2023 BC Summer Institute Partnerships for Inclusive Learning
August 21st - 23rd, 2023
Join Tamara Strijack and Hannah Beach for 3 days in August!
Three whole days together exploring emotional health in children and youth based on our book Reclaiming Our Students: Why Children and Youth Are More Anxious, Aggressive, and Shut Down Than Ever—And What We Can Do About It.
Every two years, the BC Summer Institute looks forward to facilitating strategic approaches to inclusion and belonging for all students in B.C.’s elementary and secondary schools. The BC Summer Institute brings together administrators, teachers, parents, paraprofessionals, therapists, and other members of school-based teams to network, learn, and create new and innovative approaches to teaching and provides a template for good outcomes for everyone.
This year our workshop will be held ONLINE, which means that we can come together from all over the world! Considering it is online, we wanted to ensure that the workshop still very much had a community feel to it. Therefore, we have developed our 3 days of learning and exploring together to be interactive and full of rich discussions and connection. See below for the description and outline of topics covered.
Workshop description and outline:
Strand 7: Why Children and Youth Are More Anxious, Aggressive, and Shut Down Than Ever—And What We Can Do About It – 3 days
Children and youth are more anxious, aggressive, and shut down than ever.
We were seeing these shifts before the pandemic and now it is only intensified. Faced with this epidemic of emotional health crises and behavioural problems, working with kids has become more challenging than ever. Our children are struggling. We might see anxiety, resistance, attention problems, bullying, aggression, bossiness, acting out or maybe even kids who seem completely shut down. We will unpack the dynamics at play and what we can do to address these issues at their root so that lasting change becomes possible.
This course is a trauma-informed guide to creating the conditions for change. It equips those who lead children and youth with attachment-based practices that support both individual students as well as the collective learning community. Join Hannah and Tamara for three pivotal days that will shift how you understand mental health, empower you with insights and practical strategies, and reaffirm the vital importance of your caring leadership – needed now more than ever.
Our approach is attachment/relationship-based, inclusive, rooted in developmental science, insight based (beyond behaviour) and trauma-informed.
Day 1: Join Hannah and Tamara together
Learning to read what’s needed for change
Creating an environment of emotional safety
Not safe to feel: unpacking the role of emotion and defense
Becoming the leader our students need
Aggression: what’s behind the behavior & how to help
The power of play: what play is and why kids need it Power of Play: What play is and why kids need it
Day 2: Join Tamara
Anxiety: what’s behind the behavior & how to help
Attention problems: what’s behind the behavior & how to help
Resistant or bossy: what’s behind the behavior & how to help
Shut down or bully behaviour: what’s behind the behavior & how to help
Day 3: Join Hannah
Shifting the negative identity of a child or a group
Waking up: Restoring and awakening caring feelings
Let's get serious about play: the deep work of play in growing curious, empathic humans
Exploring emotional health and community building activities together
We’d love to have you join us this summer. It will be wonderful to have 3 full days together, which gives us enough time to explore ideas in a deeper way, to connect, share, and renew our spirits before we launch into another school year!