Testimonials

 

PassageWorks Professional Development:  Comments from Participants

 

Now that I’ve been doing this for a few years, I can’t tell where PassageWorks ends and the regular curriculum begins. Everything I teach touches on the social and emotional well-being of my students.  The integration has become automatic. If teachers could only understand how this opens an entire world with students, I think they’d be flocking to try what you teach.            

-Colleen Conrad, 8th Grade English Teacher

 

I want to connect to kids and not just be an information source. The skills I got from the training are a good introduction to what I will need to do to make this a reality.  My hope is that I will begin to rekindle some of the flame that I had when I began my career.

-High School teacher

 

This course was so organized, intentional, useful!  It will change at least your professional/teaching life—and probably your whole life!

-Julie Bishop, Instructional Coach

 

It has been wonderful to watch the collegiality of the 10th grade teacher cohort. To go through the training and share about their personal lives has made them much deeper and richer in their connections to one another.  They see one another in a totally different light and have shared deep parts of themselves — their joy, pain, sorrow and excitement.

-Sandra Lundt, Principal of Poudre High School

 

Passage Works is an exceptional program committed to excellence in the often overlooked realm of social/emotional education.  We were fortunate enough to be able to offer a two day Passage Works workshop to our entire staff. It was a truly healing and renewing event — the Open School faculty was given the gift of exploring new and meaningful ways to bring passion and presence to our teaching. And in the process of experiencing the fullness of the curriculum, we also discovered a new level of community with each other.

-Scott Bain, Teacher, Advisor, and Instructional Coach, Jefferson County Open School, CO

 

PassageWorks provides systematic professional development for teachers in an area too long neglected, that of attending to teaching practices that nurture all students’ learning. The model builds on considerable work on the relationship of social and emotional learning to students’ academic success.

-Carol Wilson, Past Director Colorado Partnership for Educational Renewal

 

I was pleasantly surprised that I was so interested in the work.  I have (get) to be involved in a lot of trainings and seminars and this was the first one, in my entire career, that I went home thinking, ‘I can’t wait to return the second day’!  It was thoughtful, well prepared and very fun!

-Poudre High School Administrator

 

Faith, inspiration, rejuvenation and connection!

-Gina Ballesteros-Maculuso, Spanish Teacher

 

All three facilitators [at the Foundation Course] did a fantastic job directing the flow, teaching the model, and being human.  I know that I’ve never been to any other teacher kind of workshop that felt so real and honest.

-Kerry Geary, FC participant

 

So much of what you bring – Gosh – it gets right to my teaching gut.  It is what I believe I should do and how I should focus my work, and so often I have allowed what I perceive to be other priorities to get in the way.  So, a lot of renewal happened here for me.  Thanks!

- Poudre High School teacher

 

I have been a very good teacher for 37 years.  After the experience of PassageWorks [training], I came back to my classroom a different kind of teacher – one that was able to open her heart in a very different way to her students… a teacher who understood the importance of silence and joy in the classroom.  I became a teacher who formed deeper connections with her students than she had ever formed before.  These are only a few of the many ways that my life as a teacher was changed.

-Susie Chalom, Executive Director, Talmud Torah, Minneapolis

 

I began my Soul of Leadership training day tired, emotionally stressed, drained and not wanting to participate.  As the material was presented, I began to relax, and listen with such awe… by the end of the day I was so very excited!  THIS is what it is all about: connecting and relationships!  Feeling a part of someone and something.  It was invigorating.  I wanted to find a way for students, my teachers, friends, and family to feel this connection to inner self.  I began to listen more to my heart, mind, and soul.  I began to make changes in my life– changes that have had a positive impact on family, my students, faculty, friends, and myself.

-Mellisa Heath, Principal Doyle Elementary School, East Prairie, MO

 

Every single activity in the Soul of Ed Course stretched me in ways both profound and fun.

-Teacher, Jefferson County Open School

 

This workshop has changed the way I teach completely.  Nothing I have ever studied has made such an impact on what I do in my classroom. I will never be the same as a teacher now that I have started integrating these principles into my work.  I am grateful that you have shown me there is a better way to relate to kids and to have an impact on the lives of my students.

-High School English Teacher

 

A weekend spent at PassageWorks is a retreat that is rejuvenating on a personal level as well as a professional one.  The work is multilayered and applicable to all people, all ages, etc.  There is no greater learning then connecting with self and others, everything else should take a back seat, and this workshop is the beginning of getting that education in schools everywhere.

-Elementary School Teacher

 

The principles and practices in PassageWorks are not just applicable to teaching, but they apply in all areas of life: How do I keep an open heart in relationships, and how does that touch the hearts of those around me? How can I learn to put distractions aside and become fully present in my interactions with others? How do I allow myself and others to voice life’s big questions when I have no answers? How do I learn to sit quietly with myself and listen?  PassageWorks has relevance to me as a parent, a friend, a wife, a daughter, and a human being; and as a teacher as well.             

-Lorri Fowler, Poudre High School Teacher and Site Coordinator

 

I went to that training afraid I might lose my masculine identity. When I left, I realized I was not only going to be a better teacher and coach, but a better father and husband as well.

-Poudre High School teacher and athletic coach

 

New insights gained from this training:

• It helps clarify what advising should look like
• The depth of sharing and feeling possible within our group and (hopefully) with our students.  Personal stories build self-awareness and empathy
• Lots of ideas and sequencing that will help
• The stages of group development
• Building connections amongst staff so that we can support one another to remain present in all our work

You have provided us with a multitude of tools to utilize throughout my whole career

-Faculty, Jefferson County Open School