School Environments
Collaborate with The Institute of CGE to enhance your school culture and create calm classrooms.
The Institute of CGE brings together professionals with extensive experience in private, public, residential and alternative schools. We are proud to introduce the Attuned School Approach, a social-emotional learning (SEL) model that combines three evidenced-informed methodologies while addressing the key components of SEL for the school community, starting with the adults. We can help your school become a more collaborative, attuned and resilient community.
Schools don’t always want a one-time professional development training. They want schoolwide transformation and a partner to provide guidance and support along the way. By choosing the Attuned School Approach and collaborating with The Institute, your organization is guided through the selection of a guiding team that participates in dynamic and tailored working sessions to set culture change in motion. Most critically, they receive ongoing coaching and support, leading to a more Attuned School Community, where learning is collaborative and brain function optimized.
When trained in the Attuned School Approach,
Your community is Aware
Teachers, parents and students need to be aware of their emotional state and learn to regulate that state to optimize their brains and bodies for success at the task at hand—relating, teaching, parenting, managing stress, problem-solving, decision-making, de-escalating and the like.
Your community is Attuned
Once we are emotionally well-regulated, we can attune or empathize with each other, access the parts of our brains designed for critical thinking and choose the most effective strategy to meet the school’s and each other’s needs. We will be more successful in creating the best school culture when we are in well-regulated emotional states.
Your community is Aligned
School cultures are defined by the policies and practices the staff and students at the school utilize. The Attuned School Approach believes there needs to be alignment between the chosen priority principles for optimal school cultures and the policies and practices the school implements. The Institute invites the school community to reflect on what the priority principles are to create optimal learning environments and, over time, to align school practice with them.
These aims are achieved through an immersive training experience that teaches about the impacts of chronic stress, the importance of emotional regulation and how to avoid getting stuck in a fixed mindset, by choosing a growth mindset instead. Howard Glasser’s Nurtured Heart Approach is a key element of what you will learn, as are Leah Kuypers’ The Zones of Regulation and Carol Dweck’s Mindset: New Psychology of Success.
The following professional development options are components of the Attuned School Approach and can be offered individually as stand-alone courses varying in length from thirty minutes to five hours.
The good news? If a full training program is not in your current plan, your school may opt for individual or consultations.
Practical Applications of the Attuned School Approach
Optimizing our Brains & Bodies for Creating Well-Regulated & Resilient School Communities
(Recommended Audience: All School Leadership and Staff)
This training provides an overview of the essential components of the Attuned School Approach. It starts with understanding what it means to be attuned, aware and aligned as a school community around principles of being trauma-informed, followed by an understanding the importance of staff self-care. We then provide an overview of Zones of Regulation and teach how to create Reset Strategy Plans for staff and students. School personnel learn to attune to students according to their zone, using the Nurtured Heart Approach to “feed the flowers and not the weeds.” Our team will review the importance of staff debriefing around negative and positive situations.
Creating a Positive and Motivating Work Culture in Schools
(Recommended Audience: All School Leadership and Supervisors)
Recruiting and retaining the best staff is crucial for success in any organization, but the stress of the work can negatively affect the morale and overall work culture, leading to poor work performance and high turnover. More than ever, all staff and leaders—both formal and informal—need to be focused on creating a positive and motivating work culture. Borrowing from the work of Stephen Covey, John Kotter, Howard Glasser and Marcus Buckingham, this training provides an overview of the five foundational intentions for leaders that will contribute to positive and motivating work cultures for all staff in the school environment.
Understanding the Impact of Chronic Stress on Students & Teachers: Strategies to Build Resilience & Maintain Emotionally Well-Regulated Classrooms & School Culture
(Recommended Audience: All School Staff and Parents)
All people get stressed out from time to time, but when that stress is happening all the time, we move from thriving mode to survival mode. This training will describe what the stress response is, what trauma and chronic stress are and how our brains, bodies and the lens through which we see ourselves and others changes and negatively affects our ability to respond effectively. This awareness enables us to learn and use stress-management strategies and better attune to each other and ourselves. The overall goal of this training is to help grow awareness, attunement and alignment to achieve optimum school cultures for all.
The Nurtured Heart Approach®: Growing Greatness in our Students & Ourselves
(Recommended Audience: All School Staff, Parents and Students)
The Nurtured Heart Approach is a set of trauma-attuned principles and strategies designed to bring out the best in our staff and our students. Stand 1 teaches us to do our best to stop rewarding undesired behaviors with our attention and connection. Stand 2 teaches us various ways to grow the desired behaviors and qualities in others and ourselves. Stand 3 teaches us the importance of clear rules and limits and how to deliver them without energy. Teachers know the qualities and behaviors that make for a successful student (Flowers), and which do not (Weeds). This approach will show you how to grow the flowers and not the weeds to grow positive qualities in your students, staff, and yourself.
Getting into the Zone for Success: Utilizing Reset Strategy Plans (RSPs)
(Recommended Audience: All School Staff, Parents and Students)
Humans make better decisions and have better results when they are in calm well-regulated emotional states. We are all exposed to moments of high stress and sometimes for extended periods. When we feel this way, we are ready to fight, flight or freeze and are not as prepared to use critical thinking skills. This training will focus on becoming aware of the detrimental effects of stress on mood and decision-making and guide in the creation of an individualized Reset Strategy Plan (RSP) to effectively manage stress and return to a better mind/body state.
