Parents
Each of the following sessions can be presented as a keynote (recommended time 1 – 1.5 hours) or a workshop (recommended time 2 – 3 hours).
Drumming to the Beat of Different Marchers – Giving All Kids a Reasonable Chance at Success!
Based on her best-selling book, Drumming to the Beat of Different Marchers – Finding the Rhythm for Differentiating Learning, Debbie Silver offers her wisdom and humor to answer the question, how do parents deal with that kid who is “a little (or a lot) different”? She demonstrates how to capitalize on children’s strengths to elicit greater achievement gains and higher motivation. Dr. Silver provides insights into why kids respond the way they do and presents loads of ideas about how to provide every learner with a reasonable chance at success.
Time: 1-3 Hours
Fall Down 7 Times, Get Up 8: Teaching Kids to Succeed
Do ask ever yourself, “What can I do to motivate my child?” The real question, of course, is how to we get kids to motivate themselves? Based on extensive research for her new book, Fall Down 7 Times, Get Up 8: Teaching Kids to Succeed, Dr. Debbie Silver offers surprising new findings about fundamental ways we can change our interactions with children to help them become self-motivated. She demonstrates how to teach kids to tackle challenges rather than avoid them, and provides down-to-earth and often humorous real-life examples about fostering lifelong success. Come prepared to learn, to laugh, and to leave with a renewed perspective on parenting.
Time: 1-3 Hours
Practicing “Safe Stress!” Building Resiliency in Parents
Are all the demands on you as a parent driving you crazy? Do you feel that you have been stretched as thin as you’re going to stretch? For parents to have a positive impact on the lives of children, they must meet and take care of their own needs. This session offers practical ideas and tips for recognizing and dealing with anxiety and burnout. This empowering, interactive, and entertaining presentation helps parents discover the keys to honing their personal strength areas and to lowering stress. New research, audience participation, and humor are used to illustrate how parents can learn to reduce and manage unwanted stress. Learn to laugh, love, and live a more satisfying life.
Time: 1-3 Hours
The Power of Words – It Really IS About What You Say!
We’ve all heard the adage, “It’s not what you say, it’s how you say it.” This simply isn’t true. More and more research is pointing to the effect of specific words on student motivation and achievement. Appropriate feedback is essential to student growth. Erroneous praise can do more harm than good on long-term achievement. Come and learn about emerging research on attribution theory, self-fulfilling prophecy, “mind-sets,” and surprising insights about what truly motivates learners. You may never use compliments in the same way again.
Time: 1-3 hours
Teaching Kids to Thrive: Building the Other Essential Skills
Building the Other Essential Skills For kids to thrive in their frenzied, high-speed, hyper-connected environments, it is imperative for them to learn important competencies that go beyond academic standards. In their new book, Teaching Kids to Thrive: Building the Other Essential Skills for Success, Debbie Silver and co-writer, Dedra Stafford, explore topics such as mindfulness, controlling executive functions, student agency, resilience, perseverance, responsibility, integrity, empathy, and gratitude. In this thought-provoking presentation, Dr. Debbie Silver examines how parents can help students develop their social and emotional learning (SEL) skills to find success both now and in the future. Debbie combines meaningful points about the importance of Thrive skills with tips on how to seamlessly integrate SEL skills into daily family living.
It’s Not Just About the Bake Sales!
Today, more than ever, schools need parents as partners in the matter of educating their children. Dr. Debbie Silver offers proven procedures and basic, sensible methods for parents to engage with schools in ways that will best befinet their offspring. Dr. Silver also explores the dynamics of interpersonal relationships when dealing with school personnel. She offers a twist in perspective in that she taught for 30 years, but she also has five very different sons who went through the public school system with varying degrees of success. Debbie emphasizes the importance of assertiveness, persistence, diligence, and courtesy and models sample dialogues to demonstrate each.
“Why Can’t You Just Do It The Way I Tell You?”
Research tells us that children differ in the ways they best take in information and respond to their environment. Parents need to be aware of primary learning styles so they can enhance their children’s motivation as well as understand the different ways they and their children “make sense of their worlds.” While exploring their own learning styles, parents examine how to interact positively with children whose styles may be very dissimilar. Dr. Debbie Silver uses humor, role-playing, and anecdotes to demonstrate how best to deal with the varied learning styles of kids and the adults who work with them.