CommonAction Education Catalog

CCoommmmoonnAAccttiioonn Engaging People to Change the World!

2012-2013 Education Catalogue

Workshops & Publications for… K-12 schools, districts, state education agencies, and education organizations.

Call (360) 489-9680 or email [email protected] “Like” us online at fb.com/commonaction

CommonAction Consulting (360) 489-9680 | commonaction.org

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Table of Contents Table Of Contents ___________________________________ 2

About CommonAction ________________________________ 3

Recommendations _________________________________ 3

Our Expertise _____________________________________ 4

Our Activities _____________________________________ 5

Our People _______________________________________ 6

Training & Professional Development ____________________ 8

Workshop Logistics ________________________________ 8

School Engagement Workshops ______________________ 9

Skill Building Workshops ___________________________ 15

School Publications _________________________________ 16

Certification Programs _____________________________ 19

Past Education Clients And Collaborators ________________ 21

Costs And Scheduling ________________________________ 23


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About CommonAction CommonAction Consulting envisions all people everywhere living engaged lives, including children, youth, and adults. We believe engagement is the sustained connection a person has to the world within or outside herself or himself. CommonAction staff foster engagement through substantive personal development, sustainable social change, meaningful policy reform, and powerful transformation activities. Founded in 2005 by internationally recognized community engagement thought leader Adam Fletcher, CommonAction Consulting is a socially oriented private firm focused on engagement. Our school outreach program, SoundOut, launched in 2002 to focus on student engagement. Heartspace, our new initiative launching in spring 2012, focuses on personal engagement. Throughout the years we have worked in

Recommendations “Adam Fletcher's work is especially relevant in getting young people to participate in the realms of politics and critical education.” —Henry Giroux, Global Television Network Chair in English and Cultural Studies at McMaster University; Author 40+ books about education and youth


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“CommonAction creates opportunities for people to become meaningfully involved in the decisions that affect them. Their work has made them the “go to” organization on these issues nationally.” —Greg Williamson, Washington State Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction “Adam is one of the most knowledgeable people in the world regarding student voice and youth rights. I have attended his thorough and excellent presentations and confer regularly on current work in the field. I highly recommend him as a presenter and a writer in our field.” —Dana Mitra, Associate Professor, Penn State University; Author, Student Voice in School Reform.

Our Expertise CommonAction is a boutique firm that does not seek to “do it all.” Instead, we focus on several specific areas of expertise. They include Personal Engagement, Youth Engagement, Community Engagement, and School Engagement. Student Engagement—Our student engagement activities work with K-12 schools, districts, state education agencies, and educational organizations across the US and Canada. Meaningful Student Involvement, Student Voice, Child-Friendly Schools, and Advanced Student Leadership are among our expertise. Our flagship program for schools is called SoundOut, and you can learn more at soundout.org.


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OUR ACTIVITIES

Workshops Operating in schools, national conferences, and retreats, our educational and skill-building training events are for all ages and professional development.

Motivational and

Expert Speeches Adam Fletcher provides powerful talks for audiences of all sizes and ages about engagement, transformation, action, and more.

Organizational

Consulting Our specialties in consulting include program design, evaluation, and organizational change work focused on school engagement for students, parents, educators, and others.

Coaching CommonAction President Adam Fletcher works with a small number of teachers and school leaders annually to provide coaching focused on life and livelihood.

Program Design K-12 schools, youth-serving nonprofits, government agencies and other organizations hire us to conceptualize, design, and implement programs.

Freelance Writing Our staff has written more than 100 publications for an education, nonprofit, and government clients. We also manage social media campaigns, community relations activities, and more.


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OUR PEOPLE

Adam Fletcher—President. Adam is the award-winning founder of The Freechild Project and SoundOut. He has created more than 50 projects and has written more than 20 publications. Learn more at adamfletcher.net

Paula Kadanoff—Consultant. Paula is an educator and activist with more than 15 years experience. After becoming active in school reform as a high school student, she is currently going into her sixth year teaching high school in the Bronx. She is also a key member of student leadership activities there.

