Two Day
Pre-Conference Training Institutes
Tuesday & Wednesday, July 1 & 2 - half price!
8:30 am - 5:30 pm
School & Youth Marriage Education Programs
Kay Reed, chair

Presenters:
July 1 –
Morning - Nancy McLaren: “The Art of Loving Well”
Afternoon - Steven Judah: “Essential Disciplines”1
July 2
Morning - Char Kamper: “Connections: Dating & Emotions”
Afternoon - “Connections: Relationships & Marriage”

• This two-day Institute is half-price for conference attendees: $130 for both days.
• Attendees may attend any – or all – of the four programs.
• Qualifies for 1.6 hrs Teacher Continuing Education. See below for details.

We have to start with the kids!
These research-based, best practice, developmentally appropriate programs – being taught across the country – teach students the skills and knowledge that are central to building and maintaining healthy marriages. Curricula are easily adapted to classroom, church, community, agency, and youth group settings.

Attend to get an overview of each of these widely used programs;
specific instruction about how to teach them; and guidance about integrating them into your own setting. You will learn how each one approaches relationship education from a unique perspective. They can be taught as a stand-alone curriculum or used in combination to reinforce one another.

Participants in this Institute will learn
how to incorporate these materials into their schools, communities, and families and leave prepared to teach the programs. The presenters will cover:
• Educational theory and background
• Demonstration and power point presentations with step-by-step instruction in how to teach the curricula
• Tales from the classroom
• Evaluation results
• Tips on advocating for youth marriage education

The “First Comes Love” Deal:
To increase the availability of school/youth marriage education, this 2-day institute, which presents four youth marriage education curricula, is being offered at half-price – an incredible bargain and opportunity to strengthen marriage in your community!! In addition, grant-funded tuition rebates, free curriculum, and benchmark payments will be available to qualifying participants. All participants in the Institute will receive free curricula training materials regardless of your participation in the following special opportunity.

To be part of the DEAL and receive the tuition rebate ($130) and benchmark payment ($70), participants:
- Agree to instruct a minimum of 40 youth in one of the four curricula above by May 30, 2008;
- Complete a basic application form outlining plans for this instruction;
- Receive confirmation of your participation from the Dibble Institute, sign a Memorandum of Understanding with the Dibble Institute, and certify completion of instruction.

Applicants approved and accepted for participation will receive one curriculum of their choice from this Institute with the necessary student materials FREE; a full tuition rebate; AND a benchmark payment of $70 upon completion of instruction of 40 youth.

To review the four curricula and download the First Comes Love application, please visit:
www.BuildingRelationshipSkills.org

Who should enroll in this Insitute?
Anyone who wants to change the future by helping the youth in their community to learn about healthy relationships now and to become eventual masters of marriage. Family and Consumer Science, career prep and English teachers, youth agency workers, independent living coordinators, abstinence and teen pregnancy prevention workers, camp and after school program staff, Healthy Marriage, CBAE, and Head Start grantees, youth pastors, social workers, , and parents.

What you will receive:
First Comes Love participants will receive one of the following for FREE upon their acceptance in the activity:


• Art of Loving Well – 41 Student Anthologies at $21.95 each and Teacher Guide - $14.95
Or
• Essential Disciplines for Teens – Instructor’s Manual - $225 and 40 Teen Guidebooks at $.8.50 each
Or
• Connections: Dating and Emotions – Instructor’s Manual - $225 and 40 Student Workbooks at $6.50 each.
Or
• Connections: Relationships and Marriage – Instructor’s Manual - $225 and 40 Student Workbooks at $6.50 each.

All Institute enrollees will receive the student workbooks, sample lessons,
and other training materials for all the curricula.

More info and application forms: http://www.buildingrelationshipskills.org

Additional details about each of the programs:

July 1
Morning: Nancy McLaren: “The Art of Loving Well”
This unique curriculum, developed at Boston University, teaches teens social and emotional skills through good literature, which reflects the complexity of love and relationships. The Art of Loving Well is a 340-page anthology of 41 ethnically diverse selections, both time-honored classics and contemporary literature. Its three sections--"Early Loves and Losses," "Romance," and "Commitment and Marriage"--include short stories as well as poems, essays, and folk tales that are highly engaging and motivate students to read even more than is assigned. The curriculum challenges academically gifted students, yet some of its most dramatic successes involve chronic low achievers.

The text includes a choice of activities that provide students vicarious practice dealing with relationship challenges that are vividly portrayed in their readings. Loving Well was originally funded U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and cited in Congress for its innovative and effective approach. The newly revised Teacher Guide contains additional resource materials, insights into the selections, biographical notes on the authors included in the anthology, and suggestions from four years of field-testing with 8th – 12th graders. Loving Well is designed to stand alone but is also an ideal complement to other youth programs.

