School Training Solutions Revised Course Catalog

School Training Solutions’ revised 2015-2016 course catalog contains professional development training for administrative, support, and teaching personnel; campus security; food services; and driver training for school bus drivers and others operating district vehicles.

The updated catalog contains two new professional development sections: New Employee Training and Conflict Management. New Employee Training includes 10 hours and consists of our most commonly requested courses. Our Conflict Management section deals with issues that arise in the workplace and on the school bus such as bullying, anger management, conflict resolution, and cross-cultural communication.

Remember, we are happy to create a custom training catalog that meets the needs of your district, department, or organization.

If you have any questions about course availability or would like to look at online training options for your employees, please let us know. We are happy to help.
 
 
View this video to get a quick glimpse of our new STS Course Catalog for the 2015-16 school year.
 

 

Defensive Driving Curriculum is Discounted in May

You’ve asked and we’ve listened. We’ve discounted our online defensive driving curriculum for the month of May. Online defensive driving courses can satisfy your school district’s requirement for training.

School Training Solutions (STS) offers a defensive driving curriculum that is intended for any driver operating a school owned vehicle (van, suburban, car). Select the lessons you want your staff to take!
Thank you for visiting our booth at the 2015 WPTA Trade Show in Casper, WY. I enjoyed seeing everyone again this year. This is what we talked about:

Pick 6 hours of training from our Defensive Driving curriculum:

• Driving – 2 hours
• On the Road – 2 hours
• Road Awareness – 2 hours
• Safety – 2 hours
• Sharing the Road – 2 hours
• Traffic Lanes – 1 hour
• Turning – 2 hours
• The Threat of Road Rage – 1 hour

Each course is self-paced, and can be completed when and where it is convenient, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

Feel free to pass this information along to anyone who may be interested in online driver training!

Time Management, or “This writing life”

by Andrew Metzger

If there were ever a School Training Solutions course that seemed to have been custom written for Andrew R. Metzger, it’s the one titled “Time Management.” As one who juggles three writing-based jobs and also actively aspires to be a published science fiction writer, effective time management is crucial. The paragraph below, taken directly from the STS Time Management course, spoke to me in a special way.

“There are two facets of time; the first includes dealing with the immediate and meeting contingencies as they arise, the second is having ambitious goals and desires that take time to be assembled, cemented and pursued. Meeting goals means connecting smaller pieces of time into one block which can be imagined and projected into the future. These blocks of time can also be viewed in retrospect when looking back at what has been accomplished.”

My jobs include writing various materials for Smart Horizons, writing a weekly column about area performing arts events for The Pensacola News Journal and serving as Executive Director for the Choral Society of Pensacola. All three of these jobs involve writing tasks that are immediate or nearly so.

Writing a blog (like this one, for instance) must fit into the time structure that has been developed by Smart Horizons/School Training Solutions. Blogs are scheduled for a certain time slot, and then it’s on to the next assignment.

As a journalist who writes a weekly column, there are 52 deadlines a year, every year. Your story is due by a certain day and time each week. Period. That’s the newspaper business.

My administrative duties with the Choral Society involve many different and ongoing deadlines. Grant applications, marketing and public relations materials, program and brochure text, correspondence, and many other kinds of writing are very time sensitive.

So, I juggle – frequently working on multiple aspects of all three jobs on any given day. For example, there are times when I’ll be writing my News Journal column while simultaneously fielding phone calls pertaining to Choral Society business. Or, I might have both a Smart Horizons project and Choral Society press release open on my computer desktop at the same time.

When I describe this process to most people, they tend to go cross-eyed and express their gratitude to the universe that it’s me and not them.

Ah, but that’s only the “dealing with the immediate and meeting contingencies as they arise” aspect of the equation. Add to my triple juggling act this “aspiring science fiction writer” persona and you plunge into the “ambitious goals and desires that take time to be assembled, cemented and pursued” aspect of my particular time management universe.

I’ve completed one novel and am just about to conquer the first revision of the first draft of the second one. This is going to be a sci-fi trilogy and I am fortunate enough to have a crackerjack literary agent who is trying to land me a three-book deal. Yes, that’s THREE books, so I have to have very “ambitious goals and desires,” and yes, it’s going to take time and every ounce of whatever creative ability I have within me to “assemble, cement and pursue” a successful career as a novelist. It’s the most challenging project I’ve ever undertaken.

I’ll bet you’ve guessed by now that, not only do the three “immediate” writing realities overlap and coexist in their own odd counterpoint, but the three “immediates” also share the same space-time continuum as my “ambitious” novel writing activities. So yes, while I might have my Smart Horizons blog and my News Journal column open on my desktop at the same time, if my subconscious starts serving up a critical conversation between my novel’s protagonist and a certain testy android, I have to pop open that folder immediately!

If you’ve never written fiction, let me assure you that the process is equal parts conscious and subconscious. There’s a part of your brain that never stops working on the novel, and when that part is ready and begins speaking, you have no choice but to take dictation, for these are precious words, indeed!

So what are some of the main points I took away from the STS Time Management course? Here you go, and they are golden!

