Please note that the workshops listed below are topics that WOO coordinates on a regular and as requested basis, however, given the right material and a short amount of time to prepare, WOO would be available to facilitate a variety of topics that may not be listed below. If you are interested in a topic that you do not see, please ask if we can coordinate it. The following workshops have a focus around building leadership, will be 90 minutes in duration (2 forty-five minute periods if necessary), and unless noted, target adolescent audiences ages 12-18. They can also be easily adaptable for staff development purposes.

A Cry for Help

Students will discuss signs and symptoms of depression, eating disorders, self injury and suicide, ways to deal with it, and where to get help.

Anger Management and Coping in Uncertain Times

Participants will discuss things/situations that make them angry and learn about “triggers.” They will comprehend the process of anger, how to identify their feelings, and learned to react to their anger in a healthier manner.

Building Relationships

Participants will develop knowledge and understanding of human relationships. In addition, they will understand the skills involved in problem solving and in the intricacies of relating to others. They will understand aspects of what it means to have a healthy human relationship.

Bullying 101

The goal of this workshop is to have participants fully understand the issues of bullying, as well as build on core character values such as mutual respect, empathy, and integrity. Participants will be provided useful strategies for resolving conflicts and discussing when adult intervention is necessary.

Character of Leadership

Participants, upon completion of this workshop, will have basic character ethics and principles, comprehend the role of ethical decisions in leadership, and learn techniques to enhance their ethics.

Checking In…With Your Teen (Parenting Workshop)

This workshop was created with the intention of providing a forum for parents to comprehend their relationships with their adolescent children. It includes a discussion on the fundamentals of adolescence, different issues that teens face in different grades, how self esteem plays a role in their development, as well as the issues surrounding drugs, alcohol, depression, and sex. The workshop is completed with a discussion on what parents can do to comprehend and build a healthy relationship with their children.

Communication Skills

This is a fun and interactive workshop that will be briefly designed with a supervisor and/or director, so that role plays can be tailored to specific incidents at your school or agency. Participants will learn the importance of good communication, good listening, and how both are not always easy.

Communication Skills and Stoppers

Participants will learn several communication skills and comprehend how to integrate these skills into helping relationships. Participants will learn how to listen through one-way communication, as well as how to communicate without words. They will have an opportunity to implement real life situations and learn how to handle communication stoppers and conflict.

Creating Innovative Programs and Leadership

This workshop is designed to expand leadership thinking and empower participants to construct their visions and obtain skills to facilitate that positive outcome. Participants will be given the opportunity to learn what leadership is, be encouraged to discuss and develop new ideas, and be given strategic tools to improve their innovative leadership capabilities.

Cyber Bullying

A huge and growing problem amongst our youth today, this workshop was designed to provide participants with awareness to various issues surrounding the misuse of the Internet. WOO has 3 different types of cyber bullying workshops, one for grades 2-5, 5-9, and 9-12. All workshops are age appropriate.

Decision Making/Refusal Skills/Conflict Resolution

Participants will be challenged to make decisions about tough situations. They will comprehend the decision-making process as well as how to handle conflicts. Participants will identify how they currently make the decisions they make, as well as how to dissect a problem. They will be able to explore points of views in conflict and practice taking perspectives of other points of views.

Did You Say Something?

Participants in this workshop will comprehend the components of active listening, as well as understand the importance of focusing on what another person is saying. Participants will learn about paraphrasing and validating people’s feelings.

Don’t Give In

Peer pressure is experienced everyday by almost everyone, especially adolescents. Whether it is to try a new burger at McDonald's or to play “hooky” from school, it is still peer pressure. Studies show that factors such as peer pressure put students at a greater risk for HIV infection and other issues. This workshop will help you turn negative peer pressure into positive peer pressure.

Drug Discovery

This workshop will discuss different types of drugs, as well as their short and long term physical, social, and mental effects.

Ethics and Values

This workshop is designed to have staff identify their personal values and comprehend how those values are incorporated into their job responsibilities. Participants will have a chance to discuss and learn how to maintain a positive attitude, even if they are working in a negative environment. Workshop includes a focus on defining personal work ethics.