Transforming Your Critical Inner Voice: Moving from a Fixed to a Growth Mindset
(Recommended Audience: All School Staff, Parents and Students)
The voice we listen to the most is the one that talks to us in our head—the inner voice, which turns its attention from the world around us to ourselves. It can be kind and compassionate and sometimes critical. This critical inner voice has a significant impact on our mood, our relationships and our ability to be resilient. This training will demonstrate the difference between your inner voice and the “real” you, while identifying the detriments of a fixed mindset and the benefits of a growth mindset. The Nurtured Heart Approach will be used as a methodology for transforming your critical inner voice to a more growth mindset orientation.
Preventing Burnout and Creating Energy in Your Life
(Recommended Audience: All School Staff, Parents and Students)
Stress has become ever-present in our world. This training will focus on defining burnout and the importance of self-care, as well as provide a variety of strategies to effectively reduce stress. Utilizing a tool called the “Energy Exchange Pie Chart,” individuals will identify the energizing and draining components of one’s life and start to plan to grow elements that energize life and decrease those that don’t.
Getting Unstuck: Utilizing Motivational Interviewing to Grow Personal Motivation in Others
(Recommended Audience: All School Staff and Parents)
This training provides an overview of the key concepts in Motivational Interviewing (MI), based on the book of the same name by William R. Miller and Stephen Rollnick. MI is a way of being with others that constitutes a collaboration without pushing, directing or power struggles. The focus of the collaboration is to assist the person to resolve ambivalence towards change with MI’s four processes: Engagement (listening empathically without judgment); Focusing (helping the person identify what they want different in their lives); Evoking (asking questions to help the person explore the landscape of their feelings and perceptions around the area of change and discover clarity around what’s important and grow their self-efficacy to achieve that goal); and Planning (making individualized plans for the change journey).
Calming the Storm: Twelve Effective Strategies for De-Escalating Students
(Recommended Audience: All School Staff and Parents)
The goal of this training is to add to an educator or parent’s toolbox the skills designed to stay out of power struggles, minimize escalation of defiance or opposition and promote cooperation and movement towards better-regulated mind and body states.
Engaging the Hard to Engage Adolescent
(Recommended Audience-All School Staff & Parents)
Adolescence is a time of identity formation, rebellion, and conflict with adults and authority figures. Sometimes just getting a friendly conversation started can be a challenge. This training will provide an understanding of why it makes sense for adolescents to behave this way. It also describes the three conditions that must be created to engage the adolescent in a meaningful way. Ten tips for successful engagement and techniques for dealing with the five most common roadblocks to relationship-building are also shared. Participants will engage in role-plays and experiential learning around the seven most common ways that we inadvertently shut off communication with an adolescent.
Moving Away from Punitive Practices: An Introduction to Restorative Circles
(Recommended Audience: All School Staff and Parents)
This training supports the development of restorative circles in school, classroom and home settings through role-playing. Restorative Practices are a framework for building community and for responding to a norm violation through authentic dialogue, moving towards mutual understanding and making things right. Restorative perspectives are a significant shift away from punishment-oriented, zero-tolerance practices and represent a movement towards inclusionary and collaborative efforts towards restoration.
Growing Resilience in Your Children: A Three-Session Parent Training Series
This three-part series is designed to help parents grow resiliency skills in their children. They are offered virtually in the evening over three weekly, two-hour classes. The sessions will include lectures, discussion, videos and small group activities.
Session 1: Introduction to the Nurtured Heart Approach.
The Nurtured Heart Approach is a set of trauma-attuned principles and strategies designed to bring out the best in our children and ourselves. Stand 1 teaches us to do our best to stop rewarding undesired behaviors, habits or traits with our attention and connection. Stand 2 teaches us various ways to grow the desired behaviors and qualities in our children and ourselves. Stand 3 teaches us the importance of clear rules and limits and how to deliver them unenergetically. Parents know the qualities and behaviors they want their children to develop and live (Flowers) and which do not (Weeds). This approach will show you how to feed the flowers and not the weeds to grow the greatness in our children and ourselves.
Session 2: Understanding the effect of stress on our children and ourselves.
Learning ways to better regulate our emotions and optimize our brains to enhance parent effectiveness and parent-child relationships. Parents make better decisions and have better results with their children when they are in calm well-regulated emotional states. We are all exposed to moments of high stress and sometimes for extended periods. When we feel this way, we are ready to fight, flight or freeze and are not as prepared to use critical thinking skills. This class will focus on becoming aware of the detrimental effects of stress on mood and decision-making and will guide individuals in creating an individualized Reset Strategy Plan to effectively manage stress and return to a better mind-body state so we can be at our best as parents.
Session 3: Using Nurtured Heart Approach to build a Growth Mindset and build resiliency skills in our children.
We all have a voice in our heads that is critical and one that is supportive. When the critical voice dominates it compromises our sense of self-efficacy and confidence. This training will focus on learning about our inner critic and how to transform that voice by moving from a fixed to a growth mindset.