Professional Development
These trainings can be presented live and in-person as well as asynchronously online.
Foundational Intensive Training- The Trauma-Informed Classroom (3-4 hours)
This transformative training serves as the foundation for all subsequent training offered by NeuroLogic®. This session provides an overview of the impact of trauma and stress on the brain along with valuable insights into how these factors impact our students and ourselves.
The importance of regulating the brain from the bottom up is emphasized while introducing practical interventions tailored to each level of the brain. The significance of co-regulation is also discussed, highlighting the importance of implementing regulation strategies for both our students and ourselves throughout the school day.
The majority of this training is dedicated to equipping educators with a wealth of immediately applicable, practical, and effective strategies and interventions that work for all students. Educators will walk away empowered and equipped with valuable insights, renewed hope, and practical tools to make a positive difference in the lives of the students we serve.
Additional Trainings
1. Supporting Student Behaviors through the 3 R’s (3 hours)
Regulate, Relate, and Reason are the 3 R’s employed whenever we work with a dysregulated person. The dysregulation experienced by students is best addressed sequentially, from the brainstem and midbrain (regulate) moving upwards to limbic (relate) and finally support full cortical function (reason). This presentation will review NeuroLogic’s body-based interventions and strategies effective when working to ‘regulate’ another’s midbrain and brainstem dysregulation. We then discuss strategies for regulation through relationship and lastly through reasoning.
2. Brain and Body-Based Strategies for Regulation (1 hour)
Body-based regulation strategies, engaging the brain from the bottom up to the top, can be instrumental in helping those impacted by toxic stress as well as those dealing with current stressors. This presentation will focus on practical strategies and creative interventions to help dysregulated students. These same strategies are helpful in regulating ourselves so that we can best meet the needs of our students.
3. The Power of Relationship (1 hour)
Building relationships with students and between students is key to creating safe environments for learning and development. This presentation will focus on building positive environments, supportive of co-regulation, while sharing practical ideas and strategies for building connections with and amongst our students.
4. Building Relationships with Challenging Students (1 hour)
Do you struggle to form meaningful relationships with certain groups of students? In this presentation, we explore some of the science behind relationships and why it is so difficult for some students to form meaningful relationships with others. Science provides an excellent foundation for the exploration of strategies we offer for initiating, developing, and keeping relationships with some of the most challenging students.
5. Collaborative Conversations (2 hours)
Do you have students who, no matter what you try, end up in a power struggle with you? How can we help students move from a posture of defensiveness to one of collaboration? In this presentation, we will look at ways to build trust and connection to support conversations with students that foster partnership in solving the problems that challenging behavior can cause.
6. A Brain-Based Approach to Resolving Conflict in Schools (1 hour)
Are your students struggling to appropriately manage and respond to conflict? This presentation will explore the origins and utility of conflict that occurs in a school setting. We will examine the neuro-biologic impact of conflict and identify strategies to support students in managing conflict effectively.
7. Utilizing a Skills-Based Approach to Addressing Challenging Student Behavior (1 hour)
When looking at student behavior we can oftentimes become overwhelmed and don’t know where to start. Looking at challenging behaviors like disrespect, defiance, and disruption from skills-based and brain-based lenses can provide direction and tangible interventions to be tried, leading to a sense of empowerment and not defeat.
8. Hypervigilance: What it is and what to do about it (1 hour)
Do you have students who are often defensive and quick to anger? Or students who just don’t seem to hear the directions you give moments after you give them? Often time students that have been through hard times may live in a state of hypervigilance, scanning the environment for threats all the time. In this presentation, we examine hypervigilance and ways to help such students feel safe and examine interventions for common behavioral problems.
9. Reframing Student Defiance and Aggression (1 hour)
Do you feel stressed when faced with difficult student behaviors? Both defiance and aggression will be explored through a brain-based lens that offers understanding and practical approaches for teachers. We begin with a review that all behavior is communicating something; challenging behaviors communicate perceived stress. Following this, we review NeuroLogic’s principles of sequential dysregulation and regulation strategies. We will also discuss the critical importance of establishing supportive relationships for students within the school, the benefits of co-regulation with students, and proactively decreasing defiance and aggression through collaborative norming and group dynamics.
10. Mental Health Considerations in the Classroom Through a Trauma-Informed Lens (1 hour)
Managing classroom behaviors is challenging but may be more so when working with students who have mental health issues. Teachers are not mental health professionals but can be equipped with strategies to implement if they encounter students manifesting signs or symptoms of mental illness. This includes the importance of a multidisciplinary team to best support students’ mental health needs. This presentation looks at childhood mental health diagnoses that you may encounter and offers trauma-informed, brain and body-based activities that are helpful to proactively support students’ regulation in your classroom. We review some of the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on youth mental health and the importance of supportive relationships at school to balance that stress.
