What is SHINE In Action?

Using the principles of my book, SHINE: Life Lessons Revealed published in 2015, I developed SHINE in Action.

Throughout my educational career, I attended a plethora of training sessions. Some were effective, a few engaging, and others completely irrelevant. At times, the sheer information dump and level of detail were overwhelming - and tedious. Within minutes, I measured the relevance of distributed information, and within minutes I engaged or moved on to planning lessons in my head while feigning rapt attention.

I found the best sessions hands-on, personal, and relevant. Thus, I developed SHINE in Action around these concepts - three hours of interactive, reflective, thought-provoking, engaging, and fun activities.

SHINE in Action provides broad yet essential approaches with five tried and tested goals:

• Mastering self-knowledge - Knowing one’s strengths (and how to maximize them), one’s challenges (and how to turn them into strengths), triggers (and how to go untriggered), and effectively drawing upon one’s support system.

• Knowing the audience - Fully understanding the human make-up of the classroom of the 2020s. Realizing the challenges that come with a wide variety of students from vastly different backgrounds all in one classroom.

• Keeping intentional- Having clear and consistent expectations, knowing and honoring learning targets, working in advance to economize time, streamlining processes, and experiencing the satisfaction of checking items off an ever-growing “to-do” list.

• Developing resilience - Understanding how to resolve and circumvent the inevitable challenges that arise for teachers daily. Using effective strategies to evaluate and modify approaches to problem-solving and keeping a solutions-oriented perspective.

• Maintaining an uplifting outlook - Striving for positive outcomes, embracing possibility, rejecting negative self-talk, engaging in affirming attitudes, shifting difficult situations to opportunities for growth and improvement.