Synergy Creative Learning Solutions, LLC

Focus and Flow for Teachers

Classroom behavior plays a major role, if not the central role, in propelling students toward growth, proficiency, and joy and confidence in life-long learning.  Students thus hold considerable collective power: student leadership can uplift whole classes through a year-long journey; chaotic classrooms, however, can overwhelm even the most passionate teachers and earnest principals. 3.8 million teachers serve in classrooms across the United States, and hundreds of thousands of them, at a minimum, work in routinely distraction-ridden and sometimes violent environments–where the learning process rarely achieves momentum.  The problem of distracting classroom behavior hurts all students, and it harms families and communities.  Our whole nation feels the strain that arises from this problem. 

Everyone involved deserves an effective, swift, kind, and equitable solution.  The module I present for teachers’ professional development training presents a rigorously research- and experience-tested method that can help teachers to experience sustainable positive changes in difficult classrooms, starting from the first day of implementation.

Teachers, let’s imagine: How would you like to have more copies of yourself than students for every classroom in the school you serve?  Think, for instance, if in classes of 25, 35, or even 45 students, you could benefit from the presence of 26, 36, and 46 teachers, respectively, with all of those versions of yourself working in tandem, at a consistently high level to move students toward growth, proficiency, and greater joy and confidence throughout the learning process.  In the method I describe, all but one of these “teachers” is a simple, digital version of your calmest and liveliest self, impossible to distract, vex, or deter in pleasantly working with students; and you can put these digital versions of yourself to work while you supervise and engage students individually, in small groups, and selectively in whole-class arrangements after rich preparation in a Focus and Flow session. Under such conditions, you can spend less time repeating yourself, competing for attention, and writing behavioral referrals, and you can invest much more time on the positive academic and social-emotional programs you have designed for your students.

Now think if you could claim these advantages for very little expense while raising morale and well-being for everyone in your classroom.  All of these outcomes are possible. I have tested these methods with a variety of groups in challenging classes. I am eager to share practical methods you can start to use right now to help you achieve advantageous changes.

I have taught in colleges, high schools, middle schools, and alternative school settings since the year 2000, working with a wide variety of students, ranging from foster youth and dropouts to Ivy-bound AP students to creative writers and future teachers in university programs.  I have devoted half of my career to working with students who had either given up on traditional schooling or had struggled in school after falling years behind in their language and literacy skills.  Those students tested me to and past my limits, and they taught me so much about the larger life of our shared communities.  I had to change my methods and myself in order to be better for them—in order to learn how to help them. 

After investing over 22 years in the field of education, I am ready to share the techniques that made life-enhancing differences for my students, for myself, and for the schools I have served.  You and your teaching colleagues, too, can apply the same techniques I developed in order to bring students in disruption-prone, even chaotic classrooms to experience focus and flow on a consistent basis, and with excellent health, social, emotional, and academic outcomes for everyone. 

The method I describe in the relatively brief CEU training module is cheap to apply, relatively easy to learn, highly flexible to unique settings and populations, down to the level of each individual student in any given classroom, and adaptable to each academic subject area, grouping strategy, and lesson plan. 

I have created a module for administrators, too, so that they can know exactly how the Focus & Flow method works, why you and your team can benefit the school by creating lessons with it, and how they can support you and your team of teaching colleagues to get stronger social, health, and learning outcomes for students throughout your school.  The module I’ve created for you, for teachers, will show you exactly how to master this curriculum design and communication system to bring peace and focus to your room, to work in a healthier environment, and to establish positive, observable growth and learning momentum in your classroom and school. 

Fellow teachers, like many of you, I have worked in extremely difficult environments, and I know that when student behavior and school climate become tense and unpredictable, academic learning and growth become very difficult to achieve.  Classroom chaos can be so intense and intractable that dedicated teachers and administrators often leave a job or even leave the field, and talented, idealistic would-be teachers steer away from careers in education when they learn of stressful classroom conditions. 

Life in our schools does not have to be this way.  These problems do not have to persist.  In the CEU module, I will show you how to amplify your classroom presence and effectiveness every day, with better professional and health outcomes for yourself to go with the gains your students make in the improved classroom environment you provide. Please connect to the module, and let’s begin.        

Focus and Flow for Administrators

Principals, many of you face unprecedented problems with classroom behavior that disrupts learning, harms teacher morale, worsens school climate, and deprives the majority of students of opportunities to learn and fulfill their potential. However, you also answer to the compelling mandate that every student must remain in class, in spite of distracting behaviors, in order to implement restorative practices. Insofar as you must balance conflicting priorities in promoting a rigorous culture of attention and learning, on one hand, while on the other hand building a culture of tolerance and nurture in response to serious disruption, you find yourselves managing a complex polarity. I write to you now, and offer the Focus and Flow module for administrators, in order to help you to resolve this vexing, ongoing polarity management problem. My goal is to help you to keep rigorous academic pursuits and ambitious restorative practices goals in steady alignment–for the betterment of all students and for the sake of improved morale and school climate.

