Program descriptions
Summer 2005 - July 11-22
Klaipėda Seminars
Administration | Computer Science | The Creative Arts | Elementary Education |
Mathematics | Back to Vilnius program |
Seminar Administration:
Program Director |
Gita Kupčinskas |
Program Administrator |
Giedrė Stankūnas |
Assistant Program Director |
Aldona Marijošius |
Evening Program Director |
Vida Anton |
General Lecturer |
Kate Moss |
Administrative Assistant |
Caroline Toy |
1. Administration: Education for Sustainable Development
2. Target Audience. This is a basic course for 25 school administrators in the first five years of their administrative assignment.
3. Brief Description: This program will incorporate the critical thinking process of analysis, synthesis, and implementation to increase theoretical and practical understanding of ESD. Administrators will participate in lecture-discussion sessions designed to enhance their competencies as human resources professionals. Topics include talking to children, counseling strategies, building safety plans, classroom management, and motivating teachers and staff through team building and participative leadership. The strand will also examine mental health issues, demonstrating how depression, social anxiety, and addiction can reduce learning and worker productivity. Other topics include life skills; understanding the concepts of child abuse and domestic violence; and therapies for social and behavioral problems.
4. Primary lecturers:
Computer Science: Distance Learning
1. Title: An Introduction to Distance Learning
2. Target Audience: This is a basic, introductory course for classroom teachers of all grade levels. Participants should have a basic understanding of computers, email, and the Internet. (The number of participants will depend on the number of computers available on site.)
3. Brief Description: The Internet offers new opportunities for distance education, and this two-week seminar provides an introduction to online teaching and learning. Topics include navigating online software, transferring classroom delivered curriculum to the online platform while maintaining a meaningful learning environment, creating effective online discussions, and using digital resources effectively. Demonstrations and hands-on activities prepare participants for the online teaching environment. As the Ministry of Education opens doors exploring this method of course delivery, participants will find themselves on the cutting edge of the future of Lithuania.
4. Primary Lecturers:
Sue Kohfeldt, Course Designer and Instructor, Michigan Virtual High School; English Teacher, Milan Area Schools, Michigan, USA
Lithuanian Consultants from the 2004-5 program: Regina Kaušienė, Sigitas Kirtiklis, and Jūratė Lisauskienė
The Creative Arts
1. Title: Integrating the Arts into the Academic Curriculum
2. Target Audience: This is a basic, introductory course for 20 classroom teachers of all grade levels. No previous experience is required.
3. Brief Description: This seminar explores techniques for integrating drama, music, story telling, shadow puppetry, and digital photography into the academic curriculum. By harnessing students creative, intellectual, and kinesthetic energies, these activities provide meaningful, deep learning opportunities for students. Integrating the arts promotes individuality, bolsters self-confidence, creates intrinsic motivation, and contributes to improved academic performance. The arts prepare students for the workforce by creating real-life opportunities to meet deadlines, problem-solve, and work collaboratively. Hands-on experiences include techniques for improving photography, creating slideshows in PowerPoint, and using both fiction and non-fiction narratives. As a final project, participants will design an arts-centered experience that can be used in their own classrooms. Participants will come away with the understanding that the arts can be used in all academic areas to teach students skills they will use throughout their lives.
4. Primary Lecturers:
Elementary Education: Science
1. Title: Elementary Science: Becoming Scientists through Inquiry Learning
2. Target Audience: This hands-on, basic science workshop will familiarize 20 elementary classroom teachers with inquiry-based learning and science experimentation.
3. Brief Description: An inquiry-based classroom is one that fosters exploration of ideas, experimentation, creativity, and lots of thinking. This workshop will support participants as they learn to incorporate inquiry-learning pedagogy into their classroom work with students. The inquiry element allows participants to experience the transition from structured, directed teaching approaches to more open-ended, inquiry-based strategies to teach elementary science. The basic principles of learning through investigation and process skill development will be emphasized. Participants will enrich their understanding of the inquiry process through formative assessment, science note-booking, and adapting curriculum toward student controlled learning.
4. Primary Lecturer:
Secondary Education: Mathematics
1. Title: Mathematics for Sustainable Development
2. Target Audience: This is a mathematics methods course for 25 middle and high school teachers.
3. Brief Description: Strand sessions will provide activities for teachers to prepare their students for a global environment sensitive to the social, economic, and environmental needs of the local community and the world around them. The Mathematics Strand will use a scientific device that gathers information about distance over time to model linear, quadratic, exponential and trigonometric equations to predict the future. We will demonstrate active learning with map coloring, paper folding, and mathematics applications in art, games, and contests. We will provide ideas for school math events that involve parents and the community in appreciating the importance of math in everyday activities.
4. Primary Lecturers:
1. Title: Building Community Capacity through Preventing and Addressing Loss
2. Target Audience: 25 teachers, special education teachers, administrators, social pedagogues, social workers, and concerned school personnel.
3. Brief Description: This two-week session will address the risks students and adults face from various losses they may experience such as divorce, suicide and other sudden deaths, and natural or man-made disasters. The instructors will introduce information on understanding, detecting, and preventing these risk factors. Participants will learn fundamental skills to assist others, including active listening, empathic communication, contracting, and follow-up. The group will practice techniques to respond effectively to commonly experienced losses and will learn about the factors that help develop individual and community resilience in the face of loss.
4. Primary Lecturers:
2. Target Audience: 25 teachers,special education teachers, administrators, social pedagogues, social workers, and others in child-caring agencies, residential centers, and schools.
3. Description: What happens outside the classroom has a profound effect on a childs ability to be successful within the classroom. Many children are labeled at-risk because of the adversities they face, including poverty, family discord, substance abuse, illness, and violence. The term risk implies a negative outcome, but research indicates that many at-risk children thrive when protective factors help them overcome adversity. Participants will study basic family dynamics and the principles of working with families; learn to identify risk and protective factors; and develop counseling skills that promote home/school collaboration. They will explore the influence of different parenting styles, handicapping conditions, membership in minority groups, socio-economic status, and physical or mental illness. They will learn effective discipline methods and identify ways to engage families.
4. Primary Lecturers:Week 1:
Week 2
- Katherine Dunlap, PhD, Clinical Associate Professor, School of Social Work, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, North Carolina, USA
- Jack M. Richman, PhD, Dean and Professor, School of Social Work, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, North Carolina, USA
- Joanne Caye, MSW, Clinical Lecturer, School of Social Work, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, North Carolina, USA
- Steve Hayes, Certified Social Worker, Guilford County Department of Social Services, Greensboro, North Carolina, US
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