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At TGOW Institute, our Center for Life-long & Continuing Education offers a challenging set of education and certified training programs for youth, adult learners and educators. The goal of our program offerings is to offer an array of education and training programs to suit the various needs of adult learners, educators, businesses, or individuals interested in acquiring new knowledge or skill sets.

The goal of our professional development seminar series is to assist educators in developing innovative strategies to improve the quality of instruction they provide to their students. Professional development workshops, seminars and retreats for individuals and small groups are the primary mode of delivery for continuing education units acquired through TGOW’s program service. Each seminar is designed to support the development of progressive leaders in the new millennium. With a focus on excellence in Pedagogy and Praxis our education center provides three distinct options:

College/University Course Credits (Distance Learning Programs);

Professional Development Certified Training Programs

General Certified Training Programs

TGOW Institute offers the following university accredited education programs...

On-line/Distance Learning Course Offerings

360 - BUSINESS AND TECHNICAL WRITING

220 - CULTURAL DIVERSITY

383 - ETHICS

165 - MUSIC HISTORY OF BLACK AMERICANS

250 - A SURVEY HISTORY OF BLACK AFRICA

130 - AMERICAN GOVERNMENT & THE POLITICS OF EVERY DAY LIFE

230 - THE AFRICAN AMERICAN CHURCH

111 - INTRO TO PHILOSOPHY: CRITICAL AND CREATIVE THINKING

225 - SURVEY OF AFRICAN AMERICAN HISTORY

Credit-by-Examination

Adult learners may earn college-level credit by successfully passing courses in the College Level Exam Program (CLEP). This exam gives you the opportunity to receive college credit for knowledge that you have already acquired through prior courses, job experience, professional development, training programs, or other pursuits. For more information on costs, scheduling, and test preparation, please send an inquiry to moreinfo@tgowinstitute.com

Credit-for-Prior Learning (Experiential Learning)

Adult learners can earn up to 30 semester hours by designing and submitting a Credit-for-Prior Learning Portfolio to the TGOW Institute Academic Review Panel. The contents in this portfolio may include a combination of any of the following options:

Assessment of Certified Training Courses;

Assessment of Military Training Credit;

College Equivalent Experiential Learning

Any learner seeking Credit-for-Prior Learning credits must enroll in and complete a 3 semester hour on-line seminar entitled “Strategic Learning Colloquium”. This seminar is designed to assist adult learners with identifying realistic and valid options for obtaining credit for experiential learning. Advisors work with learners in documenting experiences that match knowledge normally acquired in an accredited college-level course.

TGOW Institute offers the following certified training programs:

[Participants may receive Continuing Education Units (CEUs)]

On-line Instruction Techniques for Educators [O-LITE!]

TGOW Institute offers a certificate training program entitled “On-Line Instructional Techniques for Educators.” This is an innovative professional training & development seminar designed to expand the internet presence of faculty and staff of collegiate and K-12 communities. Participants in the O-LITE seminar will enhance their use of computer-aided instructional techniques and tools in their individualized education delivery system. Additionally, participants are engaged in mastering:

On-Line Syllabus Construction

Effective Internet Research Strategies

Selection of Website Links & Bookmarks

On-Line Chats & Electronic Learning Forums

Integrating Enhanced & Interactive CD-ROM Technology

There are two parts to the O-LITE training workshop:

O-LITE! Part I: Focuses on the nuances of converting traditional classroom instructional materials into a distance learning delivery format.

O-LITE! Part II: Focuses on skill development and expertise in the delivery of asynchronous and synchronous course materials to distance learners.

Components of these seminars include a participatory on-line workshop series, and an accompanying set of hands-on assignments in state-of-the-art instructional technology. Individuals that successfully complete all components of O-LITE! may be awarded Continuing Education Units (CEUs) on their certificate training transcript.

Enhancing Critical & Creative Thought

This seminar is specifically designed for educators as a powerful vehicle to review past and present scholarship on effective ways to enhance critical and creative thinking skills among their students. Participants will be exposed to various instructional strategies which will allow for multiple reasoning, in-depth interpretations, personal perspectives, and problem solving to improve the thinking skills of students. The goal is for instructors to supply students with appropriate thinking tools to prepare them for success. The learning activities in this seminar will present tested strategies for infusing assignments into existing courses that expand students’ analytical capacities and complex thinking processes.

