Executive Function

Problem Solving Through the Design Process

Building Executive Function in Remote Learners

Social Emotional Learning in a Hybrid Learning Environment

The 2020 School Year changed the way we look at education. How can you ensure that each of your learners is able to access learning and succeed in any learning environment? The teacher’s role as a facilitator of learning has become more relevant than ever. Explore strategies to help students navigate their learning environment to build academic resilience, accelerate student learning, and support social emotional learning and executive functioning. This course will help you rethink instruction to prioritize differentiation and scaffolds that will meet all learners’ needs.
Syllabus
Participants in this course will use Reinventing the Classroom Experience by Dr. Nancy Sulla as a resource. The assigned book must be purchased in advance. Access to MyQPortal is included for all participants while enrolled in the VLC. 25 credit hours.
Explore a variety of classroom structures and strategies you can employ to help students take greater responsibility for their own learning, including self-assessment, goal-setting, self-regulation, learning choices, and reporting. Design a student responsibility plan that will work in your classroom.
Syllabus
Participants in this course will use Reinventing the Classroom Experience by Dr. Nancy Sulla as a resource. The assigned book must be purchased in advance. Access to MyQPortal is included for all participants while enrolled in the VLC. 25 credit hours.
Throughout history, major events have disrupted the norm to produce innovation. The COVID-19 pandemic challenged students, teachers, and parents to identify new ways to provide “schooling” via remote connections. No one could have imagined that schools would close for months, leaving students to learn at home based on remotely delivered lessons. The pandemic was a wake-up call for schools: to be prepared to provide high-quality instructional experiences through structures and strategies that work as well at home as they do in school, such that students can learn anywhere, anytime. This course will help you rethink your instruction to foster academic resilience, facilitate learning acceleration, and ensure achievement and social emotional learning for all students. You will explore structures and strategies to support an innovative learning environment that works regardless of where students are, allowing students to learn anywhere, anytime.
Syllabus
Participants in this course will use Reinventing the Classroom Experience by Dr. Nancy Sulla as a resource. The assigned book must be purchased in advance. Access to MyQPortal is included for all participants while enrolled in the VLC. 25 credit hours.
As more schools honor brain research on learning by offering students longer class periods and fewer courses per day, teachers are challenged to rethink the use of time for teaching and learning. This workshop will explore two models for teaching in the block and offer participants opportunities to design units and lessons to use in the classroom. Whether you envision students fluidly moving through activities of their own choosing or a more structured beginning-middle-end approach, this workshop will position you to enhance learning in a block-scheduling situation.
Syllabus
Participants in this course will use Reinventing the Classroom Experience by Dr. Nancy Sulla as a resource. The assigned book must be purchased in advance. Access to MyQPortal is included for all participants while enrolled in the VLC. 25 credit hours.
Social and emotional learning (SEL) plays a major role in one’s success in life and career. Being in touch with emotions, controlling them, setting and achieving goals, engaging with others in socially appropriate ways, demonstrating empathy toward others, establishing positive relationships, and taking responsibility in life are critical skills that are not necessarily included in school curricula. How can these critical skills be developed while students are not physically in school every day? In the hybrid learning model, synchronous instruction is redesigned to allow for, and in many cases, prioritize, Social and Emotional Learning. In this course, participants will explore a hybrid learning model, and develop strategies to prioritize collaboration, self-awareness, and responsible decision making skills. They are skills that are fostered every day in student-driven learning environments like the Learner-Active, Technology-Infused Classroom. Develop structures and strategies you can employ to build SEL in your classroom or school.
Syllabus
Participants in this course will use Reinventing the Classroom Experience by Dr. Nancy Sulla as a resource. The assigned book must be purchased in advance. Access to MyQPortal is included for all participants while enrolled in the VLC. 25 credit hours.
Co-teaching classrooms can be powerful learning environments that maximize the effectiveness of two teachers to ensure that each and every student advances academically at accelerated levels. In a student-focused co-teaching classroom, both teachers have the flexibility to intensively help struggling students and see them make significant strides, while challenging advanced students to new heights, bridging the achievement gap. This workshop is great for either teacher or both teachers in a partnership to attend.
