Empower your students to make school a source of meaning, vitality, and community. Two-for-One Teaching offers 30 protocols, derived from contextual behavioral science, that embed student-centered, equity-driven social-emotional learning (SEL) into every stage of an academic unit. Transform students' psychological experience of school by turning their lessons, assignments, and assessments into opportunities for them to explore and enact the values they want to live by.
Rely on this resource for meaningful learning in the classroom:
- Understand what values are, why students need to discover their own values, and how choosing values-consistent actions can make school more meaningful and satisfying.
- Receive 30 customizable protocols rooted in psychological research that simultaneously foster academic and social-emotional growth.
- Discover the six stages of an academic unit and how to integrate SEL into every stage.
- Learn classroom strategies that affirm students' identities and experiences, foster meaningful and equitable participation, and build a sense of belonging at school.
- Go beyond “voice and choice” by helping students use their voices to say what matters and make choices consistent with their values.
Contents:
Introduction: Valuing Student Values
Part I: Foundations
Chapter 1: Creating a Culture of Willingness
Chapter 2: Using the Science of Empowerment
Part II: Protocols
Chapter 3: Protocols to Prepare for Learning
Chapter 4: Protocols to Explore New Material
Chapter 5: Protocols to Review the Material
Chapter 6: Protocols to Create Work Product
Chapter 7: Protocols to Refine Work Product
Chapter 8: Protocols to Reflect on Learning
Conclusion: Create Learning Moments That Matter
References and Resources
Index
Lauren Porosoff has been an educator since 2000, most recently teaching middle school English at the Ethical Culture Fieldston School in the Bronx, New York. At Fieldston, she also served as a grade-level team leader and a diversity coordinator, and she led curriculum mapping and professional development initiatives. Before working at Fieldston, Lauren taught middle school history at the Maret School in Washington, DC; and second-, fifth-, and sixth-grade general studies at the Charles E. Smith Jewish Day School in Rockville, Maryland.
Helping students make their work meaningful has been a constant in Lauren's teaching practice, and that interest led her to learn about methods of values-guided behavior change in Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, Compassion-Focused Therapy, Relational Frame Theory, Motivational Interviewing, and other applications of Contextual Behavioral Science. Informed by research and practices from these fields, Lauren developed applications for the classroom, such as the processes for curriculum design she describes in her book Curriculum at Your Core: Meaningful Teaching in the Age of Standards, and the strategies for centering student values in EMPOWER Your Students: Tools to Inspire a Meaningful School Experience, a book she coauthored with Jonathan Weinstein.
Lauren has written for AMLE Magazine, Independent School, Phi Delta Kappan, the PBS NewsHour blog, Rethinking Schools, and Teaching Tolerance about how students and teachers can clarify and commit to their values at school.
To learn more about Lauren's work, visit EMPOWER Forwards (empowerforwards.com) and follow her on Twitter at @LaurenPorosoff.
Jonathan Weinstein, PhD, is a clinical psychologist with the US Department of Veterans Affairs. He serves as the suicide-prevention coordinator at the Veterans Affairs Hudson Valley Health Care System and holds an appointment as assistant professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at New York Medical College. Prior to serving in suicide prevention, Dr. Weinstein served as the posttraumatic stress disorder and substance-use disorders coordinator at the James J. Peters Veterans Affairs Medical Center in the Bronx, New York. Before working for Veterans Affairs, Dr. Weinstein served in a variety of mental health and education roles in New York, Baltimore, and Mississippi stretching back to 2000.
Given his own experiences as a special-needs student, Dr. Weinstein has had an enduring interest in the science of empowerment. As an early contributor to the development of Relational Frame Theory and Acceptance and Commitment Therapy at the University of Mississippi Center for Contextual Psychology, Dr. Weinstein studied behavior analysis and its applications for behavior therapy, social categorization, and education. More recently, he and his coauthor adapted elements of contextual behavioral science for teachers to empower their students. He has also applied this work to empower veterans who are at high risk for suicide. In addition to coauthoring EMPOWER Your Students, Dr. Weinstein's publications appear in Behavior and Social Issues, The Psychological Record, and Salud y Drogas.
To learn more about Dr. Weinstein's work, visit EMPOWER Forwards (empowerforwards.com) and follow him on Twitter at @jhweinstein.
To book Lauren Porosoff or Jonathan Weinstein for professional development, contact pd@SolutionTree.com.