Two Day
Pre-Conference Training Institutes
Tuesday & Wednesday, July 7 & 8,
8:30 am - 5:30 pm
School & Youth Marriage Education Programs
Kay Reed, chair
Presenters:
Char Kamper: “Connections: Dating & Emotions” and “Connections: Relationships & Marriage” and
Marline Pearson: Love U2: Relationships Plus and Love U2: Through the Eyes of a Child
Pay for two days of concentrated training, and choose from the following three options:
1) Attend two days Connections training
2) Attend two days LoveU2 training
3) Mix and match - attend one day of each program.
Apply NOW for the First Comes Love DEAL (see below). Only 25 spots available!OR, you can simply attend the Training Institutes - a rare
opportunity to be trained by these wonderful program creators/authors.
Either way….you are ahead!
We have to start with the kids! These research-based, developmentally appropriate programs – teach students the skills and knowledge that are central to building and maintaining healthy marriages. Curricula are easily adapted to classroom, church, community, agency, after school, and youth group settings.
Attend to get trained in widely used, evidence based, evaluated programs that meet the criteria for the Federal marriage grants for youth relationship education.
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 • Demonstration with instruction in how to teach the curricula
• Evaluation results
• Tips on advocating for youth marriage education.
The “First Comes Love” DEAL:
Funded by a Federal marriage grant, the “DEAL” is being offered to 25 instructors. The first 25 successful applicants will receive tuition rebates, free curriculum, and benchmark payments under the Dibble Institute’s federal Healthy Marriage Demonstration Grant. All participants in the Institute will receive free training materials regardless of participation in the following special opportunity. To be part of the DEAL and receive the benchmark payment ($200), participants:
• Agree to instruct a minimum of 40 youth in one of the four curricula above by May 30, 2010
• Complete a basic application form outlining their plans for this instruction
• Receive confirmation of their participation from The Dibble Institute
• Sign a Memorandum of Understanding with The Dibble Institute
• 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 AND a benchmark payment of $200 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 Institute?
Youth workers, 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, CBAE, and Head Start grantees, youth pastors, social workers, Boys and Girls Club staff, and parents.
What you will receive: First Comes Love participants will receive one of the following upon completion of the training: (Over $450 worth of materials!)
• Connections: Dating and Emotions – Instructor’s Manual and 40 Student Workbooks
• Connections: Relationships and Marriage – Instructor’s Manual and 40 Student Workbooks
• Love U2: Relationships PLUS and 40 Student Workbooks and the Art of Loving Well Anthology
• Love U2: Through the Eyes of a Child and the Art of Loving Well Anthology
All Institute enrollees will receive research reports, sample lessons,
and other training materials for all the curricula.
More info and application forms: www.BuildingRelationshipSkills.org
Additional details about EACH of the programs:
July 7 “Connections: Dating and Emotions”. July 8 “Connections: Relationships and Marriage”
Instructor: Char Kamper CONNECTIONS: Dating and Emotions helps teens understand the challenges that arise in early relationships, develop healthy dating practices, self-regulate intense emotions, and cultivate life skills. Engaging, interactive, ready-to-teach lessons show teens how positive relationships develop, effective ways to communicate, how to spot destructive patterns, healthy ways to break-up, how to deal with emotions, and other essential healthy interpersonal skills. This 17-lesson course helps teens understand early relationships - and helps establish a strong foundation for later life.
Topics include: • Getting Ready: What’s Dating About–Things to Know–How to Ask, Accept, Decline
• Going Out: Why Am I Dating? –Loneliness –How Relationships Grow–Problem Personalities–Abuse –Anger and Jealousy
• Defining the Relationship: It’s Not Working– Ending It
• Starting Over.
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. Teach the curriculum with confidence.
One of the most effective nationally evaluated relationship and marriage programs for teens, CONNECTIONS: Relationships and Marriage helps young adults learn to create and sustain healthy, meaningful relationships. The skill-based, interactive course covers: building and appreciating individual strengths, how family experiences shape relationship expectations, developing positive conflict resolution strategies, setting life goals, improving communication patterns, as well as love, commitment, and marriage. The program includes the popular Marriage Game that is a big favorite and eye opener with boys and girls alike! Selected Contents: • Personality: Self-understanding - Life Plans • Relationships: Attractions -Dating - Emotions- Expectations -Breaking up • Communications: Family patterns - Conflicts -Danger signs-Talking- Listening • Marriage: - Love-Commitment-Living Together-Deciding to marry – Forgiveness – Family budgets, Dealing with Crisis – Importance of fun.
Participants will be able to:
1. Identify three components of relationships.
2. Understand the need for empathy for someone they love.
3. Identify signs of maturity and personal growth through the process of dating.
4. Identify emotional differences between casual and meaningful relationships.
5. Understand the need to end a relationship that isn’t working.
6. Recognize the importance of developing resiliency skills when relationships end. 7. Understand the benefits of staying committed to a marriage relationship.
8. Identify four phases of crisis management.
9. Thoughtfully consider the responsibilities of marriage before rushing to marry. 10. Understand why many teens avoid marriage.
11. Teach the curriculum with confidence.
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July 7 “Love U2: Through the Eyes of a Child” July 8 “Love U2: Relationships PLUS”
Instructor: Marline Pearson
Learn and explore the richness of Relationships PLUS, the nationally acclaimed relationship skills program currently being evaluated in a 5 year federal grant at Auburn University. You will gain confidence in teaching teen-friendly communication skills, and in using activities, stories, real world teen scenarios, sculpting, drawing, games, popular music and film in teaching relationship concepts and skills. Most importantly you will learn how to raise teens’ understanding of the importance of sequence, i.e. education, job, marriage, before babies, and to build a “story” of healthy marriage with youth. You will also be trained to engage parents as partners with the Parent/Guardian—Teen Connection activities.
