"Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world"
-Nelson Mandela
JOIN US IN OUR DARING INCLUSIVE DREAM
Dare To Dream Institute
Dare to Dream Institute facilitates transformative projects, workshops, and courses designed to support educational leaders and practitioners working with marginalized and underperforming programs facing deeply complex challenges, including:
- Generational poverty
- Neurodiversity
- Homelessness and foster care
- Trauma-based learning challenges
- Social and cultural violence
- Substance abuse
We focus on mapping both individual and collective strengths through:
- Emergent collaboration
- Constructive development
- Reflective dialogue
- Collaborative Contribution
Building capacities through action learning in:
- awareness,
- optimism,
- adaptability
- resilience
This framework fosters a transformative educational culture where inclusivity thrives, creating a space where students and educators feel seen, heard, and purposeful.
Together, we pave the way for sustainable, impactful change in education.
I, (Jennifer Nelson White MsED Curriculum and Instruction, MsED Leadership), founded The Dare to Dream Institute in 1998 after many years as a special educator working with students who did not fit into the traditional education frameworks. Each day my students taught me more about myself: how I set up the environments they were in with me, how I showed up, and how that affected my ability to instruct and their capacity to learn. In short, they taught me that to reach them I needed to learn about my expectations, adapt my patterns of instruction and interactions, and be aware of our environment so I could build bridges of better communication and trust creating a more open and available learning environment.
I had to be willing each day to reach out to each of my students, providing rigorous instruction and inclusive social interactions where each felt they were a necessary part of our classroom/school culture. I needed to commit to being open to continued learning and deliberate growth so that I would better support not only my students and myself but anyone participating in our classroom/school culture, (teacher assistants, therapists, parents, peers). This took an availability for reflection, adaptation, feedback, and reflective dialogue. This practice created resilience and hope that each day we all could thrive.
This became the framework when developing the projects, programs, and courses provided by The Dare to Dream Institute. As a parent raising three children, all of which, were challenged with some neurodiversity, this framework and learning deepened along with the understanding that all within every learning environment need to feel they have a place and purpose. Feeling seen and connected allows for individual creative expression and deeper learning. Within this framework, space is created where mistakes can be made adapting to challenges reinforced, allowing for individual processing and collective experiences.
We continue to grow at the Dare to Dream Institute working towards a sustainable culture of education that values individual inclusivity, collective creativity, and collaborative contributions.
"Education is not preparation for life; education is life itself." -John Dewey
Daring Inclusivity.
Educational Leadership and practitioners working in underperforming schools and with marginalized populations work within systems best described by the acronym, VUCA
– volatile,
– uncertain,
– complex,
– ambiguous.
For these systems to be successful, individuals and collectives must develop skills that allow a transformative culture to thrive. This requires awareness, reflective and expressive dialogue, and the capacity to learn through action, enabling profound shifts in how educational professionals interact with students, families, and each other.
Our CORE TRANSFORMATIVE DEVELOPMENT PROGRAMS (based on the research of constructive developmental theory and adult transformative learning theory), focus on facilitating adult learning experiences in connecting, contemplating, creating, and increasing capacities in sustainable action that cultivate rich ecosystems of inclusive practice where students, staff, and families feel purpose growing roots of hope that all can achieve their daring dreams.
Hope for the Flowers CORE Transformative Development Course
In the book Hope for the Flowers by Trina Paulus, we are reminded that within us holds special gifts if we are brave enough to dare to dream and take a chance at transformation. Our 16-week virtual/ hybrid transformative development course for educational and social service practitioners increases capacities in:
- awareness
- adaptability
- optimism
- resilience
Individual transformative development increases practitioners’ ability to facilitate learning, norm development, and achieve collaborative goals by:
– Learning objective reflective practice
– Increase skills in discourse with students and colleagues
– A focus on “Synergy”
“We need critical hope the way a fish needs unpolluted water” – Paulo Freire
CORE Transformative Sprints
Transformative Sprints are designed to build strong collaborative team skills for education and social service, PLCs (professional learning communities), BIP, and IEP Teams by mapping goals, executing effective practice, and reflecting. Each sprint is a 5-day transformative process building individual and team capacities in:
– Critical Reflective Practice
– Reflective Discourse
– Effective Norm Development
– Goal Mapping
– Reflective Observation
– Emergent Collaboration
– Action Research-Based Practice
Project Oz Whole Culture Transformation
Project OZ is a transformative process designed to significantly change and improve an organization’s entire culture by inspiring and motivating administrative leadership and practitioners to embrace new values, behaviors, and goals. It goes beyond individual performance and impacts the overall ethos through a shared vision and strong communication.
Project OZ facilitates team growth in high-level rigorous instructional methodologies, emergent collaborative practice, and inclusive school cultural focus creating learning environments that welcome and value all students, regardless of their background, abilities, or needs. A sense of belonging and camaraderie among students, teachers, and administrators creates fertile soil for connection, learning, and feeling purposeful.
"Hope is an ontological need. Hopelessness is but hope that has lost its bearings, and become a distortion of that ontological need." -Paulo Freire
JOIN OUR DREAM
Dynamic Investing
It takes a community working together to grow sustainable change.
Through CORE Dynamic Investing you can help crack open the real energies that stimulate transformative development in individuals, families, and communities.
The Dare to Dream Institute is a 501c3 recognized organization, working with others to cultivate cultures of trust where seeds of dreams can be planted and transformed into interactive realities.
Our Dynamic Investment Program allows you to buy into our clients’ dreams by supporting deep transformative growth through direct developmental learning.
Investors can choose to pay from ¼ to 100% of any program for individuals, families, teams, or community organizations willing to learn how to hold space for their development and others.
YOU TOO CAN HAVE A THRIVING SUPPORT SYSTEM!
Testimonials:
“I would like to say how blessed our family has been to have the Dare to Dream Institute in our lives. They have helped our family become much healthier and happier with their family program!”
Timeshia Datillo
“My brother finished school because of The Dare to Dream Institute.”
Vianney Cassias
“The Dare to Dream Institute is very pro-student and humanistic in their approach to education. As we collaborated on the federal grant "The Small Schools Initiative" they successfully facilitated our focus on small-inclusive learning environments.
Kim Zupek, former principle at waukegan high school
“The Dare to Dream Institute always had us look at a new creative way to face a challenge.”
Devonte Jones
“The Dare to Dream Institute worked with us to develop goals that supported our vision”
Julie Perdue, Principal St. Bernard School
“We worked successfully with the Dare to Dream Institute to put together programs for our educators and students for three years.”
June McGuire, Board President Quest Academy