IPED Course Descriptions

Level I: Prerequisite Training

(12-session foundational course. Required to advance to Level II.)

Content includes:

• A philosophical approach that embraces the importance of emotional health
• Core information about child development and ways to appreciate each child’s uniqueness
• Fundamental leadership concepts that address phases of growth
• Ways to promote self-discovery
• Attributes of effective family trainers
• Ways to ensure transfer of training

Level II: Emotional Health

(12 sessions.  Prerequisite: Level I Prerequisite Training.)

Content includes:

• What promotes self-esteem
• Ways to recognize needs
• Identifying stress due to change
• Underlying issues
• Core belief systems
• Message awareness
• Grief and trauma
• Values
• Emotional intelligence
• Leadership concepts addressing burnout
• Ways adults learn
• Recognition of and response to serious psychological issues in children and adults
• Distinction between education and therapy

Level II:  Communication Skills

(12 sessions. Prerequisites: Level I Prerequisite Training and Level II Emotional Health.)

Content includes:

• 7 basic communication skills
• Specific applications of communication skills for family educators
• Recognition of ineffective and toxic forms of communication
• Emphasis on active listening skill development
• Recognizing and developing affirmations and I-messages
• Question sensitivity
• Problem exploration
• Conflict resolution
• Leadership concepts that address approaches for creating safe group environments
• Ways to decrease threat levels and promote trust
• Effective teaching and learning sequences

Level II: Relational Health

(12 sessions. Prerequisites: Level I Prerequisite Training, Level II Emotional Health and Level II Communication Skills.)

Content includes:

• In-depth exploration of the nature, properties, principles and forces of relationships
• Ways to become more aware and intentional about relationships
• Ways we can help parents and caregivers in their relationships
• Equipping participants to intentionally build, promote, foster, maintain and repair relationships
• Connecting principles and properties of emotional health to relational health
• Synthesizing concepts presented thus far.

Level III: Advanced Leadership Training, Part 1

(12 sessions.  Prerequisites: Level I Prerequisite Training, Level II Emotional Health, Level II Communication Skills, Level II Relational Health, and Group Facilitation Skills.)

Content includes a practicum approach:

• The nature and benefits of measurable standards for professional practitioners
• Interactive processes to promote uniform competencies throughout human services systems and networks
• Application of essential leadership principles via demonstrations and assessments
• Invitation to participate in making presentations and offering feedback to colleagues
• Using the Performance Outcome Evaluation Tool.

Level III Advanced Leadership Training, Part 2

(12 sessions. Prerequisites: Level I Prerequisite Training, Level II Emotional Health, Level II Communication Skills, Level II Relational Health, Enhancing Group Facilitation Skills, and Level III Advanced Leadership Training Part 1.)

Content includes a practicum approach:

• Continue to explore the nature and benefits of applying measurable standards
• Emphasize designing and conducting interactive exercises
• Focus on facilitating discussion processes
• Develop management of challenging situations
• Give and observe presentations
• Design and conduct interactive exercises

Understanding Anger: Anger, Part 1

(6-session workshop. No prerequisite.)

Content includes:

• Anger management options that promote self-awareness and self-control
• Traits of chronic versus episodic anger
• Differences between constructive and destructive anger
• How the brain is involved in the feeling and expression of anger and the impact of hormones and bio-chemistry
• Children’s anger and ways to help children have greater self-control
• Healthy ways for adults to respond to children’s anger

Preventing Violence through Anger Management: Anger, Part 2

(6-session workshop. Prerequisite: Understanding Anger: Anger, part 1.)

Content includes:

• Discuss connections between violence and anger
• Ways to teach parents about this connection
• Ways to encourage parents to become better managers of their anger
• Emphasis on information to present to parents, skills to teach parents, and ideas to motivate parents to become calmer, healthier and more in-charge of their anger

Preventing Violence through Effective Discipline

(6-session workshop.No prerequisite.)

Content includes:

• Connections between violence and struggles parents have to discipline calmly, rationally
• Current research on brain development and its connections to violent reactivity
• Practical techniques to achieve healthier attitudes, understanding, and the skills of effective, non-violent discipline.

