Description
Safety Equals Success: Demystifying Fearful Patterns that Keep Schools Stuck
Gillian Boudreau
Series Overview
As school professionals, we have a powerful opportunity to either magnify or reduce stress for our students. We are not neutral variables in our students’ lives, as our state of regulation either stresses or calms our students in each moment we spend with them. Given the negative impact of chronic stress on learning potential, this is an important responsibility. In this series we will find ways to harness this power and responsibility to give students back their rightful mental and emotional bandwidth.
Webinar #4 – Basic Safety For Adults: Learning to Model Calm Connection and Internal Freedom
In recent years, we have learned many regulation tools to weather arduous circumstances and focus on student progress. The biggest learning: cultivating calm adult nervous systems is the foundation upon which everything else can rest. In this webinar we will review and deepen our skills in the realms of self compassion, self-insight, and mindfulness. By building internal safety, we foster courage and freedom to model and inspire the same in our students.
Participants will:
- Identify the need for adults to foster basic safety in themselves in order to effectively teach others
- Review the research on self-compassion and its impact on mental and emotional effectiveness, and learn specific tools to foster self-compassion even in difficult times
- Consider the research on mindfulness as a powerful agent of basic safety, and practice specific skills to foster mindfulness in self and others
Dr. Gillian Boudreau is a licensed clinical psychologist and a licensed school psychologist. Gillian runs a psychotherapy practice with a focus on ASD, anxiety, and trauma, and teaches graduate courses on resilience, mindfulness, and social and emotional learning. Gillian is a national speaker and consultant; her work supports systems and communities to identify and shift fearful patterns, as well as remove obstacles to optimal connection and development.
Other webinars in the series:
Webinar #1 – Working Well with Neurodivergent Students: Safety, Belonging, and Getting Out of the Way
This webinar focuses on the significant benefits of adult regulation in supporting neurodivergent students, including autistic and ADHD learners. We also explore how these concepts apply to students who may not have a specific diagnosis, but still experience heightened sensitivity to sensory stimuli and executive function difficulties.
Webinar #2 – Safety and Executive Functioning: Building the Muscle of Task Engagement without Squashing Anyone’s Spark
Executive functioning is the mental muscle we use to get ourselves to do things that may not be immediately gratifying. We often practice these skills in the service of self-determination and meeting goals that are important to us.
Educators risk teaching executive functioning skills from a fearful stance of urgency, which can cause students to override their own internal cues that something isn’t right for them. This webinar focuses on the importance of teaching executive functioning from a calm and collaborative adult stance.
Webinar #3 – Safety, Behavior and Co-Regulation: Fostering Self-Determination Rather than Compliance
This webinar focuses on the importance of moving students in the direction of self-actualization rather than unquestioning compliance. We take a compassionate look at how the most well-meaning educators and schools can unwittingly end up in a compliance-based model in response to the unsustainable pressures of behavior management and curricular expectations central to modern schooling.
