TLC Educational Solutions
Professional Development for Educators
Remote-Learning Sessions
TLC Educational Solutions remote-learning 90-minute sessions provide new opportunities for professional development in classroom management, engagement and motivation, formative assessment, and higher-order thinking. This format is intended to support individual or small-group attendance from multiple schools and districts. Teachers or groups of teachers with personal professional development plans or teams wanting to preview our workshops in planning whole staff or new teacher professional development are encouraged to attend.
School or district administrators may schedule one of the eleven remote sessions for their staff by contacting TLC Educational Solutions via the contact form on this site or by email at tlceducationalsolutions4U@gmail.com with a requested Session Title and preferred date and time of Session.
Teacher-Student Relationships: The Path to High Academic Achievement
As educators, we know the impact of strong, positive teacher-student relationships on behavior and its role in social-emotional learning. However, it is only when teachers maximize the value of those relationships by incorporating formative instructional relationship-building strategies that they take their students on the Path to High Academic Performance. Teachers can benefit from developing strong student-teacher relationship-building skills using TLC Educational Solutions’ Teacher-Student Relationship Strategies to support students' adjustment to school, contribute to the development of their social skills, foster resiliency, and promote high academic performance.
What Can Be Accomplished Through Student-Student Relationships
Students need to build relationships and work with a wide range of personalities and abilities to develop the skill to do that, Build Relationships. It does take planning by the teacher to incorporate effective instructional strategies and build student-student relationships in the classroom. TLC Educational Solutions’ Student-Student Relationship Strategies are credited with developing relationships outside a student’s “circle of friends”. Students need to learn about each other, what they have in common, and how they are different, to grow these relationships. They also develop skills in working collaboratively with others, giving & receiving feedback, and evaluating their learning. Some of the rewards of developing positive student-student relationships are classrooms in which behavior is easily managed, where peer learning occurs, and the teacher can spend more time providing individual student assistance.
End Teacher-Student Power Struggles
Students often find themselves in classrooms where teachers engage in power struggles with the students. Although the disruption in learning that is caused by power struggles is a serious problem, a deeper concern exists in the failure to model effective social-emotional behavior. Students need teachers to be models of controlling their emotions and behaviors for the students to learn how to handle challenging situations in their own lives. Teachers can end power struggles with TLC Educational Solutions’ Responding Right Strategies and avert confrontations with students while modeling respectful social-emotional behaviors for their students. Any conflict requires at least two people. A power struggle can be avoided if the teacher has the strategies to disengage the struggle.
Engage, Motivate, and Inspire Students
Engaging and motivating students daily can be a daunting task for some teachers. While much student motivation is intrinsic, the teacher plays a critical role in the engagement and motivation of his/her students. Engaged students tend to be motivated students. Engaged students cause fewer classroom disruptions and misbehavior thus improving the classroom climate for all students (let’s not forget the teacher). TLC Educational Solutions’ Strategies go one step farther than motivation and engagement. During this session, teachers learn to create classroom opportunities that are active, collaborative and promote student learning experiences that not only engage, and motivate, but also INSPIRE.
Make Every Student an Active Learner
As experienced adults, many of us have discovered coping mechanisms that allow us to survive stand and deliver sessions. However, most students have not developed this skill yet. Some students do find ways to become actively engaged, although not always in a positive and productive manner. Many students are respectfully passively disengaged. These students follow the teachers with their eyes and are seemingly “with it”, but their minds are elsewhere. They are not actively nor cognitively engaged. Still, others disengage disruptively. TLC Educational Solutions’ Active Learner Strategies actively and cognitively engage students. Keeping the student actively engaged is the key to student learning and good classroom management.
Involving Students in Their Learning with Actionable Feedback
Teachers work diligently to provide quality feedback to their students. Actually, they work too hard. For years, teachers have provided significant amounts of feedback to students, some of which is effective and some of which research indicates is actually counter-productive. Learning is impaired by certain types of feedback that do not provide opportunities for the student to grapple with the information/skill and learn it. TLC Educational Solutions’ Actionable Feedback Strategies engage teachers in directing their students’ energies toward actions that improve the quality of their work. Actionable Feedback requires less teacher work while producing significantly greater gains in student learning.
Engage Students with Effective Formative Feedback
Implementing Formative Feedback strategies provides an on-going essential check-point between instruction and learning for both teacher and students. Successfully implemented formative feedback informs teachers in making real-time adjustments in learning opportunities for their students. Likewise, it informs students allowing them to be actively involved in their own learning. TLC Educational Solutions’ Formative Feedback Strategies, when used throughout the learning process, result in increased student participation, decreased student disruptive behaviors, and increased student achievement.
Developing Skill in Self-Assessment, Peer Assessment, and Collaboration
Self-assessment strategies assist teachers in opening the door to opportunities for students to recognize what they need to focus on, overcome the challenges of complex tasks, and bring meaning to learning opportunities or experiences. Peer-assessment unleashes the power of students reviewing their peer’s products while communicating with and learning from each other. An atmosphere of collaboration and communication results from classroom partnerships in solving problems, creating products, and completing tasks. TLC Educational Solutions’ Self-assessment and Peer Assessment Strategies have a profound impact on student engagement, motivation, and self-esteem.
Bringing Higher-Order Thinking Skills Into the Classroom
Higher-Order Thinking means thinking that takes place in the higher levels of cognitive processing. To be successful in today’s world, students must master decision-making, prioritizing, strategizing, and collaborative problem-solving. How are higher-order thinking skills learned and developed? This is done by the teacher incorporating educational strategies and learning environments that facilitate the growth of student thinking skills in the areas of critical, logical, reflective, metacognitive, and creative thinking. TLC Educational Solutions’ Higher Order Thinking (HOT) Session gives educators the strategies needed to guide students to think in different ways and to be able to apply these skills in a variety of situations.
Teaching Higher-Order Thinking (H.O.T.) Skills
Teaching students to think with a higher level of cognition (Higher-Order Thinking) involves bringing about a change in the way students think, not simply infusing new information into their brains. Clear explanations and modeling from the teacher are important. Opportunities to answer questions about the content, discuss or debate its meanings and implications, make relevant decisions, or apply it in authentic problem-solving situations are essential. TLC Educational Solutions’ Higher Order Thinking Instructional Skills and Strategies provide teachers with the tools needed to move their students forward in gaining these HOT skills. As students’ Higher-Order Thinking Skills are developed they become more able to access these skills gained in one setting and apply them in different settings.
Thinking with Strategic Questioning
When teachers incorporate Higher-Order Thinking questioning into their daily lessons they unleash the potential to Boost Deeper Learning by motivating students to pay attention, develop their problem-solving skills, evaluate information & experiences, and lay groundwork for creative thinking. When educators also develop that questioning skill in their students, they ignite engaging discussions and develop both critical thinking and creative thinking skills. Students’ questions can make a powerful contribution to their learning processes while providing teachers with clear evidence of their students’ understanding. TLC Educational Solutions Strategic Teacher and Student Questioning Strategies optimize the use of questioning in the classroom.