Workshops and Staff Development Days

Mary McGuiness, ITD’s Princiipal, has 25 years experience teaching professionals about personality, and 16 years experience teaching in high schools in Sydney. Mary can design a workshop or a series of training sessions to suit the needs of your staff, school executive, school administrators, school leaders, students or parents. The training, based on the psychological types (personality) theory described by Carl Jung and Isabel Myers, can be held over one or two days, or can be several one or 2 hour sessions. The initial introductory session on personality types will need a minimum of 4 hours.

These workshops can apply personality theory to a variety of topics, including:

Working Together: Understanding and valuing diversity.
Learning in their own way: Catering for different Learning styles in the classroom.
The Neuroscience of Personality: The latest neuroscience research provides evidence for the differences in personality and learning styles. We are hard-wired differently!
Curriculum design that honours differences: Including curriculum design, testing, lesson planning, activities that promote learning.
Introducing Children and Adolescents to Personality Theory: Help children to value their own gifts and the different gifts in others.
Games Personalities Play: Managing dysfunctional behaviour in the classroom by learning specific strategies that work with different types.
Different Leadership Styles: for teachers, school executives or senior students.
Communication Styles and Personality: understanding how to make sure your message is heard
Personal Development over the lifespan: track the stages of development of the personality, and the gifts and challenges at each stage
Spiritual Development for different Types: Examining the influence of personality type on prayer style, attitude to worship and pastoral care.
Coaching Different Personalities to Maximise their Potential: applying type theory to develop skills in sport and other learning areas.

Coaching Teachers

Change is difficult, even when we are convinced it’s worth the effort. If we expect teachers to change they need clear explanations or evidence of how the changes will benefit them or their students. Meaningful change is most likely to occur when coaches take into consideration the differences in teachers’ beliefs, feelings and personalities.

Coaching teachers will usually involve the following:

Applying the latest neuroscience research and the theory of personality type to understand differences in how people take in information and make decisions.
Using personality theory to understand the different teaching and learning styles
Identfiying teacher beliefs that can block change
Understanding instructional strategies that promote effective learning for different personality types
Designing curriculum or unit of work that suits the learning needs of the students, as well as the teaching style of the teacher.
Classroom management strategies, particularly effective ways of dealing with dysfunctional or disruptive behaviour.