Teddy Wright—Consultant. Teddy is an exciting facilitator and youth development specialist skilled in program development, implementation and evaluation, and a child advocate and community-builder.

Scott LeDuc—Consultant. Scott is a master teacher with more than a decade in the classroom. He also serves as adjunct faculty at several universities. Learn more about him at scottleduc.org.


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Mike Beebe—Consultant. Mike has over 20 years of experience managing youth and adult leadership programs. He has managed an AmeriCorps program, youth services, and served on the board of directors for a national organization advocating for GLBT families. Learn more about Mike at mikebeebe.biz

Emma Margraf—Consultant. Emma is an expert in community promotion for nonprofits. She has worked in non-profits and in politics for more than a decade. Her experience includes nonprofit communications and community outreach.

Alan Wong—Consultant. An innovative trainer, educator, and artist, Alan leads dynamic workshops throughout North America and beyond. He has been a lead facilitator and program director with the Power of Hope youth-empowerment program for a decade.


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Training & Professional Development CommonAction has been facilitating high quality learning experiences for K-12 schools, districts, state education agencies, and education organizations since 2005. Working in more than 35 states and 4 countries, our president Adam Fletcher is renowned for his interactive, humorous expertise. CommonAction staff have more than 100 years combined experience working with diverse participants in a variety of settings. Following is information about what we provide.

Workshop Logistics We offer each workshop in formats ranging from 60 minutes to 6 days, and can create longer retreat and conference formats on request. They can be customized as training events, conference sessions, or professional development programs. They are interchangeable for different environments and participants, and can be customized to meet your organization’s needs. Based in current research, practical experience, and pragmatic application, all of our offerings can be customized to meet participant needs. Each workshop is a hands-on, interactive learning event that engages participants as co-learners. Our workshops cover School Engagement for all school community members, along with general skill-building workshops.


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SCHOOL ENGAGEMENT WORKSHOPS These workshops are designed for K-12 schools, districts, state education agencies, and education organizations. They may also benefit educational nonprofits, foundations, and others. They can be customized to meet attendee’s needs, including K-12 students, educators, administrators, counselors, and others. Learn more at www.soundout.org.

Intro to Meaningful

Student Involvement. Explores Adam Fletcher’s internationally recognized Frameworks for Meaningful Student Involvement. This workshop teaches participants how to create powerful, purposeful approaches to engaging students as partners in schools.

Advanced Meaningful

Student Involvement. A concrete series of exercises focused on integrating

students as partners throughout education. Action planning, learning rubrics, evaluation activities, and student-adult partnerships will be explored in classroom teaching, school improvement, and throughout the education system.

Intro to Student Voice. Participants learn that student voice is any expression of learners focused on learning or schools. This training develops both students' and educators' understanding


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what student voice can do in school, including classrooms and school improvement activities.

Meaningful Student

Involvement in Career

and Technical Education. Focused on creating powerful connections for learners, this workshop helps educators make inroads with today’s diverse students while staying focused on modern goals for lifelong learning and success. Centered on practical classroom experience, this workshop is powerful.

More than Student Voice. This workshop helps educators and students understand that schools can become locations for passionate, effective action by all learners in all subject areas. Focused on practical tools to influence teaching and learning, this workshop provides the skills educators

need to transform teaching in the 21st century.

Advanced Student Leadership Training. This workshop emphasizes applied leadership throughout schools. Students and educators to work together to engage students beyond planning dances. Participants explore how to engage traditional and nontraditional student leaders solving serious problems in their schools and transform student engagement for all learners.

Student Voice in STEM. Participants in this workshop learn research-driven frameworks focused on integrating students as partners in courses and activities focused on Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math. Based in our experience, this workshop can be for students or adults.

Successful Student

Involvement in Decision-


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Making. Highlights the roles of student voice in schools. Participants examine their organization's culture and structure, identifying a multitude of ways to successfully involve students. This workshop focuses on implementing, evaluating, and sustaining student involvement.

