Live Trainings

Our live training for elementary school parents and educators are available across New York City. These sessions provide introductory information and strategies for each topic. We provide training in the following ways:

1) School-based Training Series: Individual schools must request a minimum of 3 workshops (We require that at least two are CTLE-eligible professional development workshops for staff). Our team will meet with school administration prior to scheduling in an effort to align training topics to school goals.

2) Organization Training: Community Based Organizations, city agency departments, or other NYC-based organizations can request single training sessions for professional development days, convenings, or conferences.

If you are interested in one or both of these tracks, please fill out a training request form below and we will follow up to provide more information.

Our Trainings

Healthy and Ready to Learn aims to fulfill the role of school climate partner, focusing on trauma-sensitivity and healing with an anti-racism lens to increase school and community capacity to help students succeed academically, stay healthy, feel safe and empowered by their environments, and have a positive outlook on the future. Our hope is that building healing centered schools and helping build positive and trauma-sensitive supports for students and families, will increase student’s readiness and availability to learn, increase resilience, and promote wellbeing across both their life course and academic careers.

To this aim, we are offering a series of professional development opportunities, designed to provide a framework for implementing best practices into your schools. These workshops have been designed to build off one another, but we do not require that you take them in linear order.

We are happy to work with you to determine which workshops best meet the needs of your school. Learn more about our training options below and join us either in-person or online to learn more about each of these topics! For educators in New York State, all of our trainings are Continuing Teacher and Leader Education (CTLE) eligible.

This professional development training introduces the effects of trauma on students and school-wide strategies that can be implemented. By the end of this session participants will be able to...

  1. Discuss ways that trauma affects the body, brain, and behavior
  2. Demonstrate the ability to use trauma-sensitive strategies
  3. Participate in self-reflection to identify triggers and coping skills

Now that you know what trauma is, how do you take that information and start incorporating it into your school/team practice. This session is a deep-dive into the ways that we can care for ourselves and our teams as a way of practicing trauma-sensitivity and self-awareness. By the end of this session participants will be able to...

  1. Review how trauma and chronic stress affect the brain and body, and discuss how this relates to this current moment with COVID-19, continued racial injustices, and rise in protests
  2. Assess their own self-care practices and discuss approaches to managing stress using coping skills they can implement in their own practice
  3. Demonstrate the ability to use trauma-sensitive actions when working with students and families and create a plan to integrate them into practice.

This workshop will teach participants how to be conscious of the ways that we talk about students that can impact and limit our work and how we relate to students and families. We will explore how to re-frame destructive narratives into tools for empowerment. By the end of this session participants will be able to...

  1. Define the “single story” and understand the consequences of creating single story narratives
  2. Understand how dismantling single stories lays the foundation for a restorative and trauma sensitive school environment
  3. Practice strategies for reframing single story narratives

In this workshop participants will practice using strengths-based language to help facilitate difficult conversations, such as health referrals, the impact of attendance on academic progress, or stress at home. By the end of this session participants will be able to...

  1. Define the trauma-sensitive strategy of using Strengths-based language for conversations with students, families, and school staff
  2. Discuss the importance of self-care and self-reflection for having difficult conversations
  3. Practice using this strategy for communicating with families and school staff to help connect mentees to needed resources and services

Focus on the caregiver is an essential component of a healing-centered model, especially as we consider the compounded impact vicarious trauma and compassion fatigue can have on our school staff. This session will deep-dive into mindfulness strategies that can be used both for self-care and with students and families. We will share additional resources that you can use in carrying out your work. By the end of this session participants will be able to...

  1. Define self-compassion and self-awareness, and their roles in trauma-sensitivity
  2. Describe the benefits of mindfulness practice with regard to trauma-sensitivity
  3. List at least 3 activities to add to their self-care toolkit

This workshop provides a comprehensive toolkit for school staff to utilize in referring families to health services available in the community via methods that increase referral follow-through. This interactive workshop allows participants to explore resource lists available online and through local health departments, begin mapping resources in their community, and practice referring families to local health services. By the end of the workshop, participants will be able to:

  1. Describe how to identify resources in the community and create a tailored resource guide
  2. Discuss strategies for communicating health information with parents and referring parents to health services that yield action
  3. Demonstrate how to refer a family to community-based health resources
Early Childhood-Specific Training

This workshop will teach participants all about play, its significance in development, when it is appropriate, and how to reinforce it in settings for learning and, importantly, in the home. This session will explore awareness of social-emotional learning, things to look out for, and ways to build play into the child’s routine. By the end of the session, participants will be able to:

  1. Connect play to development
  2. Label types of play and how to promote “good” play
  3. Use tips to build a routine around play

Similar to the elementary level training, this professional development will discuss ways trauma affects the body, brain, and behavior in children ages 0-5. At the end of the workshop, participants will be able to:

  1. Discuss ways that trauma affects the body, brain, and behavior
  2. Demonstrate the ability to use trauma-sensitive strategies
  3. Participate in self-reflection to identify triggers and coping skills

Educators & parents play a critical role in creating a culture of positive attendance to jumpstart educational learning. Using graphics, we explore the importance of emphasizing and monitoring attendance during early childhood and its impact on socioemotional and cognitive learning. At the end of the workshop, participants will be able to:

  1. Understand how attendance in early education lays the foundation for future attendance behavior
  2. Identify the impact of absenteeism on early development
  3. Outline a tiered attendance plan for your school