Brain Compatible Schools  
GO TEAM!!
  Customized Personal Training for World Class Teams
 by Randy Thompson
Email: gator@edugator.com or diffleadership@prodigy.net
Here is a look at the training sessions Randy does for Districts, Schools, and individual Middle School Teams and High School Academies.  As you will see, the sessions described below can be customized for anything from conference sessions and planning period presentations to multiple day workshops.
                                                                  
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Training for Middle School Teams and High School Academies

This session is based on the book “GET FIT!  THE PERSONAL TRAINER FOR ACADEMIC TEAMS” and the diagnostic fold-out tool “The Teaming Assessment-A Diagnostic Tool for Assessing the Effectiveness of Academic Teams”.  The book and the teaming assessment give a very comprehensive look at 15 different performance areas for Middle School Teams and High School Academies.  The assessment and book are meant to be diagnostic and to present prescriptive tools for professional development for Middle School Teams and High School Academies. 
 
In this session I will be your personal trainer as we will look at several areas of Academic Team performance.  I will share practical strategies for such things as student management, curriculum development, administrative and guidance participation and support, time management, special needs inclusion, raising test scores, student support systems, great parent conferences, team building, and effective team meetings.  Basically, each chapter of the book becomes a component of this session.  The number of areas I can cover and the depth of the experience are dependent on the amount of time I have with the group.  This session is about enhancing the collaboration and productivity of Academic Teams and giving them a tool for assessing progress along the way.  This session, like the book and assessment, will go straight to the heart of academic teaming, which means that new teams or veteran teams will leave this session with effective new strategies for immediate use.
 
Customize this session for your situation
 
The topics for this session are based on The Teaming Assessment, and the book Get Fit-The Personal Trainer for Academic Teams. When I do this session at conferences and schools, the number of topics covered is based on the amount of time I have with the teachers.  I always start out with advanced team meeting management and then go through as many topics as I can.  At conferences and generic teaming presentations I try to adapt each situation to the responses of the teachers in attendance.  In full day trainings, I can usually hit most of the topics at the most introductory level.  More extensive training in any of the topics will require more time.  Below is a list of the topics I cover with teams as I work with them over time, as their personal trainer. 
 
I often come to schools and present one of the topics to teachers on their conference periods throughout the day, and each of the topics could be used in that manner as well.  This allows me to customize each presentation for each school, and often for each individual team within a school, as the teams will preselect the topic they are most interested in for their professional development.   
 
Select from the menu and build your own professional development.  The menu will indicate the least amount of time required to introduce each topic and familiarize the staff in that area.  Please keep in mind that this amount of time allows only for an introduction of the topic, but little if any time to “experience” the topic.  At the other end of the professional development scale, the menu will also indicate the amount of time that would be required for initial training to ensure adequate proficiency in the topic area for implementation.  This would allow time for working with teams to model and practice strategies at levels to ensure successful implementation.   
 
I often will visit with teams after the initial training for follow-up support.  Follow-up sessions are always encouraged, as this allows for assessment of team performance and the opportunity to make adjustments, if needed, as the teachers put strategies into practice.  The number of follow-up visits depends on the school, and the level of performance they want to achieve. 
 
Note:  The rubric for deciding on a time frame for each topic will go from one hour to multiple days.  I often do training during teacher conference/planning periods.  With that in mind, one hour could also be 45 to 60 minutes as is often the case for conference sessions or school planning periods.  All fractions will indicate a fraction of a day where generally ¼ of a day is about 1½ hours.
 
Time                                               Topic and Brief Description
 
1 hr to ½ day                                Team Meeting Management
 
The topics for this session include advanced strategies for running even more efficient and effective team meetings, establishing team norms, team member roles and responsibilities, the team newsletter or website, coordinating homework and tests, becoming professional learning communities, and so on.
 
1 hr to ½ day                                        Student Management
 
Administrators and counselors are most often involved with students after something has happened to call for their intervention and therefore are often more reactive than proactive.  In this session I will share a quick and easy process that will enable administrators, counselors and teachers to quickly and effectively collaborate regularly to diagnose issues and provide appropriate interventions for every student in the building .  Participants will see how “Discipline Referral Review” and "Student Progress Review/Thumbs Up" meetings will help their school significantly  reduce student management issues.  Often schools reduce written discipline referrals by at least half by creating a proactive process for continual motivation and identifying needs for intervention for students. 
 
½ day to multiple days                        Curriculum Development
 
In this session you see how easy it can be to weave state standards, skills, projects and assessments through the various curriculums and across the school year.  This is a very interactive session as teachers will be sharing things like worksheets, overheads, activities, assessments and much more across curriculum areas.  Participants will leave this session with the strategies, tools and an easy-to-use method to chart, coordinate and integrate instruction and assessment so that their curriculums work together like a great symphony.  The curriculum sharing tools that I use are often called COW’s, which are simply curriculum charts for finding and indicating where sharing can occur across curriculum areas.  Participants will see how easy it can be to coordinate long-term, cross-curriculum, project-based instruction.  (It should be noted that while teams enhance this process, they are not required.  I have done this session with many high schools and junior high schools that are not teamed.) 
 
