Michele Borba

Michele Borba Speaking Topics

• Self-Esteem: The Same in Any Language

  Basic principles of authentic esteem-building transcend race, culture, age, and gender. This inspiring address emphasizes five critical building blocks of self-esteem that dramatically impact children's achievement, behavior, and inner-motivation. This inspiring keynote features motivational stories of those who have made a significant impact on our most at-risk and troubled youth and real examples of practical yet powerful ways they touched those children's lives. The message is always the same: children everywhere have the same basic feelings and needs. It's up to us to ensure that those needs are met so our youth have a safer and more hopeful future.

• Raising Our Girls to Be Confident, Compassionate & Morally Courageous

  Of course we want our daughters to grow to be strong and confident, but statistics are showing a troubling picture that instead displays low self-esteem, anorexia, suicide, depression, sexual abuse, and bulimia. In fact, one of the most concerning trends reveals that today's girls are also becoming meaner and more physically aggressive. In this thought-provoking session, you'll hear not only a shattering array of statistics that prove all is not well with our girls' emotional health, but also the reasons why. But more importantly, you'll learn what we can do about it. You'll hear uplifting stories of parents, educators, and organizations creating positive change for girls. In addition, you'll learn essential skills you can teach girls to cope with rejection, navigate the vicious social jungle, deal with cyber-bullying and vicious gossip, handle peer pressure, develop authentic self-esteem, and remobilize their empathy. Doing so is the best way to help our girls become confident, compassionate, and morally courageous young women.

Educating for Hearts & Minds: Teaching the Other ABCs That Cultivate Habits of Heart & Reduce the Cycle of Youth Violence

More and more of our students are becoming victims of bullying, insensitivity, and disruptive behaviors. But research clearly shows that violence and cruelty are learned and not genetically inherited. The seeds of compassion can be cultivated and aggressive attitudes can be changed. This motivating keynote explains why teachers not only do have the power to transform students' character and behavior, but how they may do so by teaching the critical ABCs that create positive moral change: Attitudes, Beliefs, and Character. Michele Borba shares inspiring stories and examples to show how educators can apply these essential ABCs. She provides ways to teach eight proven teaching practices ("Habits of Heart") that reduce bullying and activate empathy. Best yet, participants leave with practical ideas and field-tested strategies that can easily be woven into existing content to mobilize students' hearts, break the cycle of youth violence, and create moral learning communities.

Teachers DO Make the Difference: The Five Teaching Keys to Unlock Students' Potential

This motivating and inspiring keynote explains why educators have the power to turn around their students' lives and help them reach their potential as learners. Michele Borba offers inspiring stories and real-life examples of teachers who are making a difference in order to help remind educators that they are door-openers to their students. She shares five critical teaching keys that maximize student success, character, and self-worth as well as practical, no-cost ways to infuse them into existing content and best teaching practices.

Building Students' Moral Intelligence: Our Last, Best Hope

Our students' character is in trouble and scores of disturbing indicators prove it, including a steady rise in anxiety, bullying, apathy, depression, aggression, and substance abuse, as well as a sharp decline in respect, civility, personal accountability, and honesty. In all our efforts to boost achievement and reduce negative behaviors, the one element we've overlooked is our students' moral intelligence: the learned capacity to decipher right from wrong, choose what's right, and then behave morally.

This inspiring keynote based on Dr. Borba's award-winning book Building Moral Intelligence shares research confirming that character can be learned, provides a framework for teaching it, and shows simple no-cost ways to integrate moral intelligence builders into existing academic content. Borba shares heartwarming stories to prove just how influential educators can be and show how they may well be the last, best hope for many students. This presentation is an inspiring and timely address filled with uplifting stories and proven, practical solutions for turning today's "Crisis of Youth Character" around.