There are many keynotes, presentations and workshops that are delivered by Dr. Patrick Schwarz. Some frequently requested presentations include:
NEW! Reimagining Special Education: 101 Makeover Ideas
Considering all the research and publication about best practices for inclusion, Patrick identifies teaching, leadership and other strategies that need to go and those that need to stay. The areas he will discuss will be belonging, placement and normalization, leadership provided by teachers and their teams, learner-centered supports, teachers as innovators, classroom, unit and lesson supports, collaboration and transition. This is a great lead off keynote for a conference about educational innovation!
From Possibility to Success: Achieving Successful Student Outcomes Keynote or Workshop
With the goal of building lifelong skills, Patrick offers authentic processes and supports that help educators plan lessons and units while at the same time embracing students' interests and passions, working toward students' dreams, promoting leadership, self-advocacy, self-determination, and membership in both school and the community. With an overview of supports and compelling stories of how they have helped real students in real classrooms, Patrick empowers educators to combine the science and art of teaching all learners. This motivating and empowering keynote gives everyone hope, direction, and inspiration to turn learning possibility into educational success!
From Disability To Possibility® Keynote or Workshop
Using real life stories — from womb to tomb — of individuals with possibilities, Dr. Patrick Schwarz will illustrate what supports are successful and what else is needed for effectiveness in education and human services for all people. These compelling examples will motivate participants to re-imagine and support individuals in new and inventive ways. Be prepared for something fun and different!
You’re Welcome Keynote or Workshop
Focusing on the best practices of inclusive education, collaboration and innovative curricular design and support, essential tools and processes are highlighted for the purpose of effective person-centered service delivery. Using a person’s dreams, visions, and goals will be emphasized to create effective planning, implementation and achievement of successful educational and life outcomes.
Just Give Him the Whale Keynote or Workshop
Considering the fascinations, passions and interest areas of learners, powerful new ways of viewing these areas as positive teaching tools that calm, motivate and improve learning will be illustrated. Using authentic student examples, participants will discover how to make the most of fascinations, passions and interest areas to help learners they support. Areas included will be learning standards-based academic content, developing social connections, minimizing anxiety, boosting literacy learning and mathematics skills, expanding communication skills and much more!
THE NEW Co-Teaching and Collaboration: Making the Professional Marriage Work for Student Learning!
Co-Teaching is changing! There are new co-teaching models and best practices based on current educational research. Considering what students need most in their multi-faceted and dynamic classrooms, Dr. Patrick Schwarz will illustrate current best practices of co-teaching and five updated models will be illustrated that allow co-teaching teams to work successfully together in all learning situations. New focus areas include making the professional marriage work and promoting student leadership in the context of co-teaching. This session is for new and existing co-teaching constituents, including general educators, special educators, bilingual teachers, ESL teachers, related service professionals, paraeducators and leaders. The models will also be role-played for deeper understanding. Also, advanced hybrid co-teaching models will be discussed In addition, new and updated collaborative processes of planning, teaching and assessment will be taught and applied. Collaborative applications will be utilized to increase the success of co-teachers. Participants will be able to apply practices they have learned to their own classrooms, learning situations and teams.
Inclusive Education
In this workshop, rationales for inclusive education will be examined, planning processes will be delineated and tools, such as IEP at a glance, will be illustrated. Instructional strategies, such as differentiation and accommodation, will be outlined and applied. Applications will assist participants to consider their own students and classroom learning situations in creating individual support plans.
Universal Design, Differentiation and Specially Designed Instruction (SDI)
Universal design is providing access to curriculum for all learners through use of multiple means of representation, engagement and expression. Differentiation is use of educational strategy, technology, materials, sequences and procedures to support successful learning for all students in a classroom. Specially Designed Instruction (SDI) is individualized strategies to help a learner who needs further educational support to participate meaningfully in the classroom. In this immediately usable session, definitions, universal planning processes and outstanding examples of student supports will be provided and applied to participants’ classroom, teaching and learning situations.
Collaboration: Teambuilding, Active Listening and Problem-Solving
Collaborative schools utilize processes to promote successful instructional teams with all members actively involved. Tools for success include teambuilding, active listening and problem-solving. In this dynamic workshop, participants will learn about each of these processes and interactive application exercises will illustrate how they can be applied to participants’ own schools and individual learning situations.
Addressing Adventuresome Behavior While Keeping the Dignity of All Intact
Both a person-centered, authentic, functional approach to assess behavior and a problem-solving process will be applied to combine components of the very best user-proven behavioral support strategies. This approach will be illustrated and then applied to real-life classroom and learning situations identified by participants.
Student Collaboration and Instructional Effectiveness
Promoting student collaboration in the classroom is essential when considering what students will have to practice as future adults in the information age. Student collaboration instructional practices such as inquiry circles, cooperative learning, thematic instruction, equitable peer-tutoring and student advocacy will be explained and illustrated. Participants will engage in applications to plan for desired instructional effectiveness structures.
Transition From School to Post School Best Practices
Longitudinal transitional practices from school to post-school are presented in this workshop. Definitions, key players, when to start and other important information pieces are covered. Real-life learner examples are illustrated and participants are guided into creating a plan for an individual they represent for an authentic and meaningful application that can be utilized immediately.
A Friend Indeed: Promoting Meaningful Social Relationships
Social Relationships are essential for human growth, support, understanding and learning. Proven techniques to promote successful relationships in schools, classrooms, after-school settings and the community will be provided in this workshop. A major focus will be on collaboration structures and areas of interest and fascination. A hands-on approach will be utilized that will result in realistic applications for self-advocates represented by audience members. Participants will leave this workshop with practical, real-life social relationship action steps that can be immediately implemented.
Best Practices for Paraprofessionals: Effective Student and Classroom Supports
The focus of this workshop is for paraprofessionals to learn new skills and instructional best practices to achieve greater independence and effectiveness with student learning. Areas include, promoting student dignity and respectful language, teaching skills, promoting participation, achieving student goals, using student interests in learning and promoting problem-solving. In addition, how to fade supervision will be deeply discussed, demonstrated and rationales will be given why it is one of the most important areas for a paraprofessional to promote student independence.
Co-support models that come from the area of co-teaching will be taught in the areas of supportive teaching, complementary teaching, parallel teaching and promoting student leadership. Effective ideas will be provided, so the paraprofessional always has something to do that contributes to meaningful teaching and/or support for students. This session is dynamic and hands-on with many meaningful applications that will contribute to commendable job performance and achieving high value for the paraprofessional as an essential member for an educational team.
Integrated Comprehensive Services
Going beyond inclusive education, integrated comprehensive services (ICS) is how progressive school districts equitably and successfully support all forms of diversity as an integrated whole, including learning, culture and family. This presentation includes components of ICS, how to use data for decision making, how to form district and school task forces, organization of services and future planning and evaluation processes, being suitable for educators, leaders and all team constituents.
Person-Centered Planning
To achieve desired future outcomes and to promote self-advocacy and self-determination, person-centered planning is extremely important. Processes such as M.A.P.S. (McGill Action Planning System), interests/preferences inventory, social relationships planning, desired future inventory and action planning will be explained and illustrated. Participants will apply processes to individuals they represent.
Promoting Youth Leadership Through Service Learning
Service learning is a wonderful educational structure to educate diverse learners together, promote student leadership and meaningful community contributions. A service learning philosophy is illustrated with dynamic instructional strategies and meaningful tools in this interactive, engaging workshop.