Participants will explore foundational topics, including an Introduction to Child Development, which covers physical and cognitive development as well as developmental delays. You will also watch an interview with Shana Larson, Early Childhood Special Education Coordinator and Heidi Hahn, Sourcewell Special Education Partner. The course also emphasizes that behavior is a form of communication and what to expect. Additionally, learners will gain insights into de-escalation, dysregulation, and how to support students. This comprehensive approach ensures that paraprofessionals are well-prepared to support diverse learners effectively.

This practical course provides the background knowledge needed to teach all the components of beginning writing instruction. The instructional practices are developmentally appropriate for children in grades pre-K-3. They are designed to easily transfer to classroom lessons and can be integrated with any writing curriculum or published writing program. The course is tightly aligned with state literacy standards.

The course covers these topics:

• Writing Basics


• Engage a Community of Writers


• Writing Process


• Structure for the Three Types of Writing


• First Steps: Drawing, Labels, Lists


• Syntax, Sentences


• Paragraph Writing


• Writing from Sources

This webinar will identify elements of differentiation and explore differentiation strategies such as questioning, grouping, and choice. Use these strategies to meet both support and challenge needs of your diverse students.

Led by a mental health professional and educator, this webinar will cover key facts about children's mental health, early warning signs of mental health disorders, and signs and symptoms of childhood suicide. Discussion will include strategies for how to respond and how to access help for students.

This training focuses on why and how our body and brain respond to stress/crisis and how that affects our work, wellness, and interactions. Explore Social-Emotional Learning strategies to recognize dysregulation in yourself and others, as well as strategies to regain and retain regulation. These strategies apply to interactions with students, colleagues, and caregivers.

This webinar provides participants an opportunity to explore components of effective reading instruction including phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, comprehension, and motivation and engagement. Within each component, participants will learn what it is, why we teach it, and how we teach it.

Multilingual learners in our classrooms are a huge asset. Not every educator may feel confident in how to best support and include these students. This webinar offers insights to support educators in creating optimal learning environments and instructional strategies for each learner.

Explore components of effective reading instruction, including phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, comprehension, and motivation and engagement. Within each component, participants will learn what it is, why we teach it, and how we teach it.

Learn with us as we explore the 2022 Minnesota data science anchor standard with Jessica Strom to see how we can incorporate data science into your Building Thinking Classroom. Grade 6 teachers, choose which session might be the best fit for you. The BTC content will be similar in both sessions.  This session will include more examples for middle and high school classrooms.

This workshop will offer you ways for your students to be thinkers beyond rote memorization and repetitive calculations. Jessica Strom, mathematics educator in a small rural Minnesota school, will introduce you to 14 teaching practices for enhancing learning, engagement, and discourse in your math classroom. Learn how to apply these practices to engage your students in learning mathematics.

Join your fellow SchooLinks users in Minnesota to collaborate on new features, learn strategies, and more.

This professional learning day is designed for AVID Site Teams across Region 5, Minnesota to celebrate successes, strengthen collaboration, and deepen understanding of effective AVID implementation.

Participants will engage in learning across AVID systems, distributed leadership, and the characteristics of effective site teams. Teams will explore implementation instruments and data collection practices that support monitoring and strengthening AVID implementation.  Structured collaboration time will allow principals, site coordinators, and teachers to connect both with similar roles and across content areas.

The day intentionally prioritizes extended site team planning time, allowing teams to apply their learning, refine their site team plans, clarify responsibilities, and identify next steps to amplify AVID implementation within their schools.

Turning strategy into real conversations and real results

Even with strong systems in place, many nonprofit professionals still hesitate at the most critical moment: the ask. This training is hands-on, practical, and confidence-building. This session creates space to practice, refine, and build comfort with real-world fundraising conversations. We move beyond theory into lived experience to help participants find language that feels natural, grounded, and aligned with their mission.

This training is provided in partnership with the Initiative Foundation.

This is a specialized training on both practical and legal considerations of Minnesota’s Open Meeting Law and Data Practices requirements. Participants will gain an understanding of these complicated laws, gain an understanding of updated regulations, learn how to access appropriate resources, and leave with practical knowledge for working within the laws’ parameters.

How strong organizations create strong fundraising. Fundraising doesn’t begin with an ask, it begins with alignment. Participants explore how leadership, governance, and strategic clarity directly shape donor trust and long-term stewardship. This session focuses on strengthening the internal foundation that makes fundraising more natural, more effective, and more sustainable.

This training is provided in partnership with the Initiative Foundation.

Learn to support students in combining intrinsic ingredients into personalized flow-based projects by doing it yourself.  Meaning, you'll be the learner and we'll support you in creating your own one-of-a-kind project.

