Transforming School Cultures

Workshop by invitation only.

Description:

Children and youth are more anxious, aggressive, and shut down than ever. We were seeing this epidemic of emotional health crises and behavioral problems before COVID 19 and are now watching as these behaviours only intensify following this turbulent time. Teachers are asking themselves what we can do to support our students and create shifts in our classrooms and schools? Based on the book Reclaiming Our
Students: Why Children Are More Anxious, Aggressive, and Shut-Down than Ever—and What We Can Do About It – this workshop will support educators with relationship-based strategies for creating change.

This workshop will examine and offer strategies for:

• How to build, feed, and protect the student-teacher relationship, even for the students we find the most challenging to reach.
• Why children are displaying more challenging behaviours than ever, and what we can do to address these issues at their root. Based on the developmental insights of Dr. Gordon Neufeld, we will explore some of what is behind the challenging behaviours that we see in our students. What’s the emotion behind aggression? What are some ways we can reduce outbursts of aggression in our classrooms?
• How we can help our students and classes to shift their identity as the “problem student” or “bad class.”
• (Full-day session only) Redefining the meaning of ‘safe’ schools. We will look at what an emotionally safe classroom looks and feels like. How can we create the emotional safety needed to awaken feeling and build a sense of connection and community in our classrooms?