11. ACEs, Resilience, and Suicide (1 hour)
What do early adversity and neglect have to do with suicide? The research supports that early abuse and neglect, in the absence of consistent supportive caregiving, significantly increases the risk of suicidal ideation, suicide attempts, and completed suicide. This presentation will review well established data from the ACE research (adverse childhood experiences), factors that increase vulnerability for suicide, and the resilience building impacts of supportive relationships. We will explore the topic of suicide through the lenses of prevention, intervention, and postvention to help increase understanding of our ability to influence individual outcomes and help prevent suicide.
12. Teaching Students about Trauma, Stress, and Regulation (1 hour)
All students are impacted by stress and can improve learning by understanding the brain and brain regulation. For students who have experienced trauma, this information is critical to their success. This presentation will provide guidelines, ideas, and strategies for teaching students key trauma-informed principles including strategies for physical, emotional, and cortical regulation. These principles and strategies can be taught to students individually or through group and classroom settings. Practical ideas and examples will be given along with feedback and lessons learned from the students we have taught.
13. Using the NeuroLogic® Curriculum with Your Students (2-12 hours)
Are you planning to use the NeuroLogic Curriculum with your students? Consider a 2-hour pre-recorded presentation or a more in-depth (4-12 hour) virtual presentation designed to familiarize staff with the curriculum and help them prepare to use it with students in the classroom, group, or individual setting.
14. Dogs in School: Nurturing Positive Change (1 hour)
Animals in a school can bring about positive change by providing healing interventions for all levels of the brain. This presentation will demonstrate the impact of seven facility dogs working in Lakeside’s schools. Stories and testimonies will be shared regarding the changes seen in students, student-to-staff relationships, peer relationships, staff morale, and the total school environment. The difference between facility dogs, service dogs, and therapy dogs will be discussed along with things to consider when setting up a program in your school.
15. Calming Spaces: A Safe Place for Self-Regulation (1 hour)
Going through a school day can be stressful for many students. This presentation will show how having a calming space in the classroom can be a pivotal tool and routine for helping all students learn to manage their stress and regulate their emotions and behavior. Whatever age group you work with, you will leave equipped with ideas and strategies for setting up and incorporating a calming area into your classroom.
16. A Deep Dive into Brain Breaks (1 hour)
Do you ever have times when your students are having a hard time listening or paying attention? This presentation will take a deep dive exploring the uses and purposes of a brain break. We will examine how to best assess, in the moment, what kind of brain break your students need. We will also look at how building brain breaks into your classroom lessons and routines can increase student engagement and academic retention. Lastly, we will explore how brain breaks can be used to enhance social skills, reinforce academic concepts, and spark creativity.
17. Preventative Regulation Breaks for Individual Students (1 hour)
Often breaks for an individual student with challenging behaviors can truly help or can make things worse. This presentation will discuss the important role of regulation breaks in helping students to perform academically. Learn when and how to give breaks and the types of activities during a break that can help students become regulated, and ready to learn.
18. Learning to Breathe (1 hour)
Breathing is a powerful tool in helping students and ourselves find calm in moments of stress and frustration. We will examine some of the science regarding the brain and body connection to breathing. With this foundation, we explore ways to teach students of various ages to breathe, how to incorporate regulated breathing into our daily classroom routines, and how breathing can be used as a targeted intervention with students who are upset.
19. Sensory Paths (1 hour)
Sometimes students just need to go to a place and move. Whether they are upset or just need to get the giggles out, sensory paths can be a valuable asset to have in a school. In this presentation, we will be looking at the ins and outs of Sensory Paths, how to create them, where to place them, and how to communicate expectations and routines to students.
20. Fidgets (1 hour)
Fidgets can be a helpful tool to help some students stay regulated and focused during the school day. The key is to find the right fidget. This presentation will explore different kinds of sensory experiences that a variety of fidgets can help meet students’ needs. It also covers how to utilize fidgets through a universal approach for all students or a targeted approach for specific students. When done the right fidgets can work very well in a classroom.
21. A Trauma-Informed Perspective on Staff Self-Care (2 hours)
With the increasing trauma and stress our students are experiencing, so is the stress level on our school staff. It is important to understand and recognize the impact that stress and secondary traumatic stress have on ourselves and our colleagues. This presentation will discuss and identify trauma-informed tools and strategies to mitigate ongoing stressors and to support staff self-care for yourself and your school community.
22. One Step at a Time: Setting and Achieving Healthy Goals in a Realistic Way. (1 hour)
Personal health and wellness are frequently not prioritized until we find more time on our schedule to accommodate them (which rarely happens). We know that they are vital to maintaining our own resilience and managing our own regulation/co-regulation during stressful situations. This presentation will explore simple, straightforward health and wellness options such as nutrition, movement, rest and sleep, and mindfulness practices offering opportunities to build calming pathways. The presentation encourages each participant to choose ‘one step to incorporate and practice for several weeks and then reflect on the impacts of that simple choice.
23. Maintaining Your Own Regulation (1 hour)
Teaching in today’s schools can be very frustrating. The last thing we want to do is let our frustration negatively impact our students. This presentation helps one understand the science behind stress and how stress can affect our brains and bodies. By the end of the presentation, you will have started to create a self-regulation plan with key strategies to help yourself remain or gain calm.
