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 February 2022) 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?

There is information about this professional development in our catalog on page 8, but we've also developed a one-day version that is not in the catalog (yet). To clarify, all versions of this PD involve educators going out into their community to visit places (non-profit organizations, places of worship, grocery stores, etc.) that are important to their local immigrant and refugee populations. We currently have two options:

5 week version that can be facilitated (in-person) in Washington, DC or Cleveland, OH. 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. We work with you to identify 3-4 of your top immigrant communities to focus on. Then we partner closely with immigrant community leaders from those groups to work as "tour guides" for the day. For more information and an example, see how we facilitated this PD in Louisville. Contact us for more information and discuss!