Case Studies
Heart First will always collaborate with YOU to best serve your organization and clients.
What do you want to CREATE together?
Example 1: School District
Headline: The Impact of YOU
Why: As a fundamental piece in the educational journey’s of students, Horizon Elementary school serves students from a wide array of backgrounds. In order to better serve students, faculty, and staff, Horizon Elementary School hired Heart First to lead professional development sessions provide faculty and staff the tools to look within to shift their work.
Organization Overview: Horizon Elementary School is a foundational component of the community, and in the top ten of elementary schools in New Jersey with over 500 students and a large pan-Asian population. With a strong student-to-teacher ratio and high test scores compared to state averages, Horizon Elementary continues to excel and provide rigorous curricula and highly-qualified teachers to serve their community and students.
The Challenge: Horizon Elementary, much like other school districts across the nation, faced a divide between teachers who were required to teach in person versus those who could teach at home. Moreover, their veteran teaching staff was comfortable in what they do. Heart First wanted to use the first professional development day of the year to re-focus and re-ground, helping individuals rediscover their reason for what they do, and how their enhanced visions of self will flow into synergizing school culture.
The Solution: Heart First spoke with school leaders to identify particular areas of focus for teaching staff that benefitted form addressing. Heart First then crafted a training session divided into three parts, encouraging participants to self-reflect on their WHY, think through core values, and how to communicate through core values to realize the impact they have on students, and perhaps more importantly, each other.
The Results: As Horizon Elementary welcomed students, Heart First reached out to school administrators to gauge the temperature of our work and its impact on their start of school. Building leaders noticed an increased kindness and empathy between colleagues, and the transmission of key takeaways from our session being directly transmitted to students, enhancing the feel and flow to the opening weeks of school.
Example 2: Professional Organization
Headline: Insatiable Consumption: How Did We Get HERE?
Why: This Professional Teacher Organization (PTO) creates an annual space where fellow family and consumer science teachers can mold their craft as when returning to their home schools. In order to better understand the current landscape of social dynamics, this teacher organization hired Heart First to provide a key note and breakout session to provide insights and thinking routines to reground and relaunch themselves in the world.
Organization Overview: The PTO of New Jersey is a group bringing together teachers from family and consumer sciences across the state to meet, exchange ideas, and develop their outlook on self and the world when delivering content to students. The organization holds meetings annually to address trends in the field, best practices, and build connections to further one’s professional development.
The Challenge: This PTO of New Jersey seeks to serve members by providing knowledge in high-quality modules to help teachers grow in their classroom and community spaces. While many teachers have strong content knowledge, many lack a deeper understanding into WHYs behind society’s current cultural climate and its connection to our everyday feelings and mood. Heart First sought to utilize this space to provide a learning space with activities helping participants delve deeper into self, and consequently, the world around to make conscious decisions about where they put their time, energy, and money.
The Solution: Heart First spoke with PTO’s president and conference lead regarding areas of weakness that needed development. Heart First then created a keynote address, and follow up breakout session, that addressed historical processes of social and cultural development, the current state of economic and cultural affairs, and provided thinking routines to critically engage consumptive practices and the WHYs underpinning choices.
The Results: At the conclusion of the conference, Heart First spoke to the PTOs president and lead conference organizer to determine results. These individuals reported that participants demonstrated high levels of engagement and spoke at length regarding their takeaways long after Heart First’s presentations. Moreover, participant survey data indicated a deeper understanding of the how and why behind our current state of affairs, and how to actively be critical of consumptive practices and where we place our money.