SYNCHRONOUS PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT

What topics do you provide professional development on?

Laura Gardner is the main trainer for Immigrant Connections. Her primary areas of expertise are family & community engagement in schools (particularly for immigrants, refugees, and English Learners), language access, equity, cultural proficiency, refugee resettlement, unaccompanied minors, and the dynamics around immigrant family reunification. Our team includes a number of other trainers as well, with various areas of expertise. Take a look at our team bios as well as our catalog (newly updated in June 2024) to learn more about the types of workshops we offer. We can also customize a training for your district or organization.

How do you provide training?

Some of our synchronous trainings are delivered in-person and some are facilitated over Zoom. During COVID, it became clear that training via Zoom has many advantages, such as being able to easily bring together educators (and often immigrant parents or students as guest speakers!) from various districts, states, and even countries. Through interactive strategies and tools such as breakout rooms, Jamboard, Padlet, polling, video clips, and more, it is clear that engaging workshops can be facilitated virtually. Also, we can discuss whether a combination of synchronous and asynchronous training would be useful for your group.

How much does it cost?

Take a look at our catalog for pricing. If you want something customized for your district or organization, we can provide you with a quote.

I've heard about your "cultural immersion" trainings...can you tell me more?

See page 2 of our newly updated (June 2024) catalog for more information about this. We currently have two options:

5 week version that can be facilitated (in-person) in Washington, DC or Cleveland, OH due to where our trainers are located. This version requires at least 25 participants and involves meeting weekly for class, with trips into the community happening in between class each week. Graduate credit is available for this option.
The one-day version (in-person) is available anywhere in the U.S. You can either select 3-5 immigrant communities to highlight on the same PD day (see this article from Louisville as an example) or select one population / culture to highlight (see this article or video for examples). We can work with you to figure out which approach is best for your area. Then we partner closely with immigrant community leaders from those groups to work as "tour guides" for the day. Contact us for more information and discuss!

Interested in our PD?

If you are interested in having us facilitate a PD for educators in your district, please fill out this PD Interest Form and then we can schedule a call to discuss!