The Thriving Classroom: Creating the Supportive Environment

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Research shows that students learn best when they feel safe and connected to others. The 6 sessions in this series prepare you to create these types of learning environments in your classrooms, whether they are virtual or at school. You will explore the science of belonging and structure, leaving with a deeper understanding of how to support your students socially and emotionally. Expect to walk away with new, tangible tools for apply your lessons into your own teaching practice.

 

Included Sessions

This session introduces participants to foundational content for their journey through several sessions.

This session explores what it means to belong and provides techniques and activities for creating safe space and facilitating connections within a group. Participants will experience the concepts firsthand as they participate in an intentional progression of Outward Bound activities that promote belonging.

This follow-up to Facilitating Belonging: Exploring the Power of Connection prompts participants to look more deeply at how they can help their students develop a sense of belonging.  Drawing from participant’s personal experiences, research, and Outward Bound methodology, this session prepares educators to take a comprehensive approach to belonging in their classrooms.

When Outward Bound takes students into a new environment, whether it’s a ropes course or a remote forest, we utilize structure to help students feel safe and open to learning. With brain science as a guide, participants will discover how Outward Bound’s approach to structure can help them create supportive learning environments in their classrooms.

This session moves from theory to practice, giving participants the opportunity to examine their beliefs about structure and tangible practices to use in their classrooms.  Participants will leave with a plan for creating an optimal learning environment by using structure to help students feel safe and connected.

In this final session, participants reflect on the variety of approaches to social-emotional development they have explored in The Thriving Classroom and make tangible plans for implementing practices to engage and support the learners in their classrooms and support students’ social and emotional needs in their classrooms.