Schedule a Workshop with Jen Stanchfield

Jen specializes in professional learning and community building programs for educators, counselors, group facilitators, trainers, administrators, and students. Workshop topics include experiential, brain-based approaches to social and emotional learning and academic engagement, team-building, the art of group facilitation, and techniques to enhance meaningful group dialogue and reflection. Each of the programs listed below can be customized to the specific needs of your program or school. Contact Jen at jen@experientialtools.com to design a workshop for your school or organization.

CLICK HERE to fill out the Experiential Tools Workshop Inquiry Form.

Inspire, Engage, Connect and Reflect

Experiential, Brain-Based Approaches to Build Community, Integrate Academic and Social-Emotional Learning, and Create Lasting Meaningful Lessons

Join this interactive workshop and fill your teaching, counseling, or facilitation toolbox with dynamic brain-based techniques to inspire, engage, and create lasting, meaningful lessons. Empower participants to take ownership of learning, practice social-emotional skills, and build a positive, connected, inclusive, and supportive community. Enliven group work and academic and social-emotional learning content delivery with active, learner-centered participation methods to enhance involvement, buy-in, and retention.

Harness the power of experiential learning and active reflection to teach, practice, and assess content while cultivating collaboration, participant voice, problem-solving, self and social awareness, and communication. Facilitate meaningful review and reflection to increase relevancy and understanding. Leave with practical engagement strategies to get learners moving, talking, and reflecting. Take away creative inspiration and new perspectives on your role as an educator, facilitator, or counselor.

We will explore:

Experiential, brain-based strategies to actively engage learners physically, emotionally, socially, and intellectually
Methods to design, sequence, scaffold, and adapt activities to enhance learning outcomes and take advantage of "teachable moments"
Interactive activities to build rapport and community while enlivening academic lessons, differentiating instruction, and promoting social and emotional learning, along with the classroom structures to make them a success
Ways to increase involvement, buy-in, voice, choice, engagement, and ownership of learning
Methods for creating a positive, responsive, and supportive environment for learning
Engaging reflection tools and techniques to help learners find meaning, increase depth of understanding, and application to future learning
Novel and dynamic techniques to teach, review, and apply content in meaningful, relevant ways
Compelling research from the field of educational neuroscience that supports and informs experiential approaches to teaching, community building, and social-emotional learning
Ways to cultivate social and emotional skills such as communication, social problem-solving, relationship skills, collaboration, self-regulation, decision-making, self-awareness, emotional expression, creativity, and reflection
The role of the educator as guide, and the importance of flexibility, attitude, adaptation, and awareness of the group and individual needs and differences

Community Building and Social and Emotional Learning

Promote Social-Emotional Skills & Cultivate a Positive a Positive and Supportive Learning or Workplace Environment

People participate more actively and retain lessons more readily when they feel safe and supported in their group environment. This workshop explores how to create and maintain a positive, productive, inclusive and equitable learning or working community. We’ll share practical strategies and a variety of engaging activities to develop a healthy atmosphere of engagement, respect, and trust. These methods promote social-emotional skills and help participants take responsibility for their behavior and learning. In this dynamic workshop, educators will learn experiential techniques to help learners of all ages practice essential social-emotional skills such as problem-solving, communication, empathy, self-expression, and conflict-resolution. Join in this interactive session and build an inspiring and supportive learning team.

“Jen Stanchfield's authentic, warm, gentle, and engaging style makes everyone feel welcome and supported -even online. Jen creates an atmosphere where participants feel like they are partners in the experience. I have attended multiple workshops with Jen over the last decade and always take away something new that I can use right away in my teaching and counseling."

Inspired Educator, Engaged Learner

Experiential, Brain-Based Approaches for Meaningful Teaching and Reflection, and Social and Emotional Learning

Join this interactive session and fill your toolbox with dynamic brain-based techniques to inspire, engage, and create lasting meaningful lessons. Empower students to take ownership of learning, practice social-emotional skills, and build a positive, connected, inclusive, and supportive classroom community. Enliven academic and social and emotional learning content delivery and assessment with active, student-centered participation methods to enhance involvement and retention. Teach, practice and assess academics in a trauma-informed and equitable way while cultivating communication, collaboration, problem solving, self and social awareness, decision-making and reflection. Facilitate meaningful review and reflection to increase relevancy and understanding. Get learners moving talking and reflecting to create lasting lessons. Leave with practical strategies, creative inspiration, and new perspectives on your role as an educator.

"I am feeling excited and inspired, within a week of the workshop I've already tried several activities from the class and resources Jen provided. It is so refreshing to leave a workshop not only wanting to do something new but also feeling prepared and empowered to do it."

"I appreciate that along with sharing your useful tools and techniques, you have helped us engage with and learn from each other. Your style gives everyone ownership in the learning process."

