Work Overview
LATEST PROJECTS
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APPLIED KNOWLEDGE CONCEPTS
Anti Bias Training
Primary & Secondary Teachers, Administrators and Staff
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Applied Knowledge Concepts provides Leadership, Coaching, Management and Academic services and is a Service Disabled Veteran Owned and Minority owned small business venture.
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Our team of specialists have over 160 years combined experience implementing thousands of measurably effective workshops, seminars and courses for Government and Private sector clients.
Our facilitators specialize in competency-based leadership development along with other services to include Interviewing Training, Executive Coaching, Personality Assessments, Mentoring Program Design etc. We can tailor programs to your organization’s specific needs.
Culturally Responsive Pedagogy
This professional development takes the big picture work in culturally responsive pedagogy and offers a set of critical practices to help educators effectively implement culturally responsive components in their own practice. This workshop is designed to help classroom teachers and building-level administrators take action and create the conditions that bring seven main components of Culturally Responsive Pedagogy to life:
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Building and drawing upon intergroup awareness, understanding and skills
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Creating classroom environments that reflect diversity, equity and justice
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Engaging families and communities in ways that are meaningful and culturally competent
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Encouraging students to speak out against bias and injustice
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Making the implementation of anti-bias curriculum part of larger individual, school and community action
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Supporting students’ identities and making it safe for them to fully be themselves
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Using instructional strategies that support diverse learning styles and allow for the development of critical thinking skills.
Facilitating Critical Conversations
This interactive workshop will help teachers explore strategies for facilitating critical conversations with students and colleagues. Participants will engage in personal reflection and examine some common beliefs and biases that can affect their ability to engage in productive conversations. They will learn strategies for creating supportive learning environments that encourage risk-taking during critical conversations. Finally, they’ll investigate methods of teaching about implicit bias, race and other critical topics.
Family and Community Engagement
Strong communication between school staff and families is important in any school and has special relevance for schools committed to anti-bias education. This interactive workshop outlines recommendations to help schools support teacher-family relationships built on respect and trust, as well as connect parent engagement strategies to student learning objectives. Learn how to implement culturally relevant family engagement strategies that communicate understanding and value to students and families. Participants will also consider how valuable local resources can enhance teaching and learning on social justice topics.
Inclusive Practice
Strategies for reaching marginalized students that rely solely on individual interventions give educators permission to ignore systems of inequality, rely on stereotypes and focus on deficits. This interactive professional development addresses how to move from a deficit-based approach to an equity literacy framework for meeting the needs of students and families from all marginalized identity groups, including those experiencing poverty. Using a shared definition of equity, participants will work together to define a shared vision of equity in their school(s), uncover existing inequities, devise a plan to disrupt those current inequitable policies and practices and draft a plan to create and sustain equitable policies and practices for all students and their families that move from mitigative short-term changes to transformative long-term solutions.
Social Justice Teaching 101
This interactive introductory workshop to Teaching Tolerance helps teachers learn how to effectively implement anti-bias instruction in their classrooms. Participants will explore practical strategies for accomplishing academic and social-emotional goals side by side. They will discuss learning conditions that honor all identities and reflect diversity, equity and justice. After exploring ready-to-use materials, applying rigorous standards and planning ways to incorporate research-based teaching practices, participants will leave the workshop with ideas and tools for transforming their classrooms and schools.
Teaching Hard History: American Slavery
In this interactive workshop, teachers will explore Teaching Tolerance’s framework Teaching Hard History: American Slavery and engage in inquiry-based lessons to deepen their content knowledge of this topic. Participants will increase their capacity to teach effectively about American slavery by reflecting on and discussing with other educators how assumptions and biases may affect their approach to the subject. Through collaborative discussions, teachers will address some common concerns that derail teaching about slavery and share ideas about how to create a classroom culture conducive to addressing challenging-yet-essential historical information and connecting it to the present. Finally, educators will leave the workshop with content, ideas and tools to help them facilitate deeper student understanding of this complex and foundational topic.
Behavior Management Strategies and Systems
This workshop explains the intersections of school discipline and school climate, challenging participants to critically examine their relationships with their students, assess current discipline practice and policy and identify places where we might adopt strategies that fully support students staying in the classroom and in school. This workshop will identify responsive discipline practices that improve school climate and keep students learning. Identify ways for teachers, counselors, principals, district leaders and school resource officers to shift their responses in to a more reflective and responsive approach to school discipline, learning how to shift from ineffective punitive practices to more responsive approaches to managing student behavior while examining discipline policies and data.
Intercultural Development Inventory (IDI)
Using the Intercultural Development Inventory (IDI) supports developing and sustaining an intercultural approach to meeting and exceeding organizational goals. This estimate outlines the use of the IDI to assess and provide group and individual professional development and coaching
IDI Assessment:
The course utilizes the Intercultural Development Inventory (IDI) assessment tool to provide team members with 360-degree feedback on their personal and organizational areas of strength and areas for growth. This piece is imperative to effective intercultural work. The instrument is designed to focus on specific patterns of human and/or organizational behavior in order to assist in better understanding the dynamics of interactions. The best assessments are those that provide relevant data upon which training and development can be based. The course will administer, interpret, and provide group/individual feedback to team members.
The Tool:
The IDI is a 50-item, theory-based, statistically reliable, and cross-culturally valid measure of intercultural competence. The IDI assesses the major stages of intercultural competence as conceptualized in Milton Bennett’s Developmental Model of Intercultural Sensitivity (DMIS) and Mitchell Hammer’s Intercultural Development Continuum (IDC). The instrument is easy to complete, and it can generate a graphic profile of an individual’s or group’s predominant orientation of intercultural development and textual interpretation of that state and associated transition issues. As a theory-based assessment, the IDI meets rigorous scientific criteria for a valid psychometric instrument. The IDI measures cognitive structure rather than attitudes. Thus, the instrument is less susceptible to situational factors, is more stable and is more generalizable than other instruments commonly used.
The Goal:
The IDI can be used for a wide variety of purposes — org-wide needs assessment, program evaluation, teambuilding, individual goal setting and coaching.