Bob presents a wide variety of keynote and workshop presentations. He can tailor them to your specific situation and adapt most topics to present either as a keynote or workshop session.
Keynote Speaker
Bob’s background as a teacher who became a professional entertainer provides him with unique insights into the relationship between education and entertainment. Beginning in 1985, he began to present keynote presentations, workshops, and graduate seminars on topics related to humor, storytelling, creativity, the performing arts, reading and writing motivation, and energizing students and adults. During his keynotes and workshops, he is able to get hundreds of audience members moving, creating, laughing, and learning.
Bob presents a wide variety of keynote and workshop presentations. He can tailor them to your specific situation and adapt most topics to present either as a keynote or workshop session.
Bob’s most popular keynotes and workshops include:
The Value of Humor in Your Life or How Dincerella Slopped Her Dripper
Finding ways to develop a “comic mind-set” to capitalize on the strength of humor to reduce stress, build relationships, respond to mistakes in a healthy fashion, and feel good.
The Power of Storytelling
Stories have the power to touch the heart and thereby produce change in ways that are difficult to achieve through other forms of communication. Techniques are shared for identifying powerful stories and effectively and joyfully telling stories. Learn how to tap your underutilized subconscious creativity to develop your storytelling talents.
Creative Problem-Solving Techniques
Learn to think outside of the box and approach problems from new perspectives by applying six creative-problem techniques to problems you’ve indentified as ones you’d like to solve.
Creative Ideas You Can Use on Monday Morning
Hear the best ideas and insights for effective teaching and training that Bob has acquired during his thirty-five year career as a teacher and a Professor of Education who has gleaned ideas from hundreds of teachers and trainers.
Techniques for Developing Positive Attitudes toward Reading in Young Children
Learn how to read expressively, give kids’ magical words they’ll cherish, play with the joyous rhythms of language, and creatively use everything but the kitchen sink to motivate children to read.
Energizing Students and Teachers
This workshop offers techniques for teachers to become more dynamic classroom leaders and for making students more energetic learners. Participants analyze their own energy levels and ways to become more energetic, they examine their classrooms and identify opportunities for making their classrooms more vibrant learning environments, and they develop strategies for using energizing activities to motivate their students.
Multicultural Storytelling
Explore using stories to demonstrate the similarities among cultures and to highlight the uniqueness of different cultural storytelling traditions. In this active workshop, participants will develop competence and confidence telling and creating stories.
Conference/Training Events Clients have included:
Educational Organizations: Early Childhood Educators, General Education Conferences, State Library Associations, State Reading Associations, Student Financial Aids Administrators Associations, Teachers of English as a Second Language, Young Authors/Writers Conferences
Nonprofit/Social Service Agencies: Americorps, Department of Corrections, Department of Youth Services, National Association of Councils on Developmental Disabilities, State Assisted Living Associations
Conferences/Training Events
Young Authors Presentation
Bob combines his expertise as an educator with his experience as an author of books for children to present dynamic, fun, and practical keynote presentations for children and youth at young authors conferences. He presents a unique keynote presentation in which he can get hundreds of children and young adults simultaneously walking in place, creating stories, and have lots of fun as they tap unexplored source of creativity they can employ henceforth in their writing.
Writing Outside of the Box or Why a Frog’s Favorite Cereal is Toadal
Through improvisational storytelling, young writers will discover new abilities to identify subjects for stories, acquire skills for creatively developing stories, and they’ll learn strategies for confronting writer’s blocks.
A Zillion Writing Ideas: Creativity Rules!
Explore a variety of writing “tools” including clash-of-context, exaggeration, stream of consciousness, and “pundles.” Find out why the pig traveled to the hospital in a hambulance.
Young Authors Conference Presentations
Midwest Reading Council Young Authors, La Crosse, WI
Young Authors Celebration, Waukesha, WI
Young Authors Conference, Sheboygan, WI
Young Authors and Illustrators Conference, North Mankato, MN
Young Writers’ Conference, Fergus Falls, MN
Young Authors Conference, Winona, MN
Southeast Service Cooperative Young Authors Conference, Rochester, MN
Southwest/West Central Service Cooperative, Marshall, MN
Resource Training and Solutions Youth Writers and Artists Conference, St. Cloud, MN
Green Hills Area Education Agency Middle School Writers Conference, Lamoni, IA
Great Prairie Area Education Agency Young Authors Conference, Oskaloosa, IA
Northeast Iowa Reading Council’s Young Authors Celebration, Elkader, IA