Learning about Learning. Designed to teach students about learning, the school system, and school improvement. Topics covered include Evaluating Your Education, Intro to School Reform, Building Community in Schools, Learning through Service to Schools, and Student-led Organizing to Improve Schools.

Students as Partners in

School Improvement. Engages participants in learning about engaging students as education researchers, planners, decision-makers, evaluators,

teachers, and advocates. Practical opportunities are explored, and participants create plans including implementation and evaluation.

Engaging Nontraditional

Student Leaders. Designed for educators who want to reach the quiet, inconvenient, or disregarded student leaders in their schools. This workshop focuses on developing new perspectives of their abilities. It provides concrete examples, and establishes clear opportunities in each educator’s setting for action.

Changing Classroom Climate. Focused on engaging all students as leaders, this workshop teaches educators how to establish group expectations, self-monitoring, and clear avenues to ensure student investment and ownership in climate-building activities.


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Intro to Community Engagement. Provides an overview of what community engagement is, where and how it happens, and why we need to be concerned about it. Gives a concrete overview of theory and practice, and focuses on real outcomes.

Leading Communities With Love. Focuses on the motivations of movements within themselves and how those affect social change. Use practical tools to uncover your beliefs and real case studies to move your action to the next level!

Connecting to

Constituents. Participants learn hands-on tools for engagement. They study different approaches to making a difference, and identify new opportunities for deeper impact.

Engaging Communities

as Allies, Not Enemies. Explores specific

circumstances of reaching across the aisles between schools and communities to build alliances, establish collaborations, and deepen relationships in order to promote school improvement. Concrete examples and real experience are used to highlight research-driven tools that can be used in any setting.

Moving From Apathy to Solidarity. Participants in this workshop explore different perceptions teachers, administrators, school support staff, and others have of the students they serve. They then explore different ways to transform those perceptions, and what to do when transformation does not happen.

Advanced Student

Leadership Training. Focused on engaging traditionally dis-engaged student leaders. Students and adults who are ready to


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change the world learn the skills, issues, and pathways schools can take towards student leadership, and different ways student leadership can change the lives of students, adults, and the world.

Student-Driven Classroom Learning. Participants in this workshop learn the basics of Meaningful Student Involvement, and then discover who to engage students as partners throughout the learning process. Can focus on subject-areas or keep a general lens for all grade levels.

Equity, Not Equality: REAL

Student/Adult Partnerships. Focuses on relationships between young people and adults. Moving adults from seeing students as the passive recipients of adult decision-making, this workshop teaches practical, concrete pathways to form partnerships between young

people and adults at home, in schools, within communities, and throughout our society.

Intro to Student Voice. Participants in this workshop learn that student voice is any expression of any learner about any education topic anywhere all the time. Students and adults in this workshop learn how to harness the power of student voice to create effective, sustainable change in the lives of young people and throughout our communities.

Moving Beyond Voice. This workshop is an advanced session for practitioners to study the Cycle of Engagement and how it can be used throughout their lives, programs, organizations, and communities. Participants examine assumptions, critically assess activities, and plan for future action.

How to Work with

Students. Training for


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teachers, administrators, and other adults who support students in schools. This workshop maximizes decades of research and experience working with students to support adults becoming allies with children and youth. Adult participants learn practical skills, important issues, and key considerations to successfully working with young people. Barriers are directly addressed, and resources are shared to ensure participant effectiveness in their own settings.

Learning through Service. This workshop shows how activism, organizing, community service, and social change are powerful ways to engage students in learning practical classroom goals. This workshop engages teachers, youth workers, and students in learning about service, reflection, meeting

community needs, and building powerful agents for social change through learning and teaching.

New Roles for Students

Throughout Education. Participants explore the cultural shifts happening as students access technology and personalized learning. The world they live in is changing, and because of that the institutions that serve them must change, too. Explore those expectations and identifies powerful, effective ways to engage young people.

Student-Led Action. This workshop explores different ways to engage young people in creative, sustainable, and effective social change. Includes concrete planning, recruitment, and evaluation activities.