Designing Service-Learning for Social Change

This workshop series focuses on effective strategies that K-12 and college educators can employ to infuse service-learning components and requirements into their existing course offerings. Prime focus is placed on strategies for involving teachers, students and community partners in the collaborative design of each phase of a service-learning project, including course learning objectives and outcomes, the implementation of a service-learning action research plan, and the evaluation of evidence on whether genuine social change has actually occurred that addresses a social emergency in targeted communities. This workshop promotes positive social change by engaging students in classroom learning activities, service-learning placement experiences, and student-designed Participatory Action Research Projects that address a need specified by community-based organizations.

Participants interested in implementing service-learning component must engage in designing a minimum of 50 hours of service activities for their students with an approved community partner during the semester. Students will be required to maintain a daily log of experiences, a weekly journal of reflections on these experiences, and work cooperatively with their teacher (s) and with a community partner liaison on the design, implementation, and evaluation of a Participatory Action Research Project that addresses a specified need or problem related to the community partner’s programmatic and service mission. In it each case, this need will be linked to the course learning goals and objectives.

Pedagogy of the Oppressed & the Politics of Everyday Life in America

This new TGOW Institute professional development series is designed to engage cohorts of emerging social science and humanities scholars in an intensive series of seminars and workshops on effective pedagogical strategies for teaching various courses. Seminars will focus on:

The evolution of the institutional context where practices unfold in everyday life and

Creative strategies that teachers can employ to promote praxis for progressive social change.

Practical design workshops focusing on the development of cutting-edge field operative manuals are also core features of the workshop schedule. These personalized faculty guides will help teachers promote academic excellence, skill proficiencies and a decisive commitment to responsible civic engagement among all students enrolled in their courses. Participants will unplug from their daily routines & engage in a dynamic sequence of structured critical dialogues on themes that include, but are not limited to:

Systems for Mis-education: A Concise Historical Overview

Pedagogy & the Scholarship of Teaching: Research on Teaching in America

Teaching Styles and Intentions: Best Practices in Instructional Design & Delivery Systems for Teaching

Valuing Cultural Diversity in the 21st Century

This on-line seminar is designed to critically assess the origins, evolutions and contemporary dimensions of class exploitation, racism, ethnic and gender discrimination in the United States. Throughout the seminar, emphasis will be placed on an evolving system of dominant–subordinate group relationships, and the impact these systems have on racial and ethnic minorities, women and poor working class Americans. In evaluating these matters seminar participants will be engaged in a re-examination of their own values and belief systems about the origins and significance of race, class, ethnic and gender inequality, and the extent to which these personal assumptions inhibit or contribute to resolving current problems in modern society. A major goal of this seminar, therefore, is for participants to arrive at a general consensus on ways to improve the real chances for each person in this society to attain a reasonably respectable quality of life and avert previously denied human rights that curtail personal and social dignity.

Participatory Action Research

TGOW Institute is actively engaged in promoting the virtues of community-based Participatory Action Research Projects that allow participants to follow a problem from the point of recognition, to providing recommendations for its solution, and on to implementing and testing strategies to resolve the concern. The overall purpose, though, is to foster a critical set of skills in the method of approaching problems and in techniques for conducting research to solve those problems. Participatory Action Research Project team membership ranges from K-12 and college students, to teachers, university faculty, and community-based leaders. Collectively, they learn to:

Emphasize the value of collective and collaborative research in addressing social emergencies;

Improve skills in recognizing, stating, & solving problems objectively;

Improve skills in critical reading and evaluating formal research;

Improve skills in evaluating program benchmarks and in evaluating completed programs

Develop research writing skills

Improve oral presentation skills; and

Improve upon methods and procedures for creating a positive change within the organization or community for which the action research is designed

Design & Implementation: Through class-related reading assignments, exercises and service-learning experiences, PAR seminar participants will design learning activities that ensure their students are able to demonstrate a mastery of the requisite research methods & techniques used in the design, implementation, completion, and presentation of findings of participatory action research for social change. The completion of this project will enhance their understanding of the relationship between theory, methodology and the practical application of strategies for change, as well as how evaluation measures can be used to determine the degree to which social justice in their community is being served. TGOW Institute has facilitated Participatory Action Research projects on topics such as Civil Rights & Human Wrongs, Early Childhood Learning & Care, and Blues Music Expression.