Syllabus
Participants in this course will use It’s Not What You Teach But How by Dr. Nancy Sulla as a resource. The assigned book must be purchased in advance. Access to MyQPortal is included for all participants while enrolled in the VLC. 25 credit hours.
Creating a learner-centered classroom requires teachers to design opportunities for students to actively engage in their learning and maximize their potential. Designing differentiated learning activities, facilitating those learning activities with meaningful questioning, using a variety of formative assessment strategies and student reflections, and leveraging strategies to build students’ executive function skills all lead to putting students at the center of their educational process. Craft a plan for positioning your students to be active participants in the learning process as you design a classroom learning environment that engages and empowers students, building a greater sense of efficacy for them and for you as their teacher.
Syllabus
Participants in this course will use Dr. Nancy Sulla’s book, It’s Not What You Teach But How as a resource. The assigned book must be purchased in advance. Access to MyQPortal is included for all participants while enrolled in the VLC. 25 contact hours.
The engineering design process is a set of steps for creating that which does not yet exist. Help your students develop thoughtful solutions to open-ended problems, no matter what the subject area. Design authentic, open-ended problems for your students to solve using IDE Corp.’s Design Process.
Syllabus
Access to MyQPortal is included for all participants while enrolled in the VLC. 25 contact hours.
We’re all familiar with STE(A)M courses and STE(A)M hours; but what about a classroom or school that exudes a culture of STE(A)M thinking? How can we position students to use design thinking, exemplify the use of math practice standards, and experience the cross-cutting concepts of the Next Generation Science Standards throughout the day? This course will focus on designing instruction to reflect a STE(A)M culture across all activities of the day. Participants will design lesson plans and structures to use with their students.
Syllabus
Access to MyQPortal is included for all participants while enrolled in the VLC. 25 contact hours.
“Students don’t know what they don’t know.” (Sulla 2015) How do you get a clear sense that all students are learning? In this course, you will explore strategies to become a masterful facilitator of learning, becoming a guide in the learning process. While the standards drive the “what” of classroom instruction, teachers have power of the “how”. Keeping the end goal in mind helps to select and design appropriate instructional activities for student mastery. Become a facilitator of instruction to meet the demands of standards-based curriculum and actively engage with students during their thinking process.
Syllabus
Participants in this course will use Dr. Nancy Sulla’s book, It’s Not What You Teach But How as a resource. The assigned book must be purchased in advance. Access to MyQPortal is included for all participants while enrolled in the VLC. 25 contact hours.
Co-teaching classrooms can be powerful learning environments that maximize the effectiveness of two teachers to ensure that each and every student advances academically at accelerated levels. In a student-focused co-teaching classroom, both teachers have the flexibility to intensively help struggling students and see them make significant strides, while challenging advanced students to new heights, bridging the achievement gap. This workshop is great for either teacher or both teachers in a partnership to attend.
Syllabus
Participants in this course will use It’s Not What You Teach But How by Dr. Nancy Sulla as a resource. The assigned book must be purchased in advance. Access to MyQPortal is included for all participants while enrolled in the VLC. 25 credit hours.
Explore the power of problem-based learning in the classroom. Design a problem-based task, a rubric to drive instruction, and a scaffold of rich and diverse learning activities to implement with your students
Syllabus
Watch IDE Corp.’s YouTube video “What’s the difference between project-based learning and problem-based learning?“.
This course will use your choice of Dr. Nancy Sulla’s books, Students Taking Charge In Grades K-5 or Students Taking Charge In Grades 6-12 as a resource. Only one is required. The assigned book must be purchased in advance. Access to MyQPortal is included for all participants while enrolled in the VLC. 25 contact hours.
In this course, participants will engage with the “Ten Mindsets for Transformational Leadership” from Students Taking Charge: Implementation Guide for Leaders by Dr. Nancy Sulla, Julie Marks, and Tanya Bosco. Participants will gain insights, tools, and strategies for leading schools and districts in ways that transform practice and mindsets. They will design action plans to inspire the adaptive change at the core of schools focused on improving student achievement and experience through engagement, empowerment, and efficacy. They will engage in a variety of virtual settings over the course of each month and will engage in collaborative learning with other school and district leaders seeking the same transformational outcomes.