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SKILL BUILDING WORKSHOPS These workshops provide basic skill-building opportunities for participants to identify and explore what they know and need to know, and then challenges them to go to the next level.

Intro to Engagement

Introduction to Service Learning

Introduction to Community Involvement

Introduction to Student-Inclusive School Change

Teaching or Facilitating?

How Educators can Partner with Students

How Schools can Partner with Parents

How Schools can Partner with Education Agencies

How Schools can Partner with Nonprofits

Ready for School Change

Breaking Stereotypes

Examining Media Bias

Be Who You Are

Words as Weapons and Tools

Short Listening Activities

Feedback Techniques

Jargon Flags

Power, Trust, and Respect

Ground Rules

Group Strengths and Weaknesses

The Silent Circle

Group Appreciations

It’s in the Bag

Problem Solving 101

Probing for Problems

Planning For Roadblocks

Letting Go & Taking Charge

Ideal Partners

Creating Roles in Learning for Community Members

Teambuilding in Schools All our workshops can be customized for audiences ages 8 to 80, and we can accommodate group sizes from four to four hundred. Contact our office for more information.


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SCHOOL PUBLICATIONS CommonAction staff have written more than 100 publications for a education, nonprofit, and government clients. Textbooks, curriculum, introductory guides, and program manuals form the core of our tools. We also write articles for magazines and websites, activity guides, a popular blog, and maintain active Twitter feeds.

The Complete Guide to Meaningful Student Involvement. Examining his decade of experience in school reform focused on student voice and engagement, internationally-recognized expert Adam Fletcher lays a concrete framework for practice. This series of essays details a radical vision for students to become engaged throughout the education system, and gives practical examples and next steps for action. (est. 250 pgs, forthcoming)


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Meaningful Student

Involvement: Guide to

Students as Partners in

School Change. Highlighting a practical framework, this Guide is all about engaging students throughout education. Anyone interested in student voice, student empowerment, student engagement, or building community in schools. Written by Adam Fletcher. (28 pgs, 2005)

Stories of Meaningful Student Involvement. A collection of examples of meaningful student involvement in action in schools. Anecdotes illustrate various approaches to engaging student voice in school by exploring the applications in dozens of diverse schools. Written by Adam Fletcher. (40 pgs, 2004)

Meaningful Student

Involvement Research Guide. Gives advocates a “leg up” in their research.

Highlights 14 research studies and includes a useful listing of research available. Written by Adam Fletcher. (36 pgs, 2004)

Meaningful Student

Involvement Resource Guide. Provides descriptions and annotations for dozens of tools supporting student voice throughout education. Written by Adam Fletcher. (35 pgs, 2003)

Meaningful Student

Involvement Guide to

Inclusive School Change. A brief introduction to creating opportunities for student-inclusive school change in all grade levels. In numerous sections this publication explores the background, benefits, and applications of student voice in a variety of settings across the US. Written by Adam Fletcher. (24 pgs, 2003)

Meaningful Student

Involvement Evaluation Toolkit. A set of qualitative


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and quantitative tools that can be used as pre- and post-activity evaluation tools on student voice for K-12 learning environments. Designed to be used by students and adults. Written by Adam Fletcher. (50 pgs, 2011)

Student Voice and Bullying. A white paper focused on bullying, this paper was originally published by ASCD on their Whole Child blog. Provides insight and possibilities for engaging students as partners in solving bullying. (10 pgs, 2012)


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CERTIFICATION PROGRAMS CommonAction is offers a certification program for educators designed to provide high-quality, engagement-focused learning for students. Certification is good for one school year and includes the most up-to-date materials and technical assistance.

