Trauma-Informed & Resilience-Focused Classrooms: Quick & Easy Strategies to Improve Classroom Climate and Reduce Disruptive Behavior

CPD

Handouts

Speaker

Objectives

1. Communicate the importance of emotional safety and relationships as it relates to students and the classroom.
2. Explore the predictors of resilience using the brain science of trauma.
3. Determine the zones of regulation and recommend strategies to empower individual students to use these on their own.
4. Establish the difference between the in-class reset vs. the out-of-class reset and how consequences work in trauma-informed classrooms.
5. Implement Mindfulness in the classroom in a quick, efficient, and effective way.
6. Practice techniques to self-regulate & co-regulate.
7. Explore the connection between the educator’s well-being and the student’s well-being and introduce strategies that work for both.

Outline

THE BRAIN SCIENCE OF TRAUMA AND RESILIENCE

• Trauma & the mind-body connection
• Brain development
• Polyvagal theory
• The science of resilience

BEHAVIOUR – SEPARATING THE DEED FROM THE DOER

• Reflection: the social discipline window & your approach to restoration
• History, tradition and the four basic needs
• Recognize if a student’s needs are distorted or absent

LET’S GET TO WORK: STRATEGIES, STRATEGIES & MORE STRATEGIES

Targeting strategies to reduce your most challenging classroom misbehaviours:

• Talking/blurting out
• Refusal
• Anger/rage
• Panic/anxiety reactions
• Lack of follow through
• Disrespect
• Student/student conflict
• Disengagement

Practical tools to meet students’ basic needs and promote resilience:

• Create emotional safety
• Build a relationship in difficult times
• Teach your students to accept feedback
• Address shame responses from students

Classroom wide interventions to improve self-regulation, promote compassion & create a supportive classroom climate

• Proactive strategies to build relationships
• Build a community and discuss expectations with circles
• Go slow to move fast: teach the skills that you want them to use
• Two ways to teach about the brain to develop a common vocabulary
• Zones of regulation for classroom management and self-regulation
• Brain breaks and sensory tools
• Mindfulness to help with transitions

Proven strategies to empower individual students

• Affective statements for informal conferences
• Whole classroom instruction on reset space, brain gym, and sensory tools
• Setting up your reset/calm space and how to use it

When to involve the student support team and next steps

• Universal Needs Assessment
• Private Logic
• Finding the appropriate interventions to meet specific needs

Target Audience

• General Educators
• Special Educators
• School Administrators
• Guidance Counselors
• Social Workers
• Behavior Interventionists
• School Psychologists
• Para-Professionals
• Directors of Special Education
• School Nurses
• School Physical Therapists
• Occupational Therapists
• Speech-Language Pathologists