Just School. Just Growth.: The Nexus of Social-Emotional, Culturally Relevant and Trauma-Informed Education - Healing Relationships for Resilience (Session 1 of 3)

Just:  /jəst/ adjective based on or behaving according to what is morally right and fair.

We are excited to partner with you, your school, and/or district to bring you this unique, comprehensive opportunity to create and sustain inclusive learning spaces where every student feels safe, connected, challenged, and has a genuine sense of agency.

As an educator, we understand that you carry the weight of fostering a positive and nurturing culture within your staff and ensuring their well-being in the face of increasing demands and responsibilities. We recognize the immense challenges you face every day, and we want to support you in navigating these complexities while nurturing your own professional growth.

Our warm and inviting professional development opportunity has been enthusiastically received by educators like you. Our expert facilitators are renowned in their fields and bring a wealth of experience in SEL, CRE, and Trauma-Informed practices. We will guide you through engaging workshops, interactive discussions, and practical activities, all aimed at equipping you with the knowledge and tools to transform your classrooms and schools.

This professional development opportunity goes beyond theory. These experiential sessions provide participants with tangible strategies and resources that can immediately be implemented in classrooms. We share and practice practical tools that have a profound impact on students' and educators’ well-being, thereby leading to greater academic achievement. 

Each session contains the recursive threads of SEL, CRE, and Healing Informed practices for Trauma that encourage us to reimagine and reinvent classrooms and schools around the principles of equity, authentic learning, and stronger relationships.  Choose one session or choose all three, depending on your needs.  In each session, participants will receive an electronic text set with resources to bring into the classroom.

Finally, we believe investing in educators’ professional growth and well-being is vital for cultivating a thriving school community. Therefore, we have also incorporated dedicated sessions to address staff overload and support their own self-care. We understand that you cannot pour from an empty cup, and it is crucial that one prioritizes their own well-being as they strive to create nurturing learning environments for students.

Session #1: Intersection of SEL & Trauma: Healing Relationships for Resilience

Children and Educators in every community are carrying trauma caused by the health and political events of the recent past.  We know a successful academic recovery can only happen when the emotional and mental health needs of students and educators are taken care of!

Individuals who have experienced trauma, violence, or chronic stress struggle to regulate their emotions. They are more likely to be stressed or upset due to emotional dysregulation. Due to their brain chemistry, when someone who has experienced trauma becomes stressed or upset, they are unable to de-escalate at a typical rate, which then causes more problems (Van der Kolk, 2014). 

Add Van der Kolk’s assessment to the fact that schools have academic and behavioral expectations that can be very difficult, even impossible to meet for a child who has experienced trauma and you have the recipe for lack of success in students and burnout in educators.

Solution: In this session, we practice what it takes to create a safe and reliable environment where students who have experienced adversities and trauma feel supported, are welcome to explore their strengths and identities, exercise their agency, and can develop meaningful, positive relationships with adults and peers in their learning community. 

This is a non-negotiable for educators who know that we need to change our system now and want to help with that change!

Participants can expect to acquire the knowledge, skills, and dispositions to:

• Recognize trauma and respond skillfully
• Become familiar with the biology of stress (Response-Able)
• Practice tools for self-regulation
• Discover and utilize a student’s strengths to foster resilience
• Create developmental relationships
• Identify emotional triggers and make a plan (Respond rather than react)

Audience: All Grades PK-12 Educators
Presenter(s): Sharon McCarthy, TMI-ENVISION SEL Specialist/Lead Consultant, ENVISION President
Delivery Format: Virtual

Date/Times (attend any one or all):

• Session 1 - Intersection of SEL & Trauma: Healing Relationships for Resilience; January 18, 2024, 9am-12pm 
• Session 2 - Intersection of SEL & Equity: Closing Opportunity Gaps; February 27, 2024, 9am-12pm 
• Session 3 - Intersection of Trauma & Equity: Activism & Action is Empowering; March 13, 2024, 9am-12pm

The TMI-ENVISION Professional and Personal Learning Series

The 2023-2024 TMI-ENVISION SEL Professional and Personal Development Series enhances your ability to turn your pedagogical desires into reality. We think of our Series as an integrated roadmap to create and maintain learning spaces where students feel - and - are safe, connected, supported, and challenged. Each session contains the recursive threads of SEL, Equity, and Healing Informed practices for Trauma. Take one, take two, or take them all. Think of them as the vessel to hasten your journey to become the educator you are in your heart of hearts.

All of our TMI-ENVISION Professional and Personal Development Series programs are led by Sharon McCarthy, popular TMI-ENVISION SEL Specialist/Lead Consultant, ENVISION President dynamic presenter, and author.

Payment Methods and Cancellation/Refund Policy: Payment can be made by purchase order (PO) or check to TMI Education, LLC. Please mail all correspondence, including purchase orders, checks and agreements to TMI Education – PLC Division at PO Box 922, Madison, NJ 07940. If you are unable to attend a program for which you have registered, email the TMI PLC at [email protected] or call seven (7) days prior to the program to request a refund. No refunds will be granted unless notification is provided within this time frame. TMI Education reserves the right to cancel events for any reason, including inclement weather and instructor illness. If TMI Education makes the decision to cancel a workshop, we will use the EMAIL contact information you have provided to us to inform you. In addition, we will post the announcement of cancellation on the respective TMI Education website event page. If TMI Education cancels, participants will be provided a choice of:

• a full refund;
• transfer to another, upcoming workshop date and location (space permitting); or
• credit toward a future workshop. (Please note that all credits expire one (1) year from the date that they are issued.)

Video-Recorded Virtual (Zoom) Sessions and Tips to Maintain your Privacy during a Recorded Session:  As an added value, all virtually-delivered programs are video recorded and accessible to our workshop registrants and Professional Learning Consortium Members subsequent to the session. Therefore, each virtually-delivered workshop and webinar will now have Zoom’s Recording Disclaimer enabled by default. With this feature, attendees will receive a notification when a recording starts or if they join a session that is already being recorded. The participant can then consent to stay in the session and be recorded or choose to leave the session altogether.

Tips to Maintain your Privacy during a Virtually-Delivered Session: Actively engaging in Zoom sessions is important. Participants may have concerns, however, of a Zoom session recording capturing their participation. Meeting hosts or instructors are taking steps to minimize this concern. In addition to the consent, participants can also use the following steps and features to take control of what is shared when a session is being recorded.

• Change your participant name displayed in Zoom (e.g. only use your first name, replace your name)
• Disable your video
• Mute your audio
• Do not communicate via the chat feature
• Do not upload an identifiable profile photo

Please refer to Zoom’s Attendee Controls for more information on how to use these features.