Editor’s Note: In this series, Mind in the Making facilitators share their experiences guiding workshops for parents, educators, caregivers and healthcare professionals throughout the Suncoast. In May, The Patterson Foundation funded training for 31 people through the Mind in the Making Facilitator Institute, which breaks down executive functions into seven essential life skills that help children achieve their goals.
Not all workshops are created equal. Most memories of a typical workshop bring back feelings of long days and being inundated with information that you might forget when you leave. This wasn’t the scenario for the educators who attended the recent Spanish Mind in the Making Module Training in Manatee County.
In May, the Mind in the Making Community Facilitator Institute, which was funded by The Patterson Foundation on behalf of the Suncoast Campaign for Grade-Level Reading, shared the seven essential life skills presented in Mind in the Making, a book by Ellen Galinsky.
As an extension of the facilitator institute in May, community members are now taking these seven essential skills and sharing them in workshops throughout the Suncoast region for the benefit of parents, educators, caregivers, and healthcare professionals.
The Spanish workshop participants were all home-visitation educators who share the goal of reinforcing their current knowledge while learning about the latest research and studies that teach us so much about the science of how children learn and develop.
It was through deep discussions, openly sharing ideas, and having a whole lot of fun that we were able to create a workshop that was not only informative and educational but also engaging and an impactful moment in the lives of all who participated.
Week after week we dove into each module to figure out how we could improve that particular life skill and the strategies that would allow us to teach that same skill to children.
In a fast-changing world, only our higher-order thinking skills can keep us aware, engaged, and growing. Mind in the Making author Ellen Galinsky teaches lessons learned over decades of psychological research about how humans learn throughout the lifespan.
The seven essential life skills are:
• Focus and Self-Control
• Perspective Taking
• Communicating
• Making Connections
• Critical Thinking
• Taking on Challenges
• Self-Directed, Engaged Learning
Understanding cultural diversity and how we could connect as a group brought us closer together. At the end of the workshop, everyone shared what they had learned and what they hoped to share with others in their own lives and in the communities they serve.
It was nothing short of spectacular- people coming together to learn and improve the way we can help each other and our community!