Participants will be able to:
1. Learn why schools traditionally have been misguided in focusing on paths of academic and professional development to the neglect of relationship understandings and skills that hugely influence our personal and professional lives; learn how to advocate for relationship education in communities and schools.
2. Gain knowledge about new insights from research in neuro-science. For example, they will understand why that the best time for developing the areas of the brain devoted to emotional and social competence is no longer thought to end in childhood. Puberty and the late teens and early twenties also provide optimal opportunities.
3. Differentiate EQ from IQ as a predictor of happy, healthy, and productive lives and why social intelligence takes emotional intelligence to a higher level.
4. Be able to articulate the 6 key skills involved in emotional intelligence (self-awareness, self-control and ability to delay gratification, self-motivation, long term goals and ideals, empathy, social responsibility).
5. Understand the unique benefits of using stories to motivate students and teach relationship skills.
6. Develop strong self-confidence to use these engaging stories and poems and to learn along with the youth:
7. Be able to explain why these unique teaching strategies are exceptionally effective (in light of new research on the development of the teenage brain) for building strong marriages, families, and communities.
8. Understand the ways parents are urged to become involved and why the book makes it easier to have difficult conversations about emotions and sexuality.
9. See the possibility of using The Art of Loving Well to enhance other youth programs as well as for using it alone.
10. Understand that literacy, which incorporates the full range of communication skills, is increasingly important in today’s increasingly technological world. In fact, many states are mandating a new emphasis on literacy for the 21st century!

July 1:
Afternoon: Steven Judah: “Essential Disciplines”
Essential Disciplines empowers whole relationships in life, marriage, and business - for teens, couples, and adults – using, by design, the same process and content. This cutting-edge approach is called “consistent user interface”. Essential Disciplines blends character development with interactive skills training, and integrates landmark research on motivation. Research and case studies with the Ohio Department of Education (Family Consumer Sciences), the Better Business Bureau, and private companies demonstrate that the Essential Disciplines curriculum successfully helps teens develop core personal and interpersonal skills as well as crucial workforce readiness, while simultaneously helping teen educators improve their own marriage and family lives. The Essential Disciplines soft-skills training system ultimately translates into economic value in business through the building and leveraging of relational wellness. Essential Disciplines focuses on character, communication, conflict resolution, continual improvement, and one's calling.

Participants will be able to:
1. Become familiar with consistent user interface and the research foundations of Essential Disciplines.
2. Identify five core skills for personal and interpersonal relationship development and their necessary interrelationship.
3. Become familiar with the use of the Teen Workbook and Instructor Manual as a teen curriculum.
4. Identify ideas for implementing this model in teen educational settings, marriage training settings, businesses, and elsewhere.

July 2
Char Kamper
Morning: “Connections: Dating and Emotions”.
Afternoon: “Connections: Relationships and Marriage”
Institute participants will experience hands-on activities from two of the most widely used and effective nationally recognized youth relationship education programs; Connections: Dating and Emotions and Connections: Relationships and Marriage. Written by a master teacher, these popular, innovative, and ready-to teach programs address critical life skills that help teens navigate the most difficult areas of healthy relationship development, from friendships through marriage. Connections: Dating and Emotions and Connections: Relationships and Marriage include PREP® concepts and were selected for state-wide use for high schools in the Oklahoma Healthy Marriage Initiative.

Used in public and parochial schools, teen pregnancy prevention programs, community out-reach programs, and after school and pull-out programs, these practical skill-based curricula function as either stand-alone programs or can easily be integrated into existing youth relationship programs for use by teachers, health-care workers and counselors. Research shows evidence of reduction in teen pregnancy, reduced dating violence, improved peer-to-peer and teen-parent relationships, improved communication and conflict resolution skills, and more willingness to work out issues in marriage among teens who have taken the programs.

Participants will be able to:
1. Understand the purpose of dating as a social activity.
2. Understand how similarities in personality, life goals, and interests strengthen a relationship.
3. Recognize how differences in dating expectations affect the relationship.
4. The importance of dating for positive not negative reasons.
5. Understand that healthy caring relationships develop over time.
6. Identify four areas of self-disclosure that affect relationships.
7. Recognize the importance of communicating with others in ways that show mutual respect.
8. Understand the importance of having an emotional support system.
9. Identify positive coping strategies for dealing with loneliness for themselves or someone they know.
10. Identify six typical patterns of problem people.
11. Recognize how family patterns influence relationship expectations.
12. Understand the nature and cause of anger and jealousy.
13. Understand the importance of self- control when in difficult situations.
14. Identify and discuss behaviors that demonstrate abuse.
15. Chart the course of a relationship that has experienced distress.
16. Understand the need to end a relationship that isn’t working.
17. Recognize the importance of developing resiliency skills when relationships end.
18. Identify three components of relationship.
19. Understand the need for true empathy to someone they love.
20. Identify signs of maturity and personal growth through the process of dating.
21. Identify emotional differences between casual and meaningful relationships.
22. Understand the benefits of staying committed to a marriage relationship.
23. Identify four phases of crisis management.
24. Thoughtfully consider the responsibilities of marriage before rushing to marry.
25. Understand why many teens avoid marriage and divorce.
26. Will be able to teach the curriculum with confidence

For more information, contact:
The Dibble Institute for Marriage Education
(800) 695-7975
http://www.buildingrelationshipskills.org/

Funding for this project is provided by the United States Department
of Health and Human Services, Administration for Children and
Families: Grant 90FE0024/02.

Register for this Training Institute with Smart Marriages.
On-line registration available in March.

The Dibble Institte will provide participants
with a signed certificate of completion at the end of the Institute.
Participants will mail the certificates to California
State University Sacramento (CSUS) with a fee $60
. CSUS will
send the participant their certificate of credit for Teachers. Note:
you can earn .8 hrs teacher CE credit by attending Institute #914.


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