Spring 2025 Offerings

This workshop introduces methods for building supportive, youth-centered relationships and prepares participants to ask effective questions, listen actively to youth, and encourage young people by tapping their intrinsic motivation.

Leadership and responsibility opportunities are not only foundational to high-quality programs, but are also important social emotional abilities for young people to build, develop, and practice. In this workshop, participants will explore how responsibility and leadership fit within a broader SEL framework and develop practical skills to model roles and responsibilities and support young people in leveraging their strengths, interests, and leadership style as part of groups and relationships. Participants will practice applying techniques learned to their programs with an eye toward facilitating young people's ownership.

Do you communicate with youth in a way that makes them feel supported and heard? This interactive workshop introduces various communication techniques that help you build more supportive, youth-centered relationships. Participants will learn how to ask more effective questions, to listen actively to youth, and offer youth encouragement rather than praise.

It is in struggle that we all grow. Helping support young people through that struggle helps promote that opportunity for growth and learning. In this workshop, participants will practice fostering growth mindset to help young people persevere when they struggle and explore strategies that staff can use to support them. Participants will identify nuances for how these strategies may apply to work with the young people they work with in balanced, equitable ways.

In this introductory workshop, attendees will explore a framework that is focused on harnessing Social and Emotional Learning efforts on change in practice. Workshop activities will engage participants in examining SEL efforts in the context of both the out-of-school time field’s commitment to Positive Youth Development and the research, resources, and supports driving adoption of SEL practices in staff practices, program management, and continuous quality improvement efforts.

You'll leave this workshop having identified ways to have a greater impact on SEL development of young people, wherever you work with them!

This workshop provides a six-step, youth-centered, nonthreatening way of resolving conflicts that occur in youth settings. It is a problem-solving approach that seeks to turn conflicts into learning opportunities.

ELIE Circle's 3-part Holistic Health Framework is specifically designed for community-based educational spaces to support the holistic health of both young people and staff. The framework consists of describing holistic health, barriers to holistic health, and holistic health tools. In this session, we will focus on the holistic health tool: evaluating curriculum/activities. This session will address PA BOOST’s Funding Priority, "Integrating trauma-informed approaches into the program curriculum and professional development curriculum of personnel who have regular contact with school-age youth."

This sessions is facilitated by Debralyn Woodberry-Shaw.