Exhibiting Responsible Citizenship

This workshop is geared towards 6th and 7th graders and is designed to focus on actions students should take if they witness a crime.

Exploring Careers: Life Beyond High School

This program, which can be taught in 1 – 3 sessions, was designed to educate participants, grades 6 through 12, on creating high school goals, investigate their interests and aptitudes, and learn about careers in their interest areas.

Identifying Feelings - Music in Our Hearts

Participants will be able to identify their feelings with a popular past time – music. Participants will connect with other students on a personal level by letting them share a part of themselves. In addition, they will be able to comprehend that music has communicational and cultural purposes along with pop culture reasoning. Participants will be able to realize what music does in helping identify with feelings of their own and others. The facilitator has done many variations of this workshop, including the use of drum circles as a means to express oneself and release stress.

Identifying Feelings 2 - I can’t help how I feel!

This workshop was designed as a “part 2” to the previous workshop. Participants in this workshop will walk away from this lesson and notice how rare it is for someone to pinpoint their feelings in one word. Often it takes the combination of a few different key emotions to equal to their own unique outcome. They will begin to see this in themselves, then family and friends, and in the people they will be helping. They will understand the importance of correctly identifying feelings, verbally and nonverbally. Participants will also walk away with the security knowing our feelings are never wrong or right.

I’M LOUD AND I’M PROUD! (3 sessions)

This workshop was designed to address issues of tolerance and diversity. Participants will be encouraged to examine the assumptions they make about other people based on race, ethnicity, gender, religion, sexual orientation, medical condition and economic status. They will explore how the assumptions they make about other people and the language they use to express these assumptions can contribute to discrimination. Participants will discuss negative stereotypes and explore how we can begin to change these stereotypes.

Labels Don’t Have to Stick

The participants in this workshop will learn the importance of being nonjudgmental when helping others. Participants will also learn the difference between subjective and objective observations and how this pertains to being an effective Peer Leader.

No Reason to Hide ( A Suicide Prevention Workshop)

This workshop is designed to educate youth on identifying common warning signs of depression that, if not addressed, could lead to suicidal behavior. Participants will reflect on teen depression and create proposals for improving mental health in their school community. They will learn key concepts of suicide prevention including understanding the characteristics of youth who are at higher risk to attempt suicide, warning signs, what to do if a friend is suicidal, facts/myths of suicide, as well as practice needed skills through role plays and studying stories of suicidal teenagers.

Out For Acceptance

This workshop will explore some of the ins and outs of sexual orientation. Students will examine their own attitudes and beliefs about sexual orientation in the context of social justice. Participants will discover various ways people deal with differences while learning key terms that deal with sexuality and gender identity.

Presentation Skills - Part 1

This workshop was designed to train youth on how to do presentations. Participants will recognize their anxiety about creating or presenting materials to others and will be provided methods of coping with this anxiety. They will understand how to use their anxiety to enhance their performance.

Presentation Skills - Part 1

Presentation Skills - Part 2

Participants will gain additional confidence and begin to feel more comfortable in front of a group. They will learn about good platform skills that will enhance a presentation. Participants will have an opportunity to practice organizing the content of a good oral presentation while becoming better prepared to handle a range of situations that may arise in their work as peer leaders.

Presentation Skills - Part 3

Participants will comprehend the content of a successful lesson and be able to create, practice, and demonstrate a presentation on a variety of topics. They will be more confident in their ability to make presentations.

Prioritizing Issues/Empowerment

Participants will be able to identify their goals and create a plan of action for obtaining them. They will make a connection between the decisions they make and their future success. Participants will understand the relationship between current actions or decisions and the ability to achieve long-term goals. The importance of prioritizing our issues and empowering our peers will be comprehended.

Stress Management and Coping in Uncertain Times

Participants will learn what stress is and how to identify the symptoms of stress. Participants will learn different coping strategies and have a chance at participating in role plays.