Youth Leadership Development & Training

TGOW Institute has particular interest and experience in youth projects. Our youth development program offerings seek to address the growing number of “at-risk”, economically or socially disadvantaged youth by addressing the underlying issues surrounding their proneness to deviant and unhealthy behavior. Our multi-component program curriculum addresses the unique needs of today’s youth and works to help them achieve academically, socially, and physically in an engaging environment. Since we believe that our youth should be given opportunities early in their education to stay competitive in the world arena of communications, writing, arts, sciences, technology and more, the programs that we offer more than exceed this expectation. In addition, our programs include a focus on healthy lifestyles, environmental awareness, conflict management and other necessary elements of personal achievement.

TGOW Institute associates pride themselves on establishing a set of affective, behavioral and cognitive outcomes as a minimum requirement of all of our strategic learners and program participants. At the completion of each program participants and facilitators conduct a Program Review and Formal Evaluation. Most of our youth programs integrate an action research component. Themes for our youth programs include, but are not limited to:

Development of a Strategic Learning Portfolio

Alternative Dispute Resolution: Peer Mediation Workshop Series

Youth and the Music Business

Creative Arts, Sciences & Technology [CAST]

Walking for Health and Well-being is the first of a set of worship series offered by TGOW Institute to serve as a Full-Body Conditioning Naturally. At One w/ Nature (OWN) is a practical program that combines Eastern and Western approaches to wellness. Its goal is to help people become "One With Nature," a term for the natural restoration of true health. OWN is practiced in conjunction with the Chinese martial art of Tai Chi, rewarding the practitioner with inner happiness, self-control, self-realization, and self-healing. The basic instruction of OWN is to focus on: Relaxation, Breathing, Feeling the Earth, and Doing Nothing Extra. All the elements must be present and must work together in a unique form of moving meditation.

A central focus of this program is The Rugged Walker which offers a complete exercise program that provides training techniques for aerobic (cardio-respiratory), muscular, and flexibility conditioning; a healthy posture; enhanced body-mind connection; self-defense techniques; and effective stress reduction and meditation practice. Rugged walking provides optimal physical conditioning and may significantly help to improve your health by reducing your resting heart rate, blood pressure, stress, body fat, and physical aches and pains.

At One with Nature Training Series

Instructional Goals & Objectives:

Learn the value and basic techniques of nature walking, including stretching, pacing, breathing, self-massage, as a method for achieving life-time health & fitness.

Develop an understanding of the natural environment and bio-diversity of national, state & local parks system.

Complete at least 30 miles of day-hiking over a 10-12 week period

Review a range of critical literature and websites

Participate in collaborative research, activities and dialogue

Enhance creative writing, critical thinking and photograph skills

TGOW Institute’s Certified Training Series are designed to foster structured critical dialogue and skill development for its participants. Our workshop facilitators employ a skillful combination of methods to explore themes, topics and materials. This combination includes technology enhanced seminar presentations, structured small group study circles, critical dialogue and interactive projects, and guided individual workshop assignments.

The format for delivery is typically a 5-week schedule of on-line evening sessions with a small group or on an individual basis or an intensive 3 1/2 –day weekend retreat. Each of our weekend retreats officially begin on a scheduled Thursday evening with an opening Reception and Orientation, and concludes after 2 full days of intensive training activities at 12:00 noon on Sunday after a final Debriefing Session. Scheduling final dates for worship series is contingent upon a minimum number of pre-registered participations.

TGOW Institute’s Virtual Library

Each of TGOW Institute’s on-line education and certified training program is supported by our uniquely designed Electronic Learning Forum [ELF], TGOW_Institute. This web-based e-forum offer a social science reading and virtual reference room that provides participants with a full range on-line academic support system, professional development resources and support during the workshop series and beyond.

Membership in the TGOW Institute e-Forum is reserved for approved subscribers. Once approved, members are free to explore a full range of Internet resources and reference materials related to their educational or professional goals and objectives.

Among the main features of the Reference Room are web “Links” to:

Electronic General Reference & Specialized Library Resources;

On-line Bookstores; and

Resources Promoting Strategic Learning & Development

To subscribe to this e-Forum, simply send an e-mail message to:

TGOW_Institute-subscribe@yahoogroups.com

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