2024 CDE Fall Conference: Creating a Landscape of Wellbeing and Belonging

Executive functioning skills are necessary for success in life and academics. This workshop will demonstrate how executive functioning impacts academics, social and emotional wellbeing, and mental health. Participants will simulate the hardships and frustrations of having an executive functioning deficit and leave with strategies to increase confidence, independence, and the mental health of their students. Investing in students' executive functioning skills can benefit school professionals by reducing stress, improving wellbeing, and fostering a more successful learning experience for all. We invite you to our interactive workshop to problem solve, collaborate and find solutions to the everyday challenges executive functioning deficits bring.

Session Objectives:
1) Discover research-based brain development milestones and best practices for supporting executive functioning skills for neurotypical and neurodivergent thinkers.
2) Experience firsthand why students with executive dysfunction can struggle obtaining academic and emotional expectations.
3) Walk away with three easy-to-use strategies that can be implemented right away.

When Summit County, Colorado was facing a community crisis that was driving its workforce away, Theatre SilCo launched the Vivo program in order to support local families. This is a unique, no cost program that currently supports over 100 families through dual language theater education. The answer to getting it off the ground? A stellar collaborative team and forming viable and sustainable partnerships. During this session, Chris and Sara will walk you through how this initiative came about, how the team found the necessary funding to start and sustain it, and the significant impact on its community.

Session Objectives:

We hope our peers will gain some tools to make a community impact through what we know how to do: theatre!Theatre SilCo would like to serve as a resource to other non-profits who are struggling to or wondering how to want to make a local impact and serve a community through their art form.

Flying Pig Farm (FPF) provides a community learning space in which people can reclaim their relationship with food and land. We take a multi-faceted, community-based approach to teaching young people a sense of belonging to their community, their environment, and soil-based food cultivation. Through our partnership with MSSD14, we've been able to serve over 1200 students a year with academically integrated farm activities.

Session Objectives:

1. Provide a working model for community collaboration
2. Demonstrate the success and joy of land-based learning
3. Coach participants on how to integrate our methods at their schools

Poetry is more than the literary design to comply to a set of rules or poetic styles. It is undeniably the outpouring of the individual. When participants of poetry have the opportunity to elevate their voice, inevitably there is a stronger sense of self. In addition, communication skills increase allowing the participant of poetry to experience higher levels of positive social interactions. There is a significant amount of data/research that highlights the benefits/positive impact of SEL within poetry. If this is the case, we should see evidence of intentional poetry throughout schools. This presentation combines various poetic styles and music activities to promote cultivate equity, SEL, culturally responsive practices and leadership skills.

Session Objectives:

• The participant will learn poetry strategies to promote SEL. 
• The participant will write a poem implementing poetic techniques. 
• The participant will review research on SEL within poetry and develop an action plan to best support students' interests/areas of support.