What if you had a roadmap in your pocket to bring out the absolute best in yourself, your team, and your students?
What if you had a roadmap in your pocket to bring out the absolute best in yourself, your team, and your students?
The Flourish Lab is an experiential learning series designed to positively shift the way adults show up for young people. This hands-on curriculum takes a refreshingly human look at creating positive after-school environments that support the social and emotional growth in young people.
In a series of transformative workshops, we learn how to flourish first — before ever asking the youth in our care to do the same. What makes this shine is an impactful framework that incorporates three pivotal areas of focus.
Together, these practical, easy-to-use building blocks foster highly engaging environments for children of all ages, which, when mastered, fundamentally change the way we all grow, learn, and flourish.
We are passionate about positive relationships—what it means to build inspiring connections with young people.
We believe at our core, that there is power in presence—how adults in the room show up (at their best or worst).
We call for inspired planning—proactively doing the work upfront, to show how much we care.
An introduction to The Flourish Lab approach
As out-of-school-time professionals, what and how you do what you do, matters deeply. We see and celebrate the lasting difference your hard work makes in the everyday lives of young people.
In this introduction to The Flourish Lab we want to ensure that before ever engaging with young people, every adult has access to expert guidance. Why? To understand how best to work with youth, and experience what a remarkable honor that is.
Together we look for ways to practice showing up as our best, by considering three pivotal lenses: relationships, presence and planning. What results is a powerful roadmap for positive impact that begins with you.
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The Flourish Lab essentials
These foundational courses explore what it means to focus on relationships, presence, and planning.
We believe relationships are built (or broken), in a series of moments, and that fostering a sense of belonging is essential for all to thrive. Knowing how to build positive, youth-friendly relationships, and understanding exactly what to avoid in the process, is an invaluable skill set for every youth-serving adult.
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Being truly present means consciously choosing to show up with a heightened level of awareness. And it matters bigtime! Positive or negative — the choice is always ours, but either way, count on a ripple effect. Once we understand that our adult actions and attitudes have a direct impact on the youth we serve (and all who support them), we can choose to show up differently.
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It is our job to control the things we can: our lessons, time, space and materials. Planning ahead with intentionality allows us to focus on children in the moment, which is always the point. The message young people get with each well-thought-out lesson plan, choice of materials, or age-appropriate option, is that they matter. And that’s everything at The Flourish Lab.
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Spring boarding off of the EXPLORE modules, our DEEPEN workshops take things one step further — diving deeper into specific practices.
We all want to feel seen and heard
To feel seen and acknowledged by adults, is vital to the positive development of children. When young people feel valued and respected, they are much more likely to trust, which deepens any exchange. In this workshop, we explore the empowering skills of acknowledgement and validation (along with their opposites), examining the potential impact of Each.
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Diversifying your investment
What do eco-systems have to do with trust? At any given moment, trust is either quietly built, or broken. So, when we take the time to invest in a Bank of Trust with parents, guardians, co-workers, principals and others in a child’s support system — trust grows. In fact, when we engage children’s broader communities, they tend to feel more engaged, safer and open to learning.
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The impact of difference
It is human and deeply rooted in us all to want to belong. Not surprisingly then, that when we first step into a new group, it is our differences that often bubble to the surface, sometimes manifesting difficult emotions and behaviors. Spotting this kind of pattern is part of how we show up fully for our students — as we support them with new vantage points that see, embrace and celebrate differences.
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We all have blind spots
You can’t change what you don’t acknowledge. And yet, it’s virtually impossible to show up as ourselves without bringing our personal blind spots to the table. Once we see and name our biases, we can change them. With new awareness, equity enters the forefront, allowing us to intentionally show up as our best for all students. This introductory workshop dips a toe into a timely human topic that fundamentally changes every conversation and our part in it.
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Every behavior starts with a feeling
Children, like adults, have emotional emergencies — they just look different from ours. On closer inspection, we learn that there’s a predictable pattern to escalation — an arc of sorts, that if caught in time, can re-direct outcomes from explosive to calm. Using a child-first, relationship-centered mindset, this module teaches us that strong behaviors are no mystery, and that all feelings make sense. We also discover that preventative techniques (like focusing on connection), can help facilitate a sense of calm.
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What it is, and isn’t
Hint: it’s not about fixing, changing or walking in someone’s shoes. Joy, pain, struggle, fear — empathy is about companioning someone in their experience, as-is — without trying to make it better, go away, or change it. And that takes practice. In this cornerstone workshop about social and emotional development, you will be asked to experience empathy, explore what defines it, and learn how to-create an empathy-infused space for the young people you work with.
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Sometimes life is hard
When we are at our best, the sun seems to shine brighter, and there’s a bounce in our step. We also have moments that feel quite the opposite. To address the ups and downs of life and work, this module explores inner critics, self-compassion and how to practice empathy for yourself so that you can be ready to lavish it on the children you serve.
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A skill-building gold mine
We like to think of goals as micro-plans with purpose. Goal-setting infuses any program and activity with naturally occurring opportunities for social and emotional growth. Goals nudge us to deal with disappointment, and make room for pure, unadulterated celebration (over and over again). This workshop celebrates the benefits and ease that can come from inspired goal setting.
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Celebrating your strengths
We’re here to debunk the traditional notion of what leadership looks like. We define an ideal leader as: YOU AT YOUR ABSOLUTE BEST, whatever that looks like…. and growing from there. Leadership is a process, not a destination. This on point workshop helps identify and celebrate your unique blend of strengths (sometimes we call this your secret sauce!), and explores how to use them with intentionality in your work with youth.