The Art and Science of Experiential Group Facilitation

Brain-Based Approaches to Inspire, Engage, Motivate, and Connect

Fill your group facilitation toolbox with creative, practical, brain-based activities and strategies for effectively leading and engaging your group. Gain perspective on your role as an educator, group facilitator, or counselor. Gather techniques to create a positive learning environment, increase participant involvement, and facilitate meaningful reflection and group dialogue. We will focus on ways to thoughtfully design and sequence experiences to increase engagement, meet specific educational and group development goals. Whether you are new to the field and looking for an insightful overview of group facilitation, or a seasoned veteran seeking inspiration and new ideas, join this dynamic session and take away both practical strategies to enhance your toolbox and a deeper understanding of the “why behind what you do” in facilitation.

“It was the BEST inservice training I have ever been to… Never before have I interacted this much with my colleagues, have laughed with them, shared with them, and learned with them.”

"I just wanted to thank you again for your wonderful workshop! I learned so much today and am excited to implement these activities in my classroom; my kids will really enjoy and learn from them. Thank you for having such a warm, friendly, laid-back personality and teaching style. I felt so comfortable today at your workshop and I heard others say the same. I enjoyed learning from you and our group members today and I sincerely hope to be a participant in your future workshops."

Bring Learning to Life With Engaging, and Meaningful Reflection

Take advantage of teachable moments and bring learning to life with engaging reflection techniques. Enliven the traditional sharing circle with active, brain-based methods including movement, metaphor, art, and interactive dialogue to increase emotional connection, relevancy, choice, voice, ownership, and depth of understanding. Create lasting lessons learners will carry forward. Join in this interactive session and take away inspiration, new perspectives, and practical tools for weaving meaningful reflection and dialogue throughout academic, social-emotional learning, team-building, and therapeutic experiences.

"Jen Stanchfield is a seasoned professional in the world of experiential education. She is well-versed in the techniques and intention behind the activities and can extract out key points, ways to adapt for an audience, while threading the workshop back to its purpose successful facilitation. She is candid, responsive and fun! I also sensed her investment in continuing her own lifelong learning – that she gains something from each encounter or training and is willing to integrate new work into her own practice – brain research is just one good example I observed during the workshop."

The Inspired Advisory Group Leader:

Join this interactive session and fill your facilitation toolbox with dynamic brain-based techniques to inspire, engage, and create lasting, meaningful lessons. Empower students o take ownership of learning, practice social-emotional skills, and build a positive, connected, inclusive, and supportive advisory community.

Harness the power of experiential learning and active reflection to develop and facilitate meaningful advisory lessons while cultivating collaboration, student voice, problem-solving, self and social awareness, and communication. Facilitate meaningful reflection to increase relevancy and understanding. Leave with practical engagement strategies to get learners moving, talking, and reflecting. Take away creative inspiration and new perspectives on your role as an educator and advisory leader.

We will explore:

Experiential, brain-based strategies to actively engage learners physically, emotionally, socially, and intellectually
Methods to design, sequence, scaffold, and adapt activities to enhance learning outcomes and take advantage of "teachable moments"
Interactive activities to build rapport and community and promoting social and emotional learning, along with the classroom structures to make them a success
Ways to promote involvement, buy-in, voice, choice, engagement, and ownership of learning
Methods for creating a positive, responsive, and supportive environment for learning
Engaging reflection tools and techniques to help learners find meaning, increase depth of understanding, and application to future learning
Novel and dynamic techniques to teach, review, and apply content in meaningful, relevant ways
Compelling research from the field of educational neuroscience that supports and informs experiential approaches to teaching, community building, and social-emotional learning
Ways to cultivate social and emotional skills such as communication, social problem-solving, relationship skills, collaboration, self-regulation, decision-making, self-awareness, emotional expression, creativity, and reflection
The role of the educator as guide, and the importance of flexibility, attitude, adaptation, and awareness of the group and individual needs and differences

Games and Activities That Teach

Social-Emotional Learning, Academic Skills Development & Community Building Through Purposeful Play

Join in this interactive workshop focused on purposeful play and leave with a variety of activities, games, and experiential approaches to teach and reinforce social-emotional and academic skills such as: problem-solving, critical thinking, responsibility, communication, academic concepts and reflective learning. Add new activities to your educator’s toolkit. These activities can be facilitated in any size space with simple materials and easily applied to academic, therapeutic and recreational group work and adapted to varying ages and abilities. Take away strategies that to build positive environment for learning, develop social-emotional skills and promote positive relationships in your groups and facilitate meaningful reflection to create lasting lessons.

"Just wanted to reach out and say thanks a lot for coming to the AmeriCorps VYDC training to teach us more about experiential learning and offering us games and activities to use in our programs. I was completely engaged the whole time and will definitely be using some the games and strategies at my site with the kids I work with."