In this one-day workshop participants will learn how to establish and sustain comprehensive school safety efforts that attend to both physical and psychological safety. The workshop addresses critical components needed to develop, exercise, and evaluate safety and crisis teams and plans and conduct building vulnerability assessments. The model also integrates school personnel and comunity provider roles in providing school-based crisis preparedness and response activities. Additional topics addressed also include media/social media, communication, reunification, students with special needs, culture, and memorials. After this workshop, participants will be better prepared to improve their school’s climate, student resilience, and crisis response capabilities of school personnel. With updated research and strategies, this workshop makes a clear connection between ongoing crisis prevention, mitigation, protection, response, and recovery. 

View event flyer for more info >

Putting teachers and nurses together cultivating compassion. Let's make people feel safe, heard and valued.  A team approach to support your unique journey toward impactful change, nurturing compassion, forging connections, and driving positive, progressive transformations in both professional and personal lives.

Join our inaugural book club over the summer. Education professionals often don’t find time to read for themselves. This offering takes this reality into account, and we seek a community of readers looking to refresh over the summer. We have selected, JOY!, by Timothy Kanold, a reflective and practical guide for educators seeking to cultivate lasting joy in their personal and professional lives.  The group will meet in June, July, and August to discuss the book and its personal and professional impact. Registration is required by May 15 to ensure timely delivery of the book.

Language is ever evolving and changing. Sometimes knowing which terms or descriptions to use can be difficult and sometimes we don’t even know we are using outdated or harmful language. This webinar is focused on promoting positive language around topics such as race, gender, and common school-based labels and language.

This course provides a comprehensive, operations-focused approach to Active Human Shooter/Hostile Event Response (AHSER) aligned with NFPA 3000 standards. Participants will examine the critical components of an integrated response, including Unified Command, Rescue Task Force (RTF) deployment, and the application of basic trauma care in high-threat environments.

Through the lens of real-world incident after-action reports, this course bridges policy and practice—highlighting what worked, what failed, and how coordinated response efforts can be improved. Emphasis is placed on interagency collaboration between fire, EMS, and law enforcement, ensuring a cohesive and effective operational framework during rapidly evolving incidents based on the priorities of life as defined in law enforcement as well as the fire EMS tactical priorities.

Key topics include:

• Establishing and managing Unified Command in dynamic, high-risk environments


• Formation, deployment, and operational considerations of Rescue Task Forces


• Warm zone operations and risk-based decision making


• Integration of fire/EMS into law enforcement-led incidents


• Application of basic trauma techniques, including hemorrhage control, airway management, and rapid patient extraction

Morning Session: Skills for Transforming Conflict 

Conflict is a constant in our world. It is a common and inevitable aspect of work inside our organizations and with the public. With intentionality, conflict can be a powerful opportunity for growth and change. Equip yourself with the mindsets, communications skills, and practices to manage conflict productively. In this session, you will experience plenty of peer-to-peer discussion and learn practical strategies you can use as soon as you leave the room.

Afternoon session: Designing collaborative processes for reaching agreement 

Collaborative problem-solving is a systematic approach for finding workable shared solutions to complex challenges for parties with different views and interests. In this session, you will use the Office of Collaboration and Dispute Resolution’s five-step collaborative problem-solving model to design a conflict resolution process that meets the unique needs of a challenge you are facing and get helpful feedback from OCDR trainers and other participants in the room.

The STAR Autism Program teaches children with autism the critical skills identified by the 2001 National Research Council. The ABA (Applied Behavior Analysis) instructional methods of discrete trial training, pivotal response training, and functional routines form the instructional base of this comprehensive program for children with autism. 

This extensive two-day workshop provides participants with detailed examples and practice activities on how to implement the evidence-based practices. Participants will learn how to implement these strategies through structured lesson plans and a curriculum scope and sequence. The workshop will include extensive data collection systems and participants will learn to collect and use data for instructional decision making.

The STAR Autism Program teaches children with autism the critical skills identified by the 2001 National Research Council. The ABA (Applied Behavior Analysis) instructional methods of discrete trial training, pivotal response training, and functional routines form the instructional base of this comprehensive program for children with autism. 

This extensive two-day workshop provides participants with detailed examples and practice activities on how to implement the evidence-based practices. Participants will learn how to implement these strategies through structured lesson plans and a curriculum scope and sequence. The workshop will include extensive data collection systems and participants will learn to collect and use data for instructional decision making.

This training was developed exclusively for Sourcewell’s Minnesota Region 5 partners as professional development for those serving students in transportation roles. Created in response to Transportation Directors’ requests, the course provides practical strategies for addressing student conduct concerns on school buses through the lens of Social Emotional Learning. Participants will explore ways to increase self-awareness, avoid deficit thinking, and honor the experiences of everyone involved. Each unit includes flexible learning options for either facilitated group training or self-paced individual learning.