Relationships PLUS is a lively, activity-packed 13-lesson curriculum drawn and refined during the Auburn evaluation with the best of the Love U2 series. The research-based curriculum includes many hands-on activities used to build skills and knowledge to promote healthy dating relationship, to make wise sexual choices, and to lay a foundation for healthy adult relationships and marriage in the future. Its flexible design lends itself equally well to the school classroom as to all kinds of youth groups, including community and faith based organizations, whether they serve high-risk or mainstream teens. It features activities using teen scenarios written by diverse teens, sculpting, drawing, music and film. It has an engaging Student Workbook to apply concepts, and many Parent/Guardian—Teen Connection activities to convey content to parents and spark important discussions at home.
Participants will: 1. Understand personal identity development– a central developmental task of adolescence – and the impact of romantic relationships on it. 2. Learn how to help teens get in touch with their sense of identity and consider who they might become in the future. 3. Learn how to help teens generate current actions they can take to move toward their desired selves and deal with peer pressure along the way. 4. Explore the physical, mental, emotional, and social dimensions of maturity and gain an awareness of immaturity. 5. Identify personality characteristics in others that are important and find values that are attractive. 6. Learn the ingredients and building blocks of healthy relationships. 7. Explore the chemistry of attraction and the nature of infatuation. 8. Learn the difference between love and lust. 9. Explore three important dimensions of love: chemistry, friendship, and trust/commitment. 10. Build an understanding of true intimacy and how it develops. 11. Learn how to build skills and awareness for taking a wise, “deciding” approach toward relationships and avoid the risks associated with “sliding” into an unhealthy one. 12. Learn to gauge the health of a relationship – the key questions to ask. 13. Become familiar with what healthy and unhealthy relationships look like in the real world. 14. Learn how to foster parent/guardian-teen dialogue about healthy relationships. 15. Learn how and when to break up and move on. 16. Understand what dating abuse and domestic violence are and what respect and normal boundaries in relationships look like. 17. Identify early warning signs of abuse and learn to set boundaries with the first signs of disrespect. 18. Evaluate communication patterns learned while growing up. 19. Understand why it’s difficult to communicate when angry. 20. Practice “time-out” skills and the Speaker-Listener Technique. 21. Understand the need to nurture and care for relationships with regular appreciations. 22. Learn to reduce negative communication patterns by practicing how to raise complaints and issues effectively. 23. Learn to assess the patterns within one’s own relationships. 24. Understand why healthy and stable parental relationships matter for a child and what the risks are to babies of young and unmarried parents. 25. Learn the latest research about child well-being, family structure, and healthy marriage benefits. 26. Understand the characteristics and value of positive fathering. 27. Learn the “success sequence” for achieving future life and family goals. 28. Become familiar with reasons for risky partner selection and ways to make a good marriage choice. 29. Consider important facts about cohabitation. 30. Learn about skills-based relationship and marriage education. 31. Develop a personal success plan drawing on all of the above. 32. Teach the curriculum with confidence. Through the Eyes of a Child takes a unique approach to pregnancy prevention by “switching focus” — putting the child’s needs at center stage. Teens are challenged to consider how a child is affected when the parents are young, unmarried, and unprepared. This unique strategy builds a critical knowledge base that powerfully motivates teens to avoid unwed childbearing as well as early sexual involvement. It builds an ethical awareness of the link between their sexual decisions and potential consequences for a child.
In 10 activity-based lessons, Through the Eyes of a Child focuses in a highly engaging way on what babies require in order to develop and thrive. Teens learn about nurturing and socializing, how early experiences shape the future, why fathers matter, the impact of parents’ relationships, the relevance of marriage, and more. Lessons also cover basic information such as myths and facts about getting pregnant and the emotional and material realities of unplanned pregnancy for a teen.
Participants will: 1. Learn how pregnancy affects a girl’s and boy’s life materially and emotionally – now and in the future - including their separate future love lives. 2. Explore the contrasting needs of teen parents and babies. 3. Examine child outcomes and risks to babies of young unwed mothers. 4. Construct a foundation for understanding why a parent’s relationship matters to a baby in terms of stability and quality of care. 5. Learn the importance of good fathering and the unique contributions of fathers. 6. Learn what babies need from their parents before they’re born and in the early years, based on the latest early brain research. 7. Understand the connection between early socialization, parenting practices and child outcomes. 8. Understand decision-making about pregnancy and the critical questions teens need to consider about keeping a baby versus adoption.9. Learn why marriage is in trouble. 10. Understand the pros and cons of living together. 11. Gain an overview of accumulated social science evidence on how changes in family structure have impacted child outcomes. 12. Understand the impact of troubled parental relationships and divorce on child outcomes. 13. Identify the outcomes of troubled parental unions on children and whether it makes sense to stay together “for the kid’s sake”. 14. Look at the personal, social, and economic benefits of marriage (not destructive marriages) that demographic research has identified. 15. Become familiar with the latest research finding on the patterns that destroy or protect relationships and marriages and the promising skills-based programs that emerging from it. 16. 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 90FE0024/03.
This institute is part of the week-long Smart Marriages conference.
Register for the Institute and the Conference: Click for Information on Conference Details, to download a conference brochure, REGISTER ONLINE, hotel & travel information & discounts, etc.