Some teachers and support staff with the Limestone District School Board headed back to school early this year for some professional development training to help learn ways to help students dealing with stress in and out of the classroom.
More than 130 staff members came in on their vacation to spend a full day of learning on Wednesday at Cataraqui Woods Elementary School, developing tools and techniques from Sian Phillips on dealing with “Developmental Trauma and Adverse Childhood Experiences.”
“I think it’s thrilling that we can do it before school so that people go into their school year with a different understanding, rather than get reactive and feel discouraged or overwhelmed quickly,” Phillips said. “They can have some information going [into the school year] that allows them to have a couple weeks to integrate the information, think about their students, think about how to set up their classrooms, [and] for administrators to think about how to support staff and to think about it on the front end versus after the fact when everyone is tired, exhausted and overwhelmed.”
Phillips is a psychologist who specializes in working with children in foster care and their foster and adoptive parents.
According to Phillips, stress gets in the way of learning and affects early brain development, so the training is geared to helping teachers and other support staff identify, support and promote positive brain development.
[For more of this story, written by Julia McKay, go to http://www.thewhig.com/2016/08...-of-teacher-training]
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