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*This is a virtual book club that will meet via Zoom once each month. **This course is worth 30 continuing education contact hours or two graduate credits.**   Educator and teacher wellness is a personal journey. And like all journeys, there are starts, stops, and bumps in the road. The question becomes, how do we bring our best selves to our students and colleagues each day? Designed as a reflective journal and guidebook, Educator Wellness by Timothy D. Kanold and Tina H. Boogren will take you on a deep exploration where you will uncover profound answers that ring true for you.   We will start in June and spend the summer in the Season of Renewal where we reclaim our physical wellbeing. We will move into September and begin the Season of Opportunity focusing on decisions, balance and efficacy routines. Our high-energy profession requires that we bring our bent mental selves to work each day. In December we will kick off the Season of Perseverance and work on learning to respond rather than react to negative emotions through awareness, understanding, and mindfulness routines. Finally, we will end the Season of Transition in March and focus on our social wellness. We will focus on relationships, trust and purpose as we expand our desired impact as an educator.  Book:        ISBN-10: 195463109X       ISBN-13: 978-1954631090 Optional Workbook:       ISBN-10: 1958590495       ISBN-13: 978-1958590492 Website: Eductor Wellness (Solution Tree) Read more

* This course is worth either 15 continuing education contact hours (CECH) or one graduate credit.    AI for Educators by Matt Miller is a practical guide designed to help teachers understand and use artificial intelligence to enhance teaching and learning. The book explains how AI can save time, spark creativity, and personalize education by automating tasks like lesson planning, grading, and feedback. Miller provides real-world examples and actionable strategies to help educators integrate AI tools effectively while addressing ethical considerations. This resource empowers teachers to embrace AI as a partner in education, improving both their workflows and their students’ learning experiences.   Book: AI for Educators: Learning Strategies, Teacher Efficiencies, and a Vision for an Artificial Intelligence Future by Matt Miller           ISBN: 1956306471 Website: https://ditchthattextbook.com/ai-edu/#tve-jump-186cc04809e Read more

* This course is worth either 30 continuing education contact hours (CECH) or two graduate credits.  Trauma is a fact of life. Veterans and their families deal with the painful aftermath of combat; one in five Americans has been molested; one in four grew up with alcoholics; one in three couples have engaged in physical violence. Dr. Bessel van der Kolk, one of the world’s foremost experts on trauma, has spent more than three decades working with survivors. In The Body Keeps the Score, he uses recent scientific advances to show how trauma literally reshapes both body and brain, compromising sufferers’ capacities for pleasure, engagement, self-control, and trust. He explores innovative treatments - from neurofeedback and meditation to sports, drama, and yoga - that offer new paths to recovery by activating the brain’s natural neuroplasticity. Based on Dr. van der Kolk’s own research and that of other leading specialists, The Body Keeps the Score exposes the tremendous power of our relationships both to hurt and to heal - and offers new hope for reclaiming lives.   As our years as educators continue, we are seeing more and more students that are experiencing heavy trauma in more serious doses. But why? And is there anything we can do about it? This book helps to explain some of what happens to kids and why they struggle so much as they develop into adults. These struggles come due to changes in the brain and how it impacts them on social, emotional and physical levels. It explores the history of understanding trauma, what trauma is and what can cause trauma. Engaging, real-life stories are shared to help us understand what happens to our bodies due to the situations and experiences we have gone through.    The author also discusses the development of the ACE score (adverse childhood experiences) and why this came to be. Again, there are multiple real-life stories that accompany the scientific aspect to give us examples of the relationships between the body and mind.   In the last section of the book we get to explore the variety of therapies and solutions that doctors and mental health professionals have assembled to assist individuals in overcoming their trauma. Some that are mentioned that we can incorporate into school settings include theater and movement classes, yoga, and mindfulness strategies.    Teachers that have read this indicate that they recognize even more fully why they need to have patience and be patient with students. There was also a profound understanding that the world that we grew up in doesn’t exist anymore and that we can’t keep judging students through our lens because we are trying to help them navigate a completely different situation.    As educators that are making decisions in our buildings and with the knowledge that is found in these pages, we can help create a healthy culture of understanding and patience. This is what will make a difference to our students now. (https://uassp.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/The-Body-Keeps-the-Score-Book-of-the-Month.pdf)   BOOK:  The Body Keeps the Score ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0143127741 ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0143127741 Free PDF Version: https://archive.org/details/the-body-keeps-the-score-pdf/page/n3/mode/2up "The Body Keeps the Score" audiobook from YouTube is included in this course.  Please be aware of who is with you if listening to this audiobook, as some case studies are graphic in their description of physical and sexual abuse.   Mispronunciation of some words is also obvious in listening to the audiobook, but does not effect the understanding of the content.   Read more

