Itinerary
Judaism & Whole-Health Wellness: April 7th from 12:00-1:30pm MST
What is “whole-health wellness”? What does Judaism have to say about it? In what ways can Judaism serve as a protective factor, reducing mental health challenges? Are there ways in which Jewish practices make it more difficult to maintain mental health and wellness? How do we bring a wellness lens to our understanding of Jewish tradition and our creation of programming?
Designing Experiences for an Anxious World: April 14th from 12:00-1:30pm MST
While stress and anxiety have always been present, we are going through a uniquely stressful moment in time. What are stress and anxiety, and how do they impact teens and young adults? How does an understanding of stress and anxiety help us combat Zoom fatigue? How do we mitigate the impacts of stress, and help teens expand their “resilience zone?” This session will provide a theoretical framework to understand the impact of stress on our mind and body, and will provide strategies professionals can take to create stress-informed, supportive environments.
Facilitating for Resilience: April 21st from 12:00-1:30pm MST
Resilience is a commonly used term, but the concept of resilience can be clouded by ambiguity and generalizations. As a result, it can be challenging to know how we as professionals can help the young people we work with become more resilient. This session will offer tangible definitions and frameworks to understand resilience, and participants will learn experiential facilitation strategies that promote resilience in students.
Communication Skills for Building Empathy & Rapport: April 28th from 12:00-1:30pm MST
How do we respond empathetically when an individual shares a struggle? How can applying empathy help us build rapport with the students that we work with? Why is this important? How can this information help us through tough conversations? This session will give professionals the knowledge, skills, and confidence to communicate empathetically with students, and will explore specific strategies to connect students who are struggling with outside resources.
Crisis Intervention & Deescalation: May 5th from 12:00-1:30pm MST
What are healthy and helpful ways to engage with an escalated student? How can we safely deescalate a situation, and what can we do to help the student process the situation after they have deescalated? How do we “Stay in Our Lane” when interacting with an escalated student?
Suicide Prevention: May 12th from 12:00-1:30pm MST
Using a curriculum designed by the QPR Institute, professionals will gain confidence in assessing the threat of suicide, practice ways they can help prevent it, and learn when, where, and how to find help. Participants will receive a certificate from the QPR Institute after completion of this session.
Burnout, Values, and Boundaries: May 19th from 12:00-1:30pm MST
As professionals, we are often drawn to this work because we are passionate about our organization’s mission and have a strong desire to support and to serve. With this good intention at heart, we sometimes find ourselves in situations where it becomes difficult to say “no,” and hold boundaries. This can lead to burnout, dissatisfaction, and decreased motivation and drive. This session will help professionals explore how the values that drive us can contribute to our burnout and will help professionals personally answer the question: How do we balance our passion for our work with our need to protect and sustain ourselves as individuals?
It’s Not Just a Shabbat Dinner: May 26th from 12:00-1:30pm MST
How might we intentionally design Jewish educational experiences to support social and emotional growth? How do we adapt an activity, alter its objective, and thereby curate the take-aways to custom fit the needs of our group? In our final session, participants will workshop a program they have recently led or plan to lead, and will integrate lessons learned throughout the course of the fellowship into their program design.