Substance Abuse

WOO coordinates a variety of substance abuse and prevention workshops grades K-12.

Support Systems/Referral Sources/Helping Skills

Each participant will understand the importance of a support system. In addition, they will be able to identify school and community services available to adolescents while learning stress management skills.

The Heart of Management

A series of workshops designed to educate on how to increase management skills, communication skills, and increase productivity from staff members.

The 10 Demandments of Behavior Management

Participants in this staff development training will explore their feelings about what it takes to manage a group of adolescents or younger kids. They will learn the importance of giving and getting respect, as well as have a chance to express their own frustrations in a healthy manner.

Transitioning to High School

A workshop designed to prepare middle school students for high school and beyond.

Values 1 - Personal Values and Acquiring Values

Each participant in this workshop will comprehend that the members of their group share values that are both similar and different to one another. They will understand the role of diversity in American life and the importance of shared values, political beliefs, and civic beliefs in an increasingly diverse American society.

Values 2 - Going Once, Going Twice… Soooold!

This workshop is a follow up to the above workshop on personal values. Participants will begin to comprehend their own personal values and why this is important in developing their ability to help others.

Values 3 - Identifying and Influencing Values

This workshop is an additional training on values that can be combined as “part 3” to the last 2 workshops listed, or stand on its own. Participants will understand what their values are, where they originate from, and how their values influence their choices and actions.

What is Peer Empowerment and Leadership?

This workshop is intended to assist adolescents in fully understanding the concept of peer leadership as well as their role as peer leaders (in their school or organization). As they identify qualities of effective peer leaders, participants will reflect upon their own strengths and recognize what areas may require attention for improvement.

What? When? Where? Why? Huh? – Questioning Skills

Participants will learn how to use, and the importance of, open-ended questions. Participants will learn the difference between open-ended and close-ended questions. In addition, the participants will identify between general and specific statements.

HIV ORIENTED WORKSHOPS

Global HIV

Participants will be able to analyze the relationship between culture, socio-economic factors, and education in relationship to the spread of HIV/AIDS. They will understand that HIV/AIDS does not just affect us in America, but it is a worldwide problem. Participants will explore the consequences of this worldwide pandemic, as well as identify actions that can be taken to help lessen the impact of HIV/AIDS around the globe.

HIV/AIDS 101

(*note: These workshops were designed to be combined with teaching students how to present HIV Prevention lessons to their peers. The workshops are listed here are in 3 parts, but can be split up and combined in a multitude of ways depending on a school or agency’s needs. HIV and Safer Sex are also offered as separate topics and each individually is 3 forty-five minute sessions in length in their entirety.)

Students will present the basic facts on the transmission of HIV/AIDS, how to protect yourself, and the effects of HIV on your body.

HIV/Safer Sex - Part 1

Participants will have the basic understanding of what HIV is, how you can be infected, as well as be able to identify and explain the symptoms of and the treatment for STI’s. They will have an opportunity to start getting a feel for making presentations and increase their sense of what makes a HIV Prevention presentation effective.

HIV/Safer Sex - Part 2

Participants will understand and be able to identify how HIV in contracted. The workshop is designed to educate youth on risk behaviors, as well as increasing their awareness regarding alternatives to having sex, as well as “safer sex”. The workshop is designed to continue working on presentation skills. They will leave the workshop comprehending the importance of being tested.

HIV/Safer Sex - Part 3

This workshop was designed to reinforce the facts learned in the last 2 workshops in a fun and interactive manner.

Safer Sex

Students will present a review of Sexually Transmitted Infections (STI’S) and discuss contraceptives to present the spread of the HIV virus. Although, abstinence will be stressed, alternatives to ensure safety will be addressed.

SUPPORT GROUPS

Weekly support groups are available for implementation including Bereavement, Rainbow Connection (LGBT Support), and Parenting.

All the above workshops/groups are 90 minutes in length and can be split into 2 sessions if there is only a 45 minute allotment, or the age group is younger. Pricing is budget friendly. Please call for details.