* This course is worth either 30 continuing education contact hours (CECH) or two graduate credits.    After more than a decade of stability or improvement, the mental health of adolescents plunged in the early 2010s. Rates of depression, anxiety, self-harm, and suicide rose sharply, more than doubling on many measures. Why?   In The Anxious Generation, social psychologist Jonathan Haidt lays out the facts about the epidemic of teen mental illness that hit many countries at the same time. He then investigates the nature of childhood, including why children need play and independent exploration to mature into competent, thriving adults. Haidt shows how the “play-based childhood” began to decline in the 1980s, and how it was finally wiped out by the arrival of the “phone-based childhood” in the early 2010s. He presents more than a dozen mechanisms by which this “great rewiring of childhood” has interfered with children’s social and neurological development, covering everything from sleep deprivation to attention fragmentation, addiction, loneliness, social contagion, social comparison, and perfectionism. He explains why social media damages girls more than boys and why boys have been withdrawing from the real world into the virtual world, with disastrous consequences for themselves, their families, and their societies.   Most importantly, Haidt issues a clear call to action. He diagnoses the “collective action problems” that trap us, and then proposes four simple rules that might set us free. He describes steps that parents, teachers, schools, tech companies, and governments can take to end the epidemic of mental illness and restore a more humane childhood.   Haidt has spent his career speaking truth backed by data in the most difficult landscapes—communities polarized by politics and religion, campuses battling culture wars, and now the public health emergency faced by Gen Z. We cannot afford to ignore his findings about protecting our children—and ourselves—from the psychological damage of a phone-based life.     Book: The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness by Jonathan Haidt                     ISBN-10: 0241694906                     ISBN-13: 978-0241694909 Website: https://www.anxiousgeneration.com/book Read more

* This course is worth either 15 continuing education contact hours (CECH) or one graduate credit.    Helping teachers bust frustration before it even begins! Frustration is universal, even for the most effective and experienced teachers. The steady drip of forgotten pencils, classroom disruptions, and unrealistic expectations can chip away at our resolve, creating a chasm between our love of teaching and our ability to continue happily in our chosen profession. Even more, frustrated teachers pass their stress on to students, who can experience academic losses and instability from high teacher turnover. Author Katie Powell knows that there’s no “right” way to respond to specific frustrations. Instead, this book provides a process teachers can use to respond to difficult situations in healthy, effective ways that align with their own teaching style and goals. Frustration Busters helps teachers identify the source of frustrations, learn how to tackle them when they arise, and implement practices that will help prevent them from occurring in the first place. It’s filled with ideas for practical application that support a positive classroom experience.     Book:  “Frustration Busters: Unpacking and Responding to Classroom Management Challenges” by Katie Powell ISBN-10: ‎ 195630603X ISBN-13: ‎ 978-1956306033 Website: https://www.teachbeyondthedesk.com/frustrationbusters   Read more

* This course is worth either 15 continuing education contact hours (CECH) or one graduate credit.    Do you need to ramp up your classroom questioning techniques? Questions are the driving force of learning in classrooms. Hacking Questions digs into framing, delivering, and maximizing questions in the classroom to keep students engaged in learning. Known in education circles as the "Questioning Guru," Connie Hamilton shows teachers of all subjects and grades how to: Hear the music: listen for correct answers Scaffold to trigger student thinking without doing it for them Kick the IDK bucket to avoid “I don’t know” as the final answer Punctuate your learning time to end with reflection questions Spin the throttle to fuel students to ask the questions Fill your back pocket with engagement questions Make yourself invisible by establishing student-centered protocols Be a Pinball Wizard and turn students into facilitators   Book: “Hacking Questions: 11 Answers That Create a Culture of Inquiry in Your Classroom” by Connie Hamilton                     ISBN-10: 1948212145                     ISBN-13: 978-1948212144 Website: https://www.conniehamilton.org/freeresources Read more