Instructor Training Workshops To Learn To Deliver CICC's Effective Black Parenting Program

Rock Island, IL - March 3-7, 2008 (Sold Out)
Atlanta, GA - March 17-21, 2008
Miami, FL - April 7-11, 2008
Los Angeles, CA - April 21-25, 2008
Philadelphia, PA - May 19-23, 2008
Richmond, VA - July 21-25, 2008
Tacoma, WA - July 28-August 1, 2008

Dear Colleagues:

These intensive, five-day workshops prepare you and/or your staff with the training, materials and certification to lead Effective Black Parenting classes and seminars in your community. Join the more than 4,000 instructors nationwide that have already been trained to deliver this research-based national model program for parents of African-American children!

These workshops are for any professional or paraprofessional human service worker or educator whose work involves helping or educating African American children and families, or supervising those who work with these children and families. This includes non-African American workers and supervisors.

In teaching participants how to conduct parenting classes and seminars in the Effective Black Parenting Program, the workshops enhance the cultural competencies of the participants and of the organizations they represent.

Starting with the first government recognition of evidenced-based parenting programs in the late 1980s, CICC's trio of programs (Confident Parenting, Effective Black Parenting and Los Ni?os Bien Educados) have been recognized and recommended. The first government recognition was by the Office of Substance Abuse Prevention (now the Center for Substance Abuse Prevention) within the Alcohol, Drug Abuse and Mental Health Administration of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. The selected programs, including CICC's trio, appeared in a publication entitled, Parent Training is Prevention: Preventing Alcohol and Other Drug Problems Among Youth in the Family (DHHS Publication No. ADM 91-1715, Printed 1991).

The most recent recognition is by the California Department of Social Services through its California Evidence-Based Clearinghouse for Child Welfare. All three of the CICC programs were selected in the Winter of 2007 and will be appearing on the website of the Clearinghouse during 2008.

CICC's Effective Black Parenting Program:
Raising Proud and Confident African-American Children

• Award Winning
• Research Validated
• Parent Tested
• Culturally Affirming
• Extensively Utilized

Raising African American children in the United States is an extremely challenging task. Though all children progress through similar stages of development, and all children need nurturance and sensitive guidance, African American children and their parents face special problems as a result of our country's history of racism and discrimination. These problems often make it harder to raise proud and capable African American children.

Until the Center for the Improvement of Child Caring (CICC) created the Effective Black Parenting Program in the late 1970's, there were no programs that addressed these problems head on. There were also no programs that taught parenting skills in a manner that was respectful of African American patterns of communication and which recognized the African roots of the Extended Black Family. Thus, the program occupies a very special place in the history of parenting education in the United States.

CICC's Effective Black Parenting Program, which is based on an achievement orientation to African American parenting, provides an excellent learning and relearning context to help parents of African American children do the best job possible. Its basic ideas are derived from the writings of African American parenting scholars, from research with African American parents, and from adaptations of parenting skills that have been found helpful in raising children of all ethnic and socioeconomic backgrounds.

Each of the parenting strategies and skills in CICC's Effective Black Parenting Program is taught by making reference to African proverbs like "Children are the reward of life" or "A shephard does not strike his sheep." The systematic use of these proverbs helps to ground the teachings of the program in the wisdom and skillfulness of the African ancestors, and is an example of one of the many ways that the program promotes cultural pride.

Between the period when the program was first taught in 1979 to 2007, over 100,000 parents have enrolled and benefited.

What Parents Say About the Effective Black Parenting Program

"After taking the course, I would like to see more Blacks become involved, including my family members. My feelings are exactly like coming to know God. Once you've seen the light, you want everyone to see the same light so we as a race will not parish."

"It taught me to be more patient with my children, to listen, to know that they are little human beings and have feelings too. Somehow that got lost - so it put me back on track."

"My son loves me now. He doesn't fear me."

"I learned things from the class that I really needed to know. A lot of us didn't always get the structure from our parents, so we're trying to break out of that parenting cycle into one that will allow us to help our children meet their goals."

The following is a listing of the full content of the Effective Black Parenting Program, which is customarily taught in 15 three-hour training classes.