SoundOut Student Voice Curriculum Imagine a school...Where students are equal partners in school reform efforts; where students and adults work together to improve learning, teaching, and leadership throughout education; where student voice is seen as a key to successful transformation. THIS is the SoundOut Student Voice Curriculum! SoundOut provides a unique, engaging, and powerful curriculum JUST FOR YOUR class. Comprised of eight modules, each with three 50-minute lesson plans, the curriculum is focused on engaging students as partners in improving schools. Each lesson plan is designed to engage diverse high school students with highly interactive


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critical thinking, communication, and project-based learning activities. The modules include Learning about Learning; Learning about Education; Learning about School Change; Students as Researchers; Students as Planners; Students as Teachers; Students as Evaluators; Students as Decision-Makers; and Students as Advocates. Each module teaches students about the process of learning, the education system, and school reform, centering the role of student voice in all of those activities. In addition to the lesson plans, the curriculum comes with handouts, a facilitator’s guide, and access to an online resource collection that supplements the lessons. Implemented with more than 1,000 students across the US, Australia, and the UK, the SoundOut has been certified by the Children’s Trust of Miami/Dade County as a research-proven best practice. It was designed for students in grades 8-12. It can be used in a variety of settings, including Leadership classes, Service-learning requirements, School improvement teams, Student governments, Advisory periods, Social science courses, and Self-directed learning programs. Written by Adam Fletcher, founder and director of SoundOut, the curriculum is research-driven, student-tested, and school improvement-focused.


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Past Education Clients and

Collaborators Academy for Educational Development

Action For Healthy Kids

Alberta Ministry of Education

Arizona Department of Education Coordinated School Health Program

Boston Public Schools Student Engagement Advisory Council

Carnegie Corporation

Caroline High School

Catalyst Miami/Human Services Coalition of Miami-Dade County

Cloud Institute for Sustainability Education

Colfax High School

College Success Foundation

Communities for Learning/Learner-Centred Initiatives, Inc.

Community Academy of Science and Health

Connect Magazine

Cross City Campaign for Urban School Reform

Cypress Creek Elementary School

Dayton High School

EarthForce

Engineering School

ESD 123 21st Century Learning Centers

Evergreen High School

Evergreen Public Schools

Franklin High School

Friday Harbor High School

Generation YES Foundation

Genesee Valley BOCES

Grantmaker's Forum on Community and National Service

Grantmaker's Forum on Education

Harbor High School

Harvard University Graduate School on Education

Harwood Union High School

Healthy Schools Summit

HumanLinks Foundation

Institute for Democratic Education in America

Langley Middle School

Lewis and Clark High School

Lewis and Clark Middle School

Monument High School

National School Board Association

New Horizons for Learning

New York State Student Support Services Center

Olympia Free School

Oneida-Herkimer-Madison BOCES

Onondaga-Cortland-Madison Counties BOCES

Oswego County BOCES


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Patchwork School

Pinnacle Charter School

Puget Sound Educational Service District

Ridgeview Elementary School

Roosevelt High School

Santa Barbara County Service Learning Initiative

Schenectady Public Schools

Seattle Public Schools (SPS) Office of Equity and Race Relations

SPS Small Learning Environments Conference

SPS Youth Engagement Zone

Secondary Academy for Success

Service Learning Seattle

Small Schools Project

Social Justice Academy

Spanaway Elementary School

Students Taking Charge

Sumner School District

Suncoast EarthForce

University of Indianapolis Center for Excellence in Leadership of Learning

University of Washington College of Education

University of Washington GEAR UP Program

Vashon Island Student Link Alternative School

Vermont Principal's Association

Vermont State Department of Education HIV/AIDs Program

Washington State Higher Education Coordinating Board GearUP Program

Washington State Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction (OSPI) 21st Century Community Learning Centers

Washington State OSPI Learn and Serve America Program

Washington State OSPI School Improvement Program

Washington State OSPI Title V and Innovative Programs

Washington State University Center for Bridging the Digital Divide

White River High School

Wishkah Valley High School

Yakima Public Schools

Youth and Adults Transforming Schools Together

Youth On Board

Costs and Scheduling For a complete price sheet, scheduling details, and more information please contact our office. Address CommonAction PO Box 6185 Olympia, WA 98507-6185 USA Email [email protected] Phone Adam Fletcher (360) 489-9680

CommonAction Education Catalog

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