Artful Design and Facilitation

WHY YOU WANT TO ATTEND

Have you ever walked away from a PD session feeling energized and brimming with ideas? This workshop will teach you how to design adult learning experiences to leave your participants feeling the same! 

In this three-day workshop, you will learn the foundational habits of Artful Design and Facilitation and what it takes to create adult learning spaces where participants feel seen, cared for, challenged, and excited to learn. Drawing from Elena Aguilar and Lori Cohen’s book, The PD Book: 7 Habits that Transform Professional Development, you’ll learn a process to determine the purpose of your sessions, how to design agendas with clear outcomes and principles of adult learning in mind, how to facilitate intentionally, and how to assess learning for impact. You’ll also be guided in a deep exploration of how to respond to your own emotions when they come up while facilitating PD, how to respond to the emotions of others, and an exploration of how to navigate complex power dynamics. 

This workshop is right for you if:

• You struggle with disengaged, resistant learners
• You want to design more engaging learning experiences that transform organizational culture 
• You want people to love attending PD and to see their learning result in a change of practice 

Move beyond the book:
If you want to design and facilitate transformative PD, you need to do more than just read a book. You need a community of like-minded leaders with whom you can discuss and process the new ideas; you need to see the PD strategies modeled; you need guided practice in the skills required to design and facilitate transformative PD; and you need the lived experience of being a participant in a transformative PD session – you need to know what transformative PD feels like from the participant end. This is what you’ll get in this workshop. 

New and experienced coaches, teacher leaders, administrators, and facilitators will acquire new tools and strategies, and gain invaluable insight into transformative professional development.

More than skill building:
This workshop also provides you with an opportunity to connect with and learn from leaders around the world. As you process your learning and practice new strategies together, you’ll experience the potential of transformative PD to create healthy, resilient communities. You’ll be amazed by the connections you will make in a short period of time and the inspiration you’ll find in this experience. You’ll return to your organizations feeling energized and hopeful about what can be done in schools, and about your potential for impact.  
New in 2023:
Based on feedback from learners, we’ve expanded our Artful Design workshop to include a deep dive into navigating power dynamics, understanding how to work effectively with adult learners, and dealing with emotions – both your own and others’. These explorations include opportunities to practice the key skills required for these abilities.

hear from Elena

WHAT YOU’LL LEARN

• How to respond to strong emotions–in yourself and in others, and how to engage emotions to deepen learning
• Transformative strategies to navigate power dynamics 
• How to understand and meet the needs of adult learners
• Novel ways to refine your communication skills
• New methods to assess the impact of professional learning

HOW YOU’LL SPEND YOUR TIME

• Self-Paced Prework [~3-4 hours]
  • Your learning begins before your workshop session with a self-paced exploration of foundational knowledge and tools essential for designing and leading transformational professional development. 
• Live Learning [6 learning blocks, 12 hours total over three days]
  • This workshop is a 3-day learning experience, each day consisting of two 2-hour learning blocks with an hour break in between. 
  • This workshop is highly interactive, allowing you the ability to quickly build skills and synthesize learning through role-play practice, designing agendas, and action planning.

WHO SHOULD ATTEND

Anyone who designs and facilitates adult learning for schools, districts, or educational-adjacent organizations

WHAT’S REQUIRED

All participants must have their own copy of The PD Book: 7 Habits That Transform Professional Development (not included in the registration fee). The book is required for the prework and virtual session.

YOUR INVESTMENT

• Individual: $750
• Group of 6-29 paying together: $650
• Group of 30 or more: Contact us with the number of people

WHAT ELSE YOU NEED TO KNOW

All sessions will be recorded in the event you cannot make a session or if you would like to rewatch them at a later time. Participants have access to content for 30 days after the last session to help supplement learning.

What People Say

Great opportunity to leaders at all levels to sharpen facilitation and meeting design skills. I enjoyed the facilitators and learned new concepts.

Jennifer A.

This learning experience has built my confidence in planning and presenting PD. I didn’t feel like I had to reinvent the wheel, rather I feel like I was given the tools go to back and evaluate things that I was already doing well and incorporate or edit things that I can do better.

Joanna O.