1. Culturally-Specific Parenting Strategies
   • Achievement Orientation to Parenting: The Pyramid of Success for Black Children
   • Traditional Black Discipline vs. Modern Black Self- Discipline
   • Pride in Blackness: Positive Communications about Heritage, Coping with Racism, Avoiding Black Self-Disparagement
   • Finding Special Times for All of Our Children: Chit Chat Time

2. General Parenting Strategies
   • Social Learning Ideas and Pinpointing and Counting Behavior
   • The Thinking Parent's Approach
   • Family Rules Are Like A Coin, and Family Rule Guidelines
   • Children's Developing Abilities
   • Children's Thinking Stages and the Development Swing between Belonging and Independence

3. Basic Parenting Skills Taught in a Culturally- Sensitive Manner, Using African American Language Expressions and African Proverbs
   • Effective Praise
   • Mild Social Disapproval
   • Ignoring
   • Time Out
   • Special Incentives

4. Special Program Topics
   • Single Parenting
   • Preventing Drug Abuse

Click here to read this article entitled, "Black Parenting Class Challenges Traditional Practice of Spanking"

These five-day training workshops are led by CICC's National Trainers-of-Instructors.

These extraordinarily talented and sensitive African American educators and psychologists learned themselves to deliver the program through one of these workshops; delivered the program with groups of parents in their home communities; received extensive training to conduct instructor training workshops; and now are employed by CICC to conduct these workshops in different cities nationwide.

The workshop itself is quite intensive and personal, and it requires partipants to do homework assignments and deliver portions of the curriculum before their peers and the National Trainer. Despite or because of its intensity, and because it is such a unique experience to spend an entire week learning and exploring the content of the program, many consider it to be a "peak experience" that far exceeds their expectations.

During the months of March through August 2008, workshops are scheduled for:

March 17-21, 2008
Genesis "A New Life"
173 Boulevard NE
Atlanta, GA 30312

April 7-11, 2008
Miami-Dade County Public Schools
1450 NE 2nd Avenue
Miami, FL 33132

April 21-25, 2008
Child Care Resource Center
20001 Prairie Street
Chatsworth, CA 91311

May 19-23, 2008
Hosting Opportunity Available
Philadelphia, PA

July 21-25, 2008
Family Resource Center
2405 Jefferson Avenue
Richmond, VA 23223

July 28-August 1, 2008
Hosting Opportunity Available
Tacoma, WA

Call or email Gary Oltman at CICC for more information on trainings:

1(800) 325-2422.

Email: ciccparenting@sbcglobal.net

Workshop Enrollees receive the entire Instructor Kit of training materials (instructor manual, instructional transparencies, parent handbook, CD on generating and maintaining classes, etc.) which itself is valued at $413

The workshop enrollment fee is $925, which includes the Kit and certification to conduct the program in your community, agency or school.

Psychologists can receive 35 hours of continuing education credits, as CICC is approved by the American Psychological Association to offer continuing education credits. CICC maintains responsibility for the program.

The entire Instructor Kit can be purchased separately from the workshop, as can its individual components, such as the Parent Handbooks.

Click here to obtain the Kit or its components.

CICC also makes available a wide range of books and videos on African-American parenting and family life, which can also be directly obtained.

Click here for these additional materials.

Over 2,500 agencies, departments, schools, hospitals and religious institutions have sent their staffs to be trained in a CICC instructor workshop.

Click here for a State-by-State listing of institutions whose staff members have already been trained through these workshops.

CICC can bring an Effective Black Parenting instructor training workshop to any community that would like to offer the program through its school district, social services or health departments, or through any combination of local institutions.

If a community or agency has at least 15 instructors that it would want trained from one or more of its institutions, CICC can arrange to have a national trainer travel to that community to conduct a workshop when and where they would like it to be conducted.

CICC can also arrange to have instructor training workshops in its Los Ninos Bien Educados or Confident Parenting programs brought to your community.

The Center for the Improvement of Child Caring (CICC) was founded in 1974 by Dr. Kerby T. Alvy and has grown to be one of the nation's largest and most productive nonprofit parenting and parenting education organizations. For more infomration about CICC's many programs, activities, products and services, go to www.ciccparenting.org, or call toll-free (800) 325-2422.

To sign up to receive CICC's free Effective Parenting Newsletter, click here.

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