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Step aside!
What happens when we allow children the opportunity to lead? No surprise: they bloom. Whether pinch-hitting as a helper, or leading an activity for the day — encouraging youth to step into leadership roles in any moment, leads to noteworthy gains in social and emotional skills. Once we acknowledge that children are born leaders, all that remains is to spot the opportunities in plain sight, pass the baton — and step out of the way! In this session, we’ll discuss the magic children can bring to any table, when given the chance.
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Making fun of learning
We invite you to put the celebration back into youth programming. As thoughtful guides, we look for ways to craft learning objectives that inspire young people to feel proud, connected, celebrated for what they’ve learned. From math to art; problem-solving to creative thinking — learn how to bring programs to life with easy-to-implement lesson-planning practices that promote positive feelings and put the fun back into learning.
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The calm — finding & keeping it
Mindfulness conjures up many things, but what does it mean for children? At The Flourish Lab, we teach adults to teach children how to focus on the present, in ways they can relate to. We pass around a full cup of water…observe a spider crawling… smell something to notice something. When children are taught mindfulness strategies, their distracting internal noises quiet, self-control improves, and pockets of calm emerge. In this module, we dive into what it means to help youth develop a mindful mindset.
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Committing to the here and now
We believe mindfulness has a great deal to do with connecting intentionally with yourself and others in the moment. When things feel hard (like they sometimes do), mindful strategies help us stay calm amidst the storm. In this module we’ll use practical and beneficial analogies and exercises to better understand what mindfulness is, and is not. Explore the power and benefit of grounding yourself in the present moment.
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The tip of the iceberg
When it comes to strong emotions, what we see is rarely what is actually going on with a child. Powerful emotions inviteus to check assumptions at the door and go deeper into what’s really causing the behavior. These micro-opportunities for long-term growth can have an indelibly positive impact on children. This workshop offers practical solutions and strategies to navigate the landscape of strong emotions — how they can present in unusual ways, and how we can support youth when they’re in the thick of what they’re feeling.
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Guiding from the back seat
Problem solving is a muscle and we get to help young people build it. The problem is, as adults we often try to solve problems for young people, instead of allowing them to figure it out for themselves. The challenge and invitation here, is to step out of your role as all-knowing adult, and into the role of coach. Our job is no less important from the back seat — as we celebrate the discoveries, validate feelings, offer choices and useful questions to guide our capable students. This workshop explores a variety of ways to help children solve personal, social and task-related problems; and offers creative ways to get out of the way while doing it.
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Stop. Then start again.
Have you ever found yourself showing up in a way that is less than your best? You may be extra reactionary with the youth in your program. You snap at your co-workers. The voice in your head screams "I'm DONE!" What if you could learn to PAUSE before getting to this point? When we learn this invaluable skill, we show up as our best more often, making the positive impact we want to make.
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Emotions are human
We all have emotional hot buttons that cause us to show up as less than our best. Once we see and recognize these triggers, we can regain control over them. One important part of the process is to understand what sets us off. When we add clear action steps for what to do in these moments, we can quickly get back to showing up fully for our youth.
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I can see clearly now
Reflecting on our experiences and process allows us to solidify learning, refine practices and connect in deeper ways. In this module we explore what it means to reflect as both youth and adults; uncovering why this important process matters. You will be challenged to choose a new and consistent reflection practice that will have you flourishing along with your students.
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Conflict is inevitable
HOW we show up for young people in these challenging moments is what matters. When we approach conflict through empathy, listening, questioning and shared decision-making, we restore relationships. When we restore relationships, we also restore a sense of belonging. This workshop module offers indispensable strategies to add restorative practices to your toolkit.
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You only control the drop
The response you choose in each moment has an inevitable ripple effect on the youth in your program, co-workers, parents, guardians and others in your program community. When we are intentional about our actions, we can maximize the chance of making a positive impact on those we care about. In this workshop, we consider the multitude of ways to respond to common scenarios in youth development, and the possible outcomes of those choices.
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Change can be explosive!
Who knew a bathroom break could topple an entire program! We’ve seen more than a few youth programs self-combust during transitions alone. The culprit each time: the absence of creative planning for times between activities. Whether cleaning up from snack time, or migrating your group from inside to out —downtimes can quickly derail the best of the best, if you haven’t planned for it. In this workshop, we share strategies and tools to ensure your students stay motivated and engaged, even in down-time. What we know for sure: when transitions are handled with forethought, and the same level of intentionality as core programming, adults relax, and children thrive.
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A GPS for what matters most
Personal values can provide vital clues to navigating choppy emotional waters — the ups and downs that inevitably come up in the everyday. When we use our values as a guide, we can intentionally change the course of any exchange. When we embody what matters most to each of us, we elevate the way we are able to show up for ourselves and the young people in our care. Join us in exploring your own values and how to use them as your own personal roadmap.
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Staying connected to the heart of your work
Whatever your reason for working with young people, your WHY matters. You may want to make a positive impact your community. You may want to pay forward the impact of a positive adult in your life. You may want to teach invaluable life lessons. When we’re able to hone in on WHY we work with young people, we’re able to have a bigger impact in the work we do. Come discuss why you do the work that you do and how it can keep you grounded in what matters most, especially when things feel hard.
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Make way for self-expression
Great things happen when we ask young people to use their voice, and then watch and listen. Any time a young person has a say in THEIR project, THEIR plan, THEIR program, we open up all-important opportunities for young people to shine. And we get to know them on a deeper level. We can’t say enough good things about building this into your game plan! Planning for self-expression generates thoughtful programing that speaks to the strengths and uniqueness in every child.
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