Fall 2025 Offerings

Do you communicate with youth in a way that makes them feel supported and heard? This interactive workshop introduces various communication techniques that help you build more supportive, youth-centered relationships. Participants will learn how to ask more effective questions, to listen actively to youth, and offer youth encouragement rather than praise.

This workshop provides a six-step, youth-centered, nonthreatening way of resolving conflicts that occur in youth settings. It is a problem-solving approach that seeks to turn conflicts into learning opportunities.

The SEL competence and well-being of youth workers is necessary for creating programs where young people see social skills modeled and discussed. This introspective workshop is designed to support youth workers with their own ongoing social development. Participants will explore their personal identity, strengths, and values in social and professional settings, and how that influences their approach to communication, teamwork, responsibility, and leadership. Participants will identify ways to grow their social competencies and how that can impact their work with young people.

This workshop is a part of the SEL series and is a pre-requisite for taking Fostering Teamwork and the Promoting Responsibility & Leadership workshops.

Teamwork – for some of us the word generates excitement, for some of us dread. With time, support, and facilitation youth workers can help young people have both strong teambuilding skills and a sense of trust and group identity. Participants in this workshop will learn and apply group norm building and facilitation techniques. Time will be spent applying and scaffolding techniques to support young people in managing their communication styles and applying reframing conflict skills.

This workshop is part of the SEL series and has a prerequisite: FASA of Cognitive Development that must be completed prior to taking this workshop. Fostering Teamwork is the prerequisite for Promoting Responsibility & Leadership.

This workshop provides practical and fun tools for engaging young people in the Plan-Do-Reflect learning process. It focuses on establishing clear, comprehensive plans at the beginning of an activity and reflecting on the results and process after the activity has been completed.

This workshop helps staff establish appropriate structure (routines and rituals) and clear limits (norms and behavior guidelines), fostering a feeling of fairness and predictability that supports young people to explore and express themselves in a conducive learning environment.

This workshop guides staff to support young people by providing opportunities for voice and choice. With proper support and scaffolding over time, young people grow in responsible decision-making and leadership.

Leadership and responsibility opportunities are not only foundational to high-quality programs, but are also important social emotional abilities for young people to build, develop, and practice. In this workshop participants will explore how responsibility and leadership fit within a broader SEL framework and develop practical skills to model roles and responsibilities and support young people in leveraging their strengths, interests, and leadership style as part of groups and relationships. Participants will practice applying techniques learned to their programs with an eye toward facilitating young peoples’ ownership.

This workshop is part of the SEL series and has two prerequisites: FASA of Cognitive Development & Fostering Teamwork that must be completed prior to taking this workshop.