Syllabus
Participants in this course will use Students Taking Charge: Implementation Guide for Leaders by Dr. Nancy Sulla, Julie Marks and Tanya Bosco as a resource. The assigned book must be purchased in advance. Access to MyQPortal is included for all participants while enrolled in the VLC. 25 contact hours.
How will schools catch up with the curriculum after the spring closing of schools? How can teachers make the most of their time with students to cover a lot of curriculum. It all comes down to Power-Standards: those standards that drive the mastery of other standards. It’s all about starting with the end in mind, which is typically application of learning, building a “felt need” for students to learn, and then providing differentiated learning activities toward achievement.
Syllabus
Participants in this course will use Dr. Nancy Sulla’s book, It’s Not What You Teach But How as a resource. The assigned book must be purchased in advance. Access to MyQPortal is included for all participants while enrolled in the VLC. 25 contact hours.
Explore the structures and strategies you can use to gather formative assessment data to drive instruction that is targeted for increased student achievement. Design formative assessments for use with your students.
Syllabus
Participants in this course will use Reinventing the Classroom Experience by Dr. Nancy Sulla as a resource. The assigned book must be purchased in advance. Access to MyQPortal is included for all participants while enrolled in the VLC. 25 credit hours.
Explore how executive function supports the critical life skills of conscious control, engagement, collaboration, empowerment, efficacy, and leadership. Develop activities and strategies for classroom use, as well as targeted facilitation to improve students’ executive function.
Syllabus
This course will use Dr. Nancy Sulla’s book, Building Executive Function: The Missing Link to Student Achievement as a resource. The assigned book must be purchased in advance. Access to MyQPortal is included for all participants while enrolled in the VLC. 25 contact hours.
In this course, participants will leverage choice and technology to provide students with the ultimate differentiated learning environment. They will develop differentiated digital activity lists rooted in rigorous instruction that offer multiple ways to learn and apply content. Participants will explore autonomy, purpose, and mastery as motivators in all learning environments. They will design differentiated activity lists to put students in charge of their own learning, creating a structure that allows students to make decisions within a structured framework. Making informed decisions is an essential life skill that teachers can support with intentional classroom practices.
Syllabus
Participants in this course will use Reinventing the Classroom Experience by Dr. Nancy Sulla as a resource. The assigned book must be purchased in advance. Access to MyQPortal is included for all participants while enrolled in the VLC. 25 credit hours.
Deepen your knowledge of the power of problem-based learning in the classroom with a focus on implementation strategies. Design differentiated activity lists with multiple ways for students to learn, develop content facilitation grids and questions to support student-driven learning, and implement four types of formative assessments throughout the PBL unit. Note: Participants will apply course content to a previously created Problem-Based task and rubric.
Syllabus
Watch IDE Corp.’s YouTube video “What’s the difference between project-based learning and problem-based learning?“.
This course will use your choice of Dr. Nancy Sulla’s books, Students Taking Charge In Grades K-5 or Students Taking Charge In Grades 6-12 as a resource. Only one is required. The assigned book must be purchased in advance. Access to MyQPortal is included for all participants while enrolled in the VLC. 25 contact hours.
Equitable and culturally responsive teaching practices raise the level of rigor and maximize potential for all learners. In this course you will explore the role of teacher as curator to reflect on your learning environment that accepts, appreciates, and advocates for cultural differences and social justice. Participants will explore and brainstorm problems focused on instructional and social equity. They will navigate and design culturally responsive resources, structures, and teaching practices to address bias in and beyond the classroom. This course will position participants to leverage students’ culture, language, and life experiences into rigorous academic achievement.
Syllabus
Access to MyQPortal is included for all participants while enrolled in the VLC. 25 contact hours.
Executive function is critical to all students’ academic achievement; and we now know it can be developed and accelerated. Enhance your academic lesson plans by fostering the six key aspects of executive function, intentionally building critical achievement prerequisites in students.
Syllabus
Watch Dr. Nancy Sulla’s YouTube videos “Executive Function: The Missing Link to Student Achievement” and “All Students Can Learn with Executive Function“.
This course will use Dr. Nancy Sulla’s book, Building Executive Function: The Missing Link to Student Achievement as a resource. The assigned book must be purchased in advance. Access to MyQPortal is included for all participants while enrolled in the VLC. 25 contact hours.