Port Clinton Social Emotional Learning & Mental Wellness Symposium

Social-emotional learning (SEL) is critical for student success, yet educators often lack a clear, time-efficient path to integrate it into daily lessons. As a result, students may miss the chance to develop essential life skills, leading to lower emotional resilience and diminished academic growth. In this session, discover how to spot and strengthen the SEL already embedded in your teaching. You’ll gain practical insights for highlighting these hidden components, learn to combine strategies that calm classrooms and boost engagement, and receive access to over 200 evidence-based methods—each aligned to specific SEL competencies. Walk away prepared to build a thriving, supportive, and high-achieving learning environment.

In an age where AI can deliver content, the teacher’s role is evolving. This session challenges educators to move beyond traditional curriculum-provided lessons and pacing guides to include what students truly need—authentic relationships, emotional intelligence, and effective collaboration. CoreTex, a research-informed brain model, demonstrates how classroom activities and strategies drive behavior, knowledge acquisition, engagement, and social interactions. By integrating SEL and empowering educators with an understanding of how emotions shape learning, CoreTex provides tools to reduce disruptions, enhance attention, and build the emotional intelligence students need to thrive. With access to a database of over 200 research-backed strategies, CoreTex equips teachers to create effective, student-centered learning experiences and focus on teaching kids, not just content.

All educators are aware of the incredible demands of working with today's students. Not enough educators, though, take the time to look closely at ways to reduce their own workload and stress levels, to steal time during the school day and year, to invest time in the happiness of one's self and one's colleagues, and to lean into the common struggles all educators face. We tend to work only on some of these aspects, alone and in "quiet desperation," as Thoreau famously noted. This session will cover aspects such as taming the grading workload, improving morale as a staff or building, joyful communication, and other techniques that, in concert, will make a tremendous, positive difference for you and for your colleagues (and, by extension, your students).

You have likely heard The Starfish Story, and the first time you did, it likely brought you to tears. Then, survival mode kicked in like it tends to for educators. We try to be everything for everybody, put out fires, and as a bonus, maybe stay sane. We think about our students, though, as individuals, all the time; it's why we got into this work. Alas, though, it may not seem to them like we do. There are ways, though, to show this to them without fanfare, and without major time, financial, or emotional expense to us. No matter how long you have taught, you remember the students for whom you made a small, positive difference even if, at the time, you were not really even trying. Rest assured, they remember you, too. Helping a student feel loved, valued, and appreciated is perhaps the most significant win-win that exists in education, with everyone's buckets getting filled. Let's explore and share ways to do this for our students at a time when all other noise in our lives may seem more pressing.