Educators
Teaching neurodiverse children can be both rewarding and extremely stressful. These children can bring insights to the fore that give you goosebumps as they almost poetically discuss mass, gravity, black holes and quasars while not being able to organise their school bag and forgetting to eat altogether.
They make us believe in the best for the future of humanity when we observe their compassion in noticing and taking a younger, insecure fellow scholar under their wing while at other times challenging us to take a deep breath when they just say No! and refuse to co-operate because their nervous system has reached capacity for that day.
Supporting Educators in Practice
The reality in teaching these both talented and challenged as well as sometimes beautifully exasperating individuals is that there is no one size fits all as each child is different. So much of the effort to reach the child is a combination of insight, compassion, creative trial and error in terms of what works with the child’s profile as well as just plain grit on the teachers’ part in addressing areas that need support.
I offer support to teachers and schools through a trauma-informed and neurodiversity-affirming approach, helping educators better understand themselves and how to build and maintain their own capacity to be able to hold space for and teach effectively as well as how to respond to the needs of children and teenagers in an authentic, caring and calm manner.
My work focuses on practical, realistic approaches that can be integrated into everyday classroom environments. The principles help teachers respond in ways that support both learning and emotional safety, rather than escalating stress or disconnection.
Psych Education for Educators
Helping teachers understand:
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Trauma (Including ensuring understanding of how trauma impacts learning, how incorporating nature and movement helps)
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Neurodiversity (ADHD, Autism, Giftedness, Sensory Processing Differences)
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Behaviour as a nervous system response: For example, understanding “challenging behaviour” through a nervous system lens. This helps shift from: “What is wrong with this child?” to “What does this child need?”
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Explaining the concepts of connection before correction as well as regulation before discipline. For example, understanding co-regulation in relation to self-regulation developmentally as well as discipline as the ability to teach (as in from the root word: disciple) and modelling from a regulated state
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Sensory needs
Collaborate
I work with teachers, schools, and parents in order to support children consistently across environments.