PLEASE RE-REGISTER!
Due to technical difficulties, any registrations submitted before April 18 have been lost. We greatly apologize for this inconvenience. If you registered before April 18 for any of the sessions below, please re-register. Thank you for your understanding!
Join Us for a Spring Speaker Series Event: Self-Care, Compassion, and Connection
You are invited to attend our special Spring Speaker Series virtual event focusing on self-care, compassion, and connection. The series includes special guests from Pennsylvania and throughout the United States who will infuse inspirational storytelling and professional insights that will highlight resources, strategies, and tools to expand upon your services and support to students and families experiencing housing instabilities. This series is brought to you by the Pennsylvania Department of Education, Education for Children and Youth Experiencing Homelessness (ECYEH) program.
All sessions will occur virtually. Registration is free and now open for ALL sessions! You can register for all sessions, or pick and choose as you go.
Why should you attend?
- Receive a free resource with each session you attend.
- Reenergize with speakers’ personal accounts of uplifting resiliency in their own lives and in their work with young people.
- Gain new educational insights and practices to support holistic, wraparound services for students experiencing housing instability.
- Practice and engage with new tools, tips, and tricks you can use for both personal and professional growth.
Please remind me of upcoming sessions!
Upcoming Sessions:
Wednesday, May 18, 10 a.m.-12 p.m. ET (note special time)
Making Engagement Easy: The 5 Ingredients with Chad Littlefield
In this fun, interactive session, Chad Littlefield, TEDx speaker and bestselling author, will share practical tools on making engagement and connection easy, whether you’re in person or on your fourth Zoom call of the week (or day). You’ll walk away with numerous tips, tools, and techniques that you can implement within your own context immediately. Perhaps most importantly, this session is designed to be highly enjoyable—life is short!
During this session, you will:
- See and practice concrete tips and tools to make your virtual, hybrid, or in-person gatherings better
- Develop two key strategies to foster meaningful “connection before content”
- Leave re-energized at the possibility to gather with purpose—online or off
- Takeaway tips to redesign your content for contribution—not just consumption
Note: Being video and mic ready is highly encouraged, as intentional breakouts and interaction will be a key component of this session (i.e., wear pants). The first 100 registrants will receive Chad’s We! Engage Cards deck after the session.
Presenter: Chad Littlefield
Chad Littlefield is the co-founder and chief experience officer of We and Me, Inc., an organization whose mission is to create conversations that matter. Leaders call Chad when they want to amplify connection, belonging, and trust in their organization. Forbes calls Chad a “global expert on asking questions that build trust and connection in teams.” He is a TEDx speaker, author of the “Pocket Guide to Facilitating Human Connections,” and creator of We! Connect Cards™, which are now being used to create conversations that matter on campuses and companies in over 80 countries around the world. Most recently, Chad and his partner Will Wise launched their new book, “Ask Powerful Questions: Create Conversations that Matter,” now a #1 Amazon bestseller.
Chad has led workshops, trainings, retreats, and interactive keynotes at JetBlue, Starbucks, Conscious Capitalism International, Johnson & Johnson, Penn State, Notre Dame, George Mason University, Typeform, Goodwill, and dozens of conferences. Feel free to follow Chad via video beforehand through his interactive learning letter right here: www.weand.me/ideas
Register now!
Wednesday, May 25, 11 a.m.-12 p.m. ET
How to Humanize: The Questions You Should Be Asking Before You Tell Other People’s Stories with author Jessica Goudeau
It’s one thing to connect with another person–to sit with them and really listen to who they are, where they came from, and what motivates them. But how do you turn that conversation into a story that captures something essential for a wider audience? And how do you do that without damaging the people you’re writing about or falling back on problematic clichés? Those are just two of the many questions advocates who represent people in vulnerable situations must wrestle with. In a world that relies on sympathetic stories that grab an audience in order to market programs, raise funds, or increase community interest, the potential for harm to the real people at the heart of any good work remains high. In this practical session, advocate and author Jessica Goudeau provides the necessary tools to write engaging, ethically told narratives that transcend stereotypes and tropes. The first 100 registrants will receive Jessica’s book “After the Last Border.”
Presenter: Jessica Goudeau, Ph.D.
Jessica Goudeau is a journalist, professor, producer, and advocate. Her first nonfiction book, “After the Last Border: Two Families and the Story of Refuge in America,” won the J. Anthony Lukas Book Prize and a Christopher Award, was named a New York Times Editors’ Choice book, World Magazine’s Understanding the World Book of the Year, a Library Journal Best Social Science Book of the Year, and one of Chicago Public Library’s Best Books of 2020. She has been an as-told-to columnist about displaced people and those living in war zones for Catapult, and has written for The New York Times, The Atlantic, Washington Post, and Los Angeles Times. She is currently working on her next nonfiction book for Viking called “We Were Illegal.” She produced a mini-documentary series called “Ask a Syrian Girl” for Teen Vogue and “A Line Birds Cannot See,” a short documentary distributed by The New Yorker. She co-founded a nonprofit for Burmese refugee artisans in Austin, Texas, that successfully ended after seven years when the last artisan found full-time employment. She has a Ph.D. in literature from the University of Texas and currently teaches narrative nonfiction at Wilkes University.
About “After the Last Border”
“After the Last Border” situates a dramatic, character-driven story about Mu Naw (a Christian woman from Myanmar) and Hasna (a Muslim woman from Syria) within a larger history–the evolution of modern refugee resettlement in the United States, beginning with World War II and ending with current closed-door policies. The book reveals not just how America’s changing attitudes toward refugees has influenced policies and laws, but also the profound effect on human lives.
Register now!
Act 48 credits offered. Certificate of Attendance/Completion provided.