The method I promote involves simulating the presence of multiple teachers in every complex classroom.  Think, for instance, if in classes of 25, 35, or even 45 students, your school could guarantee the presence of 26, 36, and 46 teachers, respectively, with all of those teachers working in tandem, at a consistently high level to move students toward growth, proficiency, and greater joy and confidence throughout the learning process.  Imagine if, on a daily basis, you could easily, thoroughly examine the lessons those teachers lead in order to gauge each class’s content, standards, and quality.  Under such conditions, you could spend less time handling behavioral referrals and more time on the positive academic and social-emotional programs you have designed with your teaching staff. 

You can claim these advantages at very little expense while raising morale and well-being throughout the school.  All of these outcomes are possible. I’m eager to share with you the simple, concrete, practical methods that you can start to use right now to bring about these advantageous changes.

I have taught in colleges, high schools, middle schools, and alternative school settings since the year 2000, working with a wide variety of students, ranging from foster youth and dropouts to Ivy-bound AP students to creative writers and future teachers in university programs.  I have devoted half of my career to working with students who had either given up on traditional schooling or had struggled in school after falling years behind in their language and literacy skills.  Those students tested me to my limits and past, and they taught me so much about the larger life of our shared communities.  I had to change my methods and myself in order to be better for them—in order to learn how to help them. 

After investing over 22 years in the field of education, I am ready to share the techniques that made life-enhancing differences for my students, for myself, and for the schools I have served.  Teachers in your school, too, can apply the same techniques I developed in order to bring students in disruption-prone, even chaotic classrooms, to experience focus and flow on a consistent basis, and with excellent health, social, emotional, and academic outcomes for everyone. 

The method I describe in the relatively brief CEU training module is inexpensive to apply, relatively easy to learn, highly flexible to unique settings and populations, down to the level of each individual student in any given classroom, and adaptable to each academic subject area, grouping strategy, and lesson plan.  I have created a module for teachers so that they can master the Focus & Flow method for their students.  This particular module is for you, the administrator, so that you can know exactly how the method works and how you can support your team to get stronger social, health, and learning outcomes for students throughout your respective schools.

Colleagues, like many of you, I have worked in extremely difficult environments, and I know that when student behavior and school climate become tense and unpredictable, academic learning and growth become very difficult to achieve.  These problems do not have to persist.  In the professional development CEU module, I will show you how to amplify the presence and effectiveness of every teacher and every teaching team in your building.  I’m eager to work with you.  Please connect to the module, and let’s begin.

Focus and Flow for Restorative Practices Coordinators

Restorative Practices Coordinators (RPCs) play unique, difficult, essential roles within a school. RPCs usually work directly with a school’s highest-needs students, and they form a special mutual bond with them. Schools employ a small number of people (often only one person) to handle RPC duties for the entire school population. RPCs thus need to find ways to be efficient without sacrificing–preferably while increasing–the quality of their service to challenging populations. The method I describe in this module can help RPC leaders reach their students with their idealistic energy, expert advice, presence, and care, all while saving energy and time and maintaining excellent boundaries in the one-of-a-kind relationships they form with students outside of normal classroom settings and routines.

While RPCs are not teachers or administrators in the usual sense, RPCs perform tasks proper to both teaching and administration. RPCs operate in a challenging, often solitary arena, usually without the consistent collegial connections with peers who play the same role, a feature of education work that sustains teachers and administrators who share with colleagues the same daily rhythms, rosters, schedules, and group routines that collectively bring a sense of order to each day. The Focus and Flow module for RPCs can help RPCs create concrete relationships with teachers and administrators, formalize a restorative curriculum for resistant and high-needs students, and infuse literacy and emotional intelligence training into their communications with students assigned to work in RP centers.

Working from an island to ensure that the school carries out its restorative practices mission, RPCs carry the banner of a school administration’s policies on behavior, discipline, and counseling strategy while working with teachers on an irregular schedule to coordinate plans for students who have been assigned work-time outside of the classroom. The Focus and Flow method gives RPCs an excellent option for bringing structure, calmness, and purpose to students’ work time away from the classroom, and it is a tool that RPCs can use in tandem with teachers and administrators to immerse students in a more predictable environment that settles students’ attention and directs it into academic and health-promoting activity.