The foundation identified promoting the social-emotional health of students as a top priority and developed the following four-module series of school-facing trainings:
Module 1
Know Better: Introduction to the Developing Brain, ACEs, and the Impact of Toxic Stress
Module 2
See Better: Developing a Trauma-Informed Lens
Module 3
Be Better: Adult Emotional Heath and Regulation
Module 4
Do Better: Fostering Self-Regulation and De-escalating Dysregulated Students
Taken together, these modules are intended to increase the tools and skills that school staff have to understand and address challenging student behaviors and, in turn, decrease the psychological distress of families. Many school staff want to skip straight to “What can I do differently?” However, the foundation has found that school staff must know better, see better, and be better before they can truly do better.
Supplementary Module
Choosing to De-Escalate: Developed in partnership with SCS, including representatives from its SPED, Alternative Schools, and Student Equity, Enrollment and Discipline, this module is designed to help educators respond to students with challenging behaviors in ways that help de-escalate their negative conduct and become emotionally regulated in order to reduce the incidence of students being suspended or otherwise excluded from class. It focuses on exploring and shifting teachers’ mindsets around behavior so they will be more inclined to choose to respond to students in supportive and regulating ways, as well as on teachers’ posture, affect, and emotion, including specific strategies for responding to challenging behaviors more constructively.