Group Facilitation Skills

(6-session workshop. No prerequisite.)

Content includes:

• Principles and properties of groups
• Ways to intentionally promote healthy group processes
• Key interactive skills in which all group facilitators need to be proficient
• Design approaches to maximize effective group dynamics
• Ways to identify and respond effectively disruptive, distracting or detached members
• Opportunities to practice new skills and refine existing techniques
• Clearly and confidently describe typical parenting group processes and dynamics
• Demonstrate specific skills and approaches of effective group management
• Apply principles of effective group management in vivo

Understanding Teens

(6-session workshop. No prerequisite.)

Content includes:

• Enhanced understanding of the nature of adolescence
• Discussion of issues faced by parents of adolescents and suggestions for healthy, effective responses
• Approach that embraces the importance of maintaining the emotional health of each teen while simultaneously preserving the health of each relationship in the family
• Core information about adolescent areas of growth:  physical, neurological, emotional, social, moral and intellectual
• Core information on hormones and neurotransmitters on growth processes and related behaviors
• Uniqueness of each adolescent
• The impact adolescent growth processes and related behaviors can have on parents
• Responses that promote processes of successful maturation.

One-on-One Facilitation

(6-session workshop. No prerequisite.)

Content includes:

• In-depth study of one-on-one educational interactions
• Skills and knowledge to ensure effective, healthy interactive processes
• The importance of maintaining emotional health of each individual and each relationship
• Identifying the needs of parents who might benefit from one-on-one interactions
• types of one-on-one interactions and the purposes of each;
• the nature of problems and identifying serious problems;
• Skills and knowledge to conduct one-on-one interactions
• Opportunities to practice designing, facilitating and evaluating one-on-one interactions

Workshop Certification

(6-session workshop. Prerequisites: Level I Prerequisite Training, Level II Emotional Health, Level II Communication Skills, Level II Relational Health, Enhancing Group Facilitation Skills, and Level III Advanced Leadership Training Parts 1 and 2.)

Content includes:

• Formal acknowledgement for work and abilities applying leadership competencies
• Participants who meet the requirements to attend this course can lead educational workshops
• Be mentored with a written Performance Outcome Evaluation
• Complete a written final exam based on previous training
• Complete an in-class final evaluation to demonstrate competencies
• Successfully meet all requirements and be recognized as IPED certified

Enhancing Trauma Awareness

(6-session workshop. Prerequisites: None)

Content includes:

• New research with startling statistics and critical information on simple and complex trauma
• The profound effects and implications of trauma, especially in childhood
• Trauma’s transgenerational potential
• Become equipped to educate families about the nature of trauma
• Clear, easily understood and translated segmented information
• Principles and practical applications for parents
• Be empowered to lessen or eliminate trauma
• Learn ways to avoid inadvertently re-traumatizing children
• Become clear about providing environments that can effectively promote health and healing from trauma

Deepening Trauma Awareness

(12-session workshop. Prerequisites: Enhancing Trauma Awareness.)

Content includes:

• In-depth exploration of enhancing awareness and understanding the nature of trauma
• Essential concepts, facts and principles for parents
• Skills that allow for trauma-sensitive responses to children and adults who might be trauma-impacted
• Awareness of the connections and impact trauma can have with regard to attachment, fear, anger, trust, grieving, relationships, recovery and healing
• Ways to apply information, principles and skills in real-life situations

40 Developmental Assets (NEW July 2009)

(12-session workshop. No Prerequisites.)

Content includes:

• Using The Search Institute’s 40 Developmental Assets*, as a basis, learn about each Asset and ways to present each to parents
• Be equipped to effectively increase the number of assets present in families
• Impact the emotional health of families and of young people in very clear and specific ways

* The premise of the 40 Developmental Assets cites the more likely a child adopts each asset, the more likely the child will develop in positive and healthful ways. Consequently, the fewer the number of assets present, the greater the possibility youth will engage in risky behaviors such as drug use, unsafe sex, and violence