Here you can trial our three minute interactive micro lessons curated for school staff professional development. Watch this sample introducing the concept of school belonging.
These micro lessons boost knowledge of key concepts and related terms. Moreover they offer learning in four related areas of training:
1)The trauma informed classroom,
2)Teacher preparedness for Social and Emotional Learning (SEL) curricula,
3) Diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) training,
4) Readiness for updates to Title IX requirements.
We believe that all of these areas intersect with concepts that foster strong School Belonging.
Here you may preview the School Belonging module.
We’ve dubbed our micro training modules “Real Reels”. Typically 5-12 Real Reels comprise each module. Our theme-based modules have specific learning objectives that hones knowledge, skills and ignite metacognitive work about approaches to a range of child behaviros, pedagogy and supportive classrooms. We weave in basic knowledge about child and adolescent development, child psychology, mental health, and wellness into each interactive video.
Understanding childhood trauma, is key to building a trauma informed classroom. This area also overlaps with aspects of social and emotional learning. Learning and understanding the many affect of adverse childhood events can be hard on staff and educators.
We present our Digital Drama DISPLACED for the 23/24 school year, to learn more about the ways adverse childhood events are conceptualized, classified and understood.
The six chapter non-fiction narrative tells the true story of a child who was forced to flee his home during crucial middle childhood years of his development. This digital drama may be experiencedas an audio book, or with the visual narrative which includes manga style illustrations. Optional American Sign language interpretation, and subtitles can be toggled on or off.
Grab the popcorn to sample the first chapter.
Our Digital Drama Displaced is accompanied by our ground-breaking multi-part study guide named TIGERS Tool.
TIGERS is an acronym that stands for Trauma Informed Guides for Educators and Recovering Survivors. In these tools we review how events may lead to childhood stress, distress, and complex forms of trauma. We also offer learning about psychological, developmental and cognitive concepts that related to both adverse child hood events, trauma, coping, resilience, and protective factors.
At times the lesson’s learning objective is explicitly mentioned in the micro lesson. However, some testimonials offer micro lessons without a stated learning objective. These encourage key metacognitive growth in the self-guided setting or productive discussion in the group training setting.
Not all our micro lessons have a set template. There are in fact four variations. This is intentional and our design for inclusive teaching also mimics the organic ways in which humans learn from testimony, spoken word, narrative, and formal case studies.
Indeed, three minute testimonials, our digital dramas, and narrative non-fiction, follows several different formats. Here’s one example from our Headlice Outbreak module which provides information on practical, safe and inexpensive treatments. How ever this particular testimonial, breaks from the informational part of the module.
We use the training to also tackles the meaning of stigma, stigmatizing language the real experiences of parents navigating school head checks.
Many micro-lessons incorporate professional development for culturally responsive teaching and a growth mindset.
Here is the introductory Real Reel from our series introducing culturally responsive teaching around special days of honor.
Finally, a peek at our pipeline… we have several new Digital Drama that will expand on our methods for professional development in coming years. Here’s a sneak peek, watch the trailer for
Adolescence: A Dialogue
See preview below
