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 #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.
Participants will:
- Explore why neurodivergent students may come to us with a more narrow “balance beam of basic safety”
- Identify how a school culture of fear and stress specifically disempowers neurodivergent students
- Develop new mental patterns allowing us to expect well of students who may make us uncomfortable
- Develop tools to work with students who resist demands, circumventing power struggles that can emerge between neurodivergent students and well meaning adults
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.
Participants will:
- Learn the research on and finite nature of “regulatory resource,” the primary engine of executive functioning
- Identify what can help reduce the barriers to executive functioning, including social motivation and belonging, alignment with strong interests, and personally meaningful rewards
- Learn how executive function skills can reflect elements of white supremacy culture, which can contribute to exploitation and burnout
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. We consider both the ethical and pragmatic benefits of fostering intrinsic rather than extrinsic motivation, helping students recognize and align with their core values rather than blindly adopt the agenda of others, and even self-advocate and question authority responsibly and effectively.
Participants will:
- Understand how some unwanted behaviors in schools are actually fear-based, and how identifying the underlying fear can help prevent emotion contagion.
- Learn specific and effective tools to foster “student voice and choice” to improve classroom cooperation, motivation and engagement
- Develop self-compassion and self-insight to build the internal freedom required for adults to courageously share power with students
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 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.