Online Inspiration and Support Sessions for K-12 and College Educators

Educators are working hard to adapt and innovate in remote, hybrid, physically distant learning environments. Support, co-creative problem-solving, and collaboration with other educators is needed now more than ever before. In response, Jen Stanchfield has adapted her Inspired Educator, Engaged Learner workshop into an online professional development series offering educators a combination of practical tools and techniques, peer mentoring, and moral support. This dynamic program will explore methods to increase meaningful social-emotional learning and academic engagement while building a positive and supportive culture in this challenging new teaching and learning environment.

This workshop offers:

Engaging community building, connection, dialogue, and reflection activities designed to enhance academic and social-emotional learning and promote student buy-in, voice, and choice
Facilitated time to connect, collaborate, and problem-solve with other educators who are facing similar challenges and successes
Collaborative exploration of methods to teach, practice, and assess academics in a trauma-informed and equitable way while cultivating communication, collaboration, problem-solving self and social awareness, and reflection
Exploration of the role of educator as guide, and the importance of flexibility, attitude, adaptation, and awareness of group and individual needs and differences

Join us and take away strategies to enliven remote academic and social-emotional content delivery and assessment with active, student-centered participation techniques to enhance involvement and retention for learners of all ages. Leave this dynamic series with practical methods, creative inspiration, positive connections, networking, and support from teaching peers from across the country. To encourage collaborative learning and community building, each series/cohort group's capacity is 20 participants. The workshop can also be customized for existing educator groups or school-wide faculty teambuilding and professional development.

"I loved how engaging and interactive this session was. I think all of the activities can be used with our students, even if we are continuing social distancing in the fall." Music City SEL Online Conference Participant

"Great info. Also, the breakout rooms were structured enough to not be awkward. The introverts thank you...

"I LOVE the ways we were able to interact with each other (even virtually). These are always my favorite workshops to attend!!

"You opened my eyes regarding the options that exist within Zoom for bringing experiential engagement and team-building methods online! Thank you for helping me create a positive learning community for my teams and engage them in meaningful reflection."

Online and In-Person Team-Building Sessions

Relationship building, collaboration, support, connection, and adult social and emotional learning is essential now more than ever before. This online community building program for organizational, faculty or student teams will cultivate cohesion, cross-departmental communication, collaboration, and professional networking and relationship building. This intentionally designed and carefully sequenced interactive program will meet the differing needs and personalities of participants, building confidence, rapport, and comfort with group process to promote empathy, respect, collaboration, problem-solving, trust, and positive group norms as the team faces the challenges and opportunities of our times. This program will be designed to meet the specific team or faculty's unique needs and can be delivered as a stand-alone two-hour session or a series of sessions over time. For more information contact jen@experientialtools.com

The Inspired Online Facilitator, Leader or Coach

Join this interactive online workshop series and fill your facilitation, leadership, and coaching toolbox with experiential, brain-based techniques to inspire, motivate, and promote engagement and buy-in with your faculty and professional development groups. Take away innovative methods to get your groups talking and reflecting in virtual meetings. Empower participants to take ownership of learning, practice social-emotional skills, and build a positive and supportive learning environment and cohesive teaching team. Teach and reinforce training material, faculty meeting content, and group building objectives in novel ways to differentiate instruction and enhance learning. Collaborate and problem-solved with other educational leaders who are facing similar challenges and successes. Leave with creative inspiration and new perspectives on your role as a facilitator, educator, or leader. For more information contact jen@experientialtools.com.

“She was the most encouraging, inspiring instructor. Loved her enthusiasm for the art of facilitation and teaching!”

“Your presentation helped me to bridge another way to connect expressive arts therapy with the classroom in a meaningful and direct way. I really appreciated your insights and practice of constantly evaluating what would work best to facilitate the group’s learning. Taking time to be aware of the type, timing, presentation and sequence of activities is actually one of the founding tenets of occupational therapy, and I admired your natural ease with this process. Your theory and practice come through as one in the same.”

Custom Teambuilding Programs

Build Rapport, Collaboration and a Positive and Productive Community in Your Workplace or Classroom

Jen Stanchfield can customize team-building programs tailored to meet the specific needs and goals of your group.

She carefully sequences her professional development and community building programs to cultivate rapport, cross-departmental communication, collaboration, and professional networking and relationship building. The interactive teambuilding approaches used in her sessions build confidence and comfort with group process and meet the differing needs and personalities of group members. Experiential activities combined with meaningful reflection promote empathy, respect, collaboration, problem-solving trust, positive group norms, and application to day-to-day interactions in the workplace, team or learning environment, and creating a shared vision for the larger mission of the organization.

"I am always encouraged with the personal touch you bring to facilitation and training. I like the “old-fashioned” and homegrown, creative style."

Conference Presentations

Jen's dynamic and interactive approach has made her a popular presenter at education, training, social-emotional learning, facilitation, and counseling conferences worldwide.

For more information contact jen@experientialtools.com