Trauma Smart Schools Live Workshop – Educator Capacity Building (Primary Schools)

What are Trauma Smart Schools?

Trauma SMART schools are student-centred and recognise that emotional intelligence and social-emotional skills are the foundation for improved academic outcomes and resiliency. Evidence shows that if a brain has been affected by early trauma or prolonged stress, particularly during the sensitive periods of development, the wiring of the brain and nervous system can be affected. This faulty wiring of the lower subcortical parts of the brain drives behaviour, the ability to navigate relationships, the ability to learn and remember, the ability to focus and pay attention, responses to stress, and self-concept.

Building Better Brains Australia’s Trauma Smart Schools Program aims to change these statistics through evidenced-based education and a toolbox of support strategies for the entire school community – teachers, parents, and the children themselves.

The program will cover essential neuroscience and provide practical classroom, home, and personal strategies to help your school build a sustainable, trauma-informed community.

Topics Covered In This Workshop:

• The Brain and Behaviour Toolkit – Demystify behaviour as you explore essential neuroscience and interpersonal neurobiology for the classroom. Understand why behaviour is a symptom of a dysregulated nervous system and explore a range of evidenced-based strategies that help improve safety, connection, and regulation.
• The Elephant in the Room: Trauma and Toxic Stress – We explore how trauma presents in the classroom, the neuroscience of trauma and toxic stress, and how trauma affects the brain, behaviour, learning, nervous-system regulation, and relationships, and we provide an evidenced-based toolbox of strategies to aid dysregulation and grow safety and connection in your classroom.
• Regulation Toolbox for Classroom Success – Learn practical evidenced-based strategies and tools to build calmer, more regulated classrooms and strengthen relationships which are the basis of pro-social functioning and academic resilience. Tools include: rhythmic regulation, brain breaks, sensory tools, calm mind practice, Peace Spaces, music, breathing techniques, and movement. This can assist with transitions, dysregulated behaviours, switching on the ‘learning brain,’ and strengthening rapport and connection in the classroom.
• Beyond Burnout: Sustainable Practice and Educator Self-Care – Adults are the physiological anchor for the students in the room and do the essential support work with children with trauma and all others. In this workshop we explore how schools can build a foundation of wellbeing for their staff, address burnout, and encourage sustainable, emotionally intelligent professional practice by becoming the role models for change, self-regulation, compassion, and self-care. Full of lots of practical and reflective activities, this topic is an essential foundation for Trauma Smart Schools.

Every Trauma Smart Schools full-day training package includes a parent/caregiver workshop on Brain, Behaviour, and Trauma for your community.