* Learn how to say “no.” Yes, there was a time when I let too many requests become obligations by not using this one, critical word. I couldn’t survive without it now.

* Eliminate time wasters and procrastination. Like most people, my mind will try to trick me into such pitfalls. Thanks for reminding me of these enemies, STS!

* Make logical decisions about how to manage your time. Prioritizing is essential, even for jugglers like me.

* Streamline your writing. This is a good one, because I really DON’T need to spend inordinate amounts of time with tasks such as composing e-mail responses.

* Eliminate workplace clutter. Hey, I’m getting better!

 
Andrew Metzger
Guest blogger
School Training Solutions

Discounted Course:   Time Management This course discusses the principles of time management. It highlights time management myths, outlines the symptoms of poor time management, and provides methods for utilizing good time management practices. Regularly $15.00 / Now $10.00

As the NAPT Professional Development Series continues to grow and impact the pupil transportation industry, we want to see how it affects individual NAPT members. We are looking for individuals to showcase. Have you earned an NAPT Certification? How has your coursework and professional development contributed to advancing your career? We would truly like to hear your stories and experiences.

Share your story!

Please take a couple of moments to reflect on how NAPT and the PDS program, both online and at conferences or workshops, has helped you to achieve your personal and career goals. You can submit your story in paragraph form using the contact information below. We look forward to hearing from you!

 
     

YOLO Walk Safe Program Promotes Pedestrian Safety Among High School Students

by Andrew Metzger

The Montgomery County (MD) Department of Transportation YOLO Walk Safe program represents the culmination of four years of focused efforts to develop pedestrian safety awareness among high school students in Montgomery County. YOLO stands for “you only live once.” It is a program developed by students for students to help combat “distracted walking” caused by activities such as texting, playing handheld games, listening to music, or talking on the phone.

“We began working with one high school that was located in one of our high incidence areas in 2010,” said Nadji Kirby, Safe Routes to School Coordinator for the Montgomery County Department of Transportation. “We worked with the school administration to establish a pedestrian safety working group that included students, and we worked with those students to develop pedestrian safety awareness activities. Due to this success, we knew that some of the same strategies we used at this school could be used at other high schools.”

Sadly, it was in the midst of efforts to broaden the program that a Montgomery County high school student, Christina Morris Ward, was fatally struck while walking to school.

“At that point, our County Council felt this was a priority, so they wanted us to develop a specific high school pedestrian safety program,” Kirby said. “We started with the ‘Walk Your Way’ project in late October 2013. This project gave grants of up to $2,000 to any high school group that wanted to create, design, and implement their own pedestrian safety campaign. This generated the second part of the program, which is the YOLO toolkit. The toolkit was created to basically serve as an inspiration, motivator and idea generator for even more schools and student groups to get involved in developing their own pedestrian safety programs at their respective schools.”

The YOLO toolkit, which is available here, contains:

• A guidebook on developing and implementing a school pedestrian safety education program
• Ideas for events/education campaigns that could be conducted by a partnership of students, parents and PTAs
• A USB drive with digital resources, including web banners, electronic poster files, and a video public service announcement titled “Moment of Silence”
• Campaign posters
• Static clings for restroom mirrors
• Sample morning announcements
• Pledge banners
• A customizable letter/email for parents in English and Spanish
• A parent tip sheet in English and Spanish
• A social media plan, including graphics and pre-written tweets and posts
• Talking points for meetings or assemblies

“Currently, only public schools are included in the receipt of a toolkit,” Kirby said. “However, the great thing about our website is that anyone can access and utilize the posters, tweets, announcements, guidebook, etc. as they see fit for their school. I am hopeful that some private schools will utilize the resources; and if they need help thinking through ideas on doing activities or starting a pedestrian safety working group, we will be more than happy to help them do that.”

Kirby cited statistics which show that one in five high school students cross the street while engaging in distracted behavior. “In Montgomery County, for pedestrians at fault between 10 and 29 years of age, the age range found most at fault was 15 to 19, so this data supported our outreach efforts aimed at this age group,” she said.

In addition to making the YOLO toolkits available, the Montgomery County Department of Transportation also conducts pedestrian safety assemblies that include the County Police as well as Gwen Ward, the mother of Christina Morris Ward. “We will work one-on-one with high schools to help them plan and implement various pieces of the overall program,” Kirby said. “That may take the form of an assembly or a presentation for specific groups of high school students. Each school varies. We just hope that each school will do something to help make their staff and students really understand the dangers of the road and what they can do to help keep themselves safe.”

Patrick Willi, Product Development Manager for School Training Solutions, a division of Smart Horizons, learned about the YOLO Walk Safe program at the 2014 National Association of State Directors of Pupil Transportation Services (NASDPTS) Annual Conference, held November 9-12 in Kansas City, MO.

“I was extremely impressed with the YOLO Walk Safe campaign,” Willi said. “It is a well crafted, simple message that I was able to immediately identify. I think it is a message that should be taught across the country, especially as texting and smart phones continue to grow in accessibility and popularity.”

Andrew Metzger
Guest blogger
School Training Solutions