Programs & Services

Our emotions are an integral part of who we are as human beings. Our awareness, understanding, and development of emotion related skills has multifold advantages. These include increasing our own well-being and personal journey toward our potential. Another advantage is improving the strength and quality of our relationships and the results we produce. Emotional Intelligence in a broad sense can refer to taking on our emotional self, increasing our awareness and empathy for others, and learning and applying how emotions, moods, and feelings are integral and inseparable from the quality of our leadership, legacy, and life. There is much value in expanding the awareness of emotions, growing emotional resiliency, and in raising the leadership potential of organizations in examining emotions, moods, and feelings and the courageous journey of embracing the wisdom for personal, leadership, and organizational growth and well-being.
Course Learning Outcomes:
The program participants will learn to recognize four aspects of Emotional Intelligence: Self-Awareness, Self-Management, Social Awareness, and Relationship Management. Further, they will gain a better appreciation of the significance of each of the four aspects and methods for personal growth of each aspect. Interactive exercises raise awareness of various existing predispositions, tendencies, and factors that contribute to how each participant's personal and professional results may be currently affected by their own emotional intelligence. The program examines a sampling of common emotions, both positive and negative, and strategies and tactics that can grow greater versatility in responses that produce more favorable results.

Teachers of all world languages in Bucks County will have the opportunity to collaborate with their colleagues during a sharing and reflection session at the Bucks IU. This event will allow us to tap into our greatest resource...each other!

Teachers of all languages are invited to attend sessions from 8:30-11 AM that will be language-specific. Teachers of AP languages will collaborate in their own session from 8:30-11. We will spend the remaining hour from 11-12 in a whole group discussion.

Bring your ideas, questions, concerns and willingness to share with others!

Build and strengthen your collaboration with teachers through aligning the American Association of School Librarians National School Library Standards with the PA Core Standards as well as with new ISTE Standards. You'll create an action plan for collaborating with teachers to promote information and digital literacy across the curriculum for all learners, both students and teachers. These aligned Standards provide a solid foundation for developing learner competencies in information fluency and have credibility with administrators and educators. Whatever your situation-one school or multiple schools, solo in your district, fresh from the classroom, or assuming new teaching responsibilities-you'll take away an action plan to tackle how to collaborate effectively with teachers to help your learners. Bring your most successful information literacy lesson plan and learn how to align it with these standards and transform the way you collaborate with your teachers.

Childhood trauma can have a direct impact on the ability of a child to learn. School Counselors have the unique opportunity to both support these students as well as provide teachers with strategies to help these children feel safe and connected in the classroom so that they can achieve their potential socially, emotionally, and academically. Join us to learn practical strategies to reach and teach students impacted by trauma.

This workshop will introduce the participants to the concept of text dependent analysis(TDA) as defined by the Pennsylvania Department of Education. The day will specifically focus on the PA ELA standards, eligible content and their role in grade-specific close reading activities. The day will also introduce of structure used for close reading that focuses on literary elements and the role they play in the TDA process.

Communication is an essential core competency of effective leadership and achievement throughout an organization. Nonverbal communication represents as much as two-thirds of communication. One of the imperatives of working at the "thinking" level of leadership and professional performance is that our thoughts are "projected" as a communication, and our beliefs and thinking swerve to filter and flavor how we interpret our world. To improve the communication competencies, our work begins at the thinking level. Interestingly, we think in "language" and words. We take the case that our language shapes and creates the world we see and have. If we are not happy with our results, the solution to reshaping results is in our words and language. And we first look to the conversations that occur within our thinking. An overview of topics include:

• The power of Words
• The power of Stories
• The role of the subconscious
• Speech acts
• Grounding assessments
• Listening with and for Integrity
• Managing Drift
• Feedback as an indispensable tool for growth
• Checking in and checking out understanding
• Appreciative inquiry
• Courageous conversations

Day Two of this three-day series will focus on the reading comprehension and analysis of Text Dependent Analysis(TDA), with a special emphasis on analysis. The day will also introduce the components of two kinds of TDA prompts: instructional and assessment prompts. Participants will learn how to construct and how to de-construct both kinds of prompts.

Day Three of this three-day series will review the concepts of close reading, analysis, instructional TDA prompts, and assessment TDA prompts - topics covered in Days One and Two. The agenda will then take the participants into the essay writing portion of TDA and will introduce the TDA Learning Progressions, developmental progressions that can support the formative feedback for the TDA essay.

Is this going to be on the test? Why do we have to know this? Is this for a grade? Can you tell me what I need to do to get this right? These questions haunt each and every math and science teacher that is on the receiving end of such inquiry. When inspired and passionate teachers create an environment that fosters and nurtures engagement, questions like these evaporate from our schools and classrooms while our students deep dive into learning. Over the past fifteen years, the science of learning has provided many insights into how we think. Furthermore, these promising principles provide a starting point for inspired and passionate teachers to build the capacity in math and science learners to engage in higher order thinking. This workshop shows you how! Participants will experience targeted and specific strategies for finding the right level of rigor, striking the ideal balance between surface and deep learning, and identifying the perfect level of challenge for each student - regardless of their current level of learning. Practicing what we preach, participants will take part in an out-of-your-seat experience that models the promising principles from science of learning for deep thinking and understanding: simple to complex, concrete to abstract, and the idea that memory is the residue of thought.

This day consists of a morning session with all participants, and then two afternoon options.

Morning Session 8:30 - 11:30
Student data is only helpful if you have a system in place for working with your data. This 3-hour session will allow you the opportunity to map out your system and learn ways that PVAAS growth and student projection data can enhance each season of the school year. By the end of the session, participants will have created a plan for analyzing their data across the year.

(Lunch will be on your own)

This afternoon program is divided into two sessions. The first session will offer participants a hands-on opportunity to analyze their PVAAS projection data through a variety of lenses, and identify multiple uses within their own district/LEA or school. The second session will offer participants an opportunity for collaborative discussions about the use of PVAAS with their colleagues and the state PVAAS team.

Assessment takes a step toward equity by unveiling what students need at that moment in their educational path. Rethinking assessment means finding solutions that assist educators to know the student, promote high expectations for all, help students know their learning story, create flexible routines for personalized learnings, teach failure as a step in the learning process; and build a culturally responsive environment. In speedgeeking style, participants will discuss these topics and seek real solutions to revising the assessment system in their respective settings. Connections to CDTs, The Framework for Teaching, and UDL principles will be made.

This course looks to demonstrate the benefits of personal accountability, as a means of empowering themselves and fostering an environment of accomplishment and best in-class work cultures. An empowering framework will be introduced, along with interactive exercises and discussions, to help highlight key distinctions, definitions, relationships, behaviors, and expressions that will clarify accountability within themselves and their organization. Concurrently, the course helps identify primary barriers and inhibitors to achieving accountability which are addressed with guidance on thinking levels and insights to language, practices, and conversations.