1 hr to ½ day          COMPASS (Community Partnerships Assuring Student Success)
 
The way to get the business community and families reengaged in the educational system is to make them a part of the curriculum. COMPASS (Community Partnerships Assuring Student Success) is an innovative program which is bringing the community, through its businesses and organizations, into the middle school by linking them with teams through their curriculums and developing a "community-based" curriculum.  (This session is dependent on the Curriculum Development session described above and can only be done as a part of the Curriculum Development session.) 
 
1 hr to ½ day                               Service Learning Projects
 
When community service is integrated into the curriculum and becomes a regular part of student learning, the community service evolves into Service Learning.  In this session I share how to use the Curriculum Development Process described above to incorporate Service Learning into curriculum and instruction.                        
 
1 hr to ½ day                          Working in a Flexible Block Schedule
 
In this session I share creative ways for teams to work together to use their instructional time to collaborate and enhance instruction.  I share scheduling options to enhance authentic assessment options, for developing simple rotations, creating alternative blocks and so on.   (I also do training for developing block instruction called Teaching in a Block.) 
 
1 hr to 1 day                                            Inclusion
 
Inclusion -- no other term in education seems to create so much confusion. Special Needs students on the team most often require adaptations and modifications, and the purpose of this session is to look at how teams can work together to meet those needs.  This session looks at what inclusion is -- and isn't. In this session, we will look at what it means to co-teach.  Inclusion does not mean “watering down” anything!  In this session you see lessons and assessment that are developed to actively engage and challenge every student in the classroom regardless of their levels.  Participants will learn easy ways to co-plan for lessons and how to be successful with inclusion. 
 
1 hour to 1 day                          Advisory - - The Student Assistance Period
 
The focus of this "hands on" session is to demonstrate how Advisory programs can promote academic achievement by working to develop young adolescents' affective skills that are required for cognitive success.  Participants will see how an activity-based, student-centered, skill-focused Advisory program brings together guidance services, teaching staff, and administrators to maximize learning.  The goals of this session are to provide purpose while sharing numerous motivating activities to challenge and actively engage the students in building the skills necessary for success in your school.  In this session you will see just what a huge impact an effective Advisory program can have on your students and the entire school!   
 
1 hour to ½ day                                   Team Identity
 
In this session I work with teams to develop strong ownership with their students.  I share many team-building activities from “Fire Up for Learning!” and other sources to help teams work with students to ensure each student feels a part of the “team”.  Students who identify with some sub-group (like athletic teams, clubs and academic teams) in a school are more likely to be successful, which is why team activities like the “team puzzle”, which I share during this session, have a positive effect on student performance. 
 
1 hr to ½ day                              Parent Contacts and Conferences  
 
In this session I share with teams many strategies to improve parent-team conferences.  I share the strategies for how to plan for parent conferences and how to enhance communication for even more productive parent meetings.  Then I walk the teachers through a sample parent conference and, with enough time, teams can practice the strategies. 
 
1 hr to ½ day                         The Four Stages of Team Development
 
All teams go through four developmental stages, and their training regiment changes depending on their stage of development.  This session will help teams recognize the levels of team development and assess where they are on the continuum.  This session is best done in conjunction with the Team Goals and Assessment below. 
 
1 hr to 1 day                     Using Teams to Increase Student Test Scores
 
This session will help teams outscore the opponents every time.  I share how to use a combination of strategies from several of the other sessions with a specific focus on the state tests.  I share scheduling options with teams that demonstrate how to flex their schedules to model state testing formats in a non-threatening way. I share how to use the COW’s to share information about specific state standards in need of improvement and then develop integrated strategies for developing the identified state standards.  I also share Advisory strategies to teach the affective skills needed to help students learn how to be better students.  By the way, the opponents would be the state tests. 
 
1 hr to ½ day                                  Team Goals and Assessment
 
The purpose of this session is to guide teams in developing team goals, and establishing rubrics for assessing the achievement of those goals.  Team goals give the team a road map to allow them to see where they are, how far they have come, and how far they have to go.  I work with teams to establish milestones and to celebrate accomplishments.  I work with teams to establish both cognitive goals and affective goals.  Then I show teams how they can use The Teaming Assessment to assess their progress on a regular basis.
 
1 day to multiple days              Observation, Assessment and Feedback
 
For this session, I will observe team meetings and interact with the teams to gather information to assess each team’s progress.  Then I provide detailed feedback to each team regarding areas of strength, and I make specific recommendations for continued improvement and productivity.

 

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