow ‘cracked the code’ to the art of teaching.
The Education Network asserts that everyone possesses the capacity to be an extraordinary educator. Our Access to Breakthrough Teaching program is designed to enable educators to express this competence on a day-to-day basis. The ten sessions focus on the skills of thinking and interacting that allow them to maintain their passion for teaching, and enhances their ability to connect with students, parents, administrators and other educators. Results which are dependent upon these abilities are dramatically increased in both quantity and quality. The program includes exciting and thought-provoking discussions and exercises, and weekly practices which translate the program topics into results in all of their accountabilities.
Participants also train their students in this methodology. “What It Takes to Survive Math” illustrates what the students in a middle school math class in the Alpine School District in Utah were able to achieve.
“What It Takes to Survive Math”
One thing you absolutely have to have is dedication. At least once a week you should review your promise and accomplishment. This helps you concentrate on gaining ground on your promise and helps you watch your understanding. It also gives your confidence a boost, which helps you learn better. You need to be dedicated to your goal though. Nothing else can be as important.
Another must is team work and integrity. For our “Term Promises” the whole class has to work together. If one of us doesn’t keep our integrity and do what we all agreed to do, then the whole class misses the promise.
You also need a coach. Miss King is our coach. She helps us “stay on the court.”
You also have to have fun! You should be prepared to laugh at your mistakes. You should probably laugh every day.
In conclusion, it takes dedication, teamwork and integrity, and the ability to have fun to survive math (or anything.)
So many of the students in my classes lead lives that I can’t imagine. Combine issues like death, abuse or abandonment with being a 13 or 14-year old, and the trauma that many of these students face by simply living is overwhelming. I think to myself, “And you want to teach them math?” I do, so I provide a place where it is safe to be free and inventive so learning can occur. ~ Tammy Miller, Disney’s American Teacher Award finalist
Learning for Education
The extent to which education can realize its potential hinges upon how well those who care can interact effectively with the complex challenges and opportunities they face. Their capacity to adapt to the evolving needs of children, communities and society as a whole hinges on leadership.
The kind of leadership that is called for is not what we normally associate with qualities demonstrated during a critical or very high risk situation. What is called for are people who have the capacity to sustain their stand and the fundamental values that govern their actions and relationships – no matter what the current reality indicates is possible. They can think what cannot be thought, and then act on it, even when others, committed to ‘reality’ unwittingly, or knowingly, place obstacles in the way. They create a clearing that allows for the possibility of what is clearly impossible, and invite others to step into not just the improbable or the difficult but the inconceivable.
Leadership for Education is a three-day program for individuals who are committed to acquiring the fundamental skills to create visions, to inspire the commitment of others, to nurture creativity and to stimulate achievement. When participants apply these skills, they create an atmosphere in which groups effectively collaborate to develop higher quality solutions to instructional problems, and successfully implement school and district-wide initiatives.
An Assistant Superintendent attributed the success of her first year in a new district to her participation in ‘Leadership for Education.’
A major accountability of her job was the design and implementation of a district-wide initiative. During one of our sessions, she realized that the team members had a history with administrators who had enlisted their support and then discounted their input. She focused on operating with integrity with them, and they gradually stopped wondering if their ideas would be valued. Now she is facilitating a group that shares her commitment to providing teachers and parents with a structure to act in concert based on the needs of the individual students.
The Future by Design
“This weekend gave us hope for the future.”
Before our hope grew out of what we knew to be possible from the past. Perhaps giving possibility a chance to free our imaginations instead of allowing our history to limit them is just the remedy we were looking for to break out of the survival trap. Not to say that history cannot provide very insightful guidance, I strongly believe that understanding and learning from our past gives us an important jumping off point. It is only that we should not allow our own history to take away from what is possible. Albert Einstein sums up best what I’m trying to say in this quote which was one of the first things Robin said to us at the start of the program, “The world that we have made as a result of the level of thinking we have done thus far creates problems that we cannot solve at the same level we created them.”