Registration now open!

Given the unprecedented challenges of the pandemic, schools are forced to adapt the ways in which they meet the educational needs as well as to support the emotional wellbeing of students. The course is designed to provide the learner with the evolving understanding of how to recognize the gaps in learning and design appropriate educational interventions. The emphasis is on practical and timely clinical information and skills based on research, including evidence-based practices, and innovative learning strategies. We will use live streaming, electronic Q & A, and other remote learning technologies.

Presented by Nancy Rappaport and John Sargent.

As participants discuss the challenges they face when working with families, they gain the ability to address clinical problems as “tasks” for the family to resolve in the clinical setting and develop skills that enable this family-therapist collaboration. There is a focus on encouraging interactions within and with families that promote effective family function, build hope, enhance flexibility, and leverage the family’s capacity to heal. Participants become familiar with common themes for families that are “stuck” and learn both approaches and interventions that enhance closeness, encourage effective limits, and build understanding and support in the family.

Trainees interact with prominent child and adolescent psychiatrists, Drs. Rebecca Klisz-Hulbert, Nancy Rappaport, and Andres S. Martin, as they share their journeys and career paths to leadership in the field.

To best determine appropriate accommodations for dysregulated students, child and adolescent psychiatrists need to be familiar with systemic interventions that schools implement, how those may impact their patients, and how to assess students who have made threats. Participants learn strategies for engaging families in a collaboration with schools to best support their students; and understand how evidence-based, systemic interventions can improve school climate, prevent bullying, assess safety threats, recognize school avoidance, and support students returning to school after hospitalization. Participants are more prepared to assist with systemic interventions, realize the importance of relationship building between students and school adults, and acquire strategies to support collaborative planning.

Dr. Rappaport will present Personal Experiences of Safety Assessment: Student and Family Voices as part of a Clinical Perspectives presentation: Impulsive Behavior or Legitimate Warning?: Preventing, Assessing, and Responding to Student Threats.

Registration now open!

During this time of uncertainty and change, adults who work with children and families are rising to the challenge of finding new ways to connect with them, offering practical strategies for coping and thriving, and providing comfort and consistency – all while trying to care for themselves and their own families. Dr. Rappaport will share more practical concepts and tools that educators and social workers can use: maintaining connections, finding contributory activities, communicating in age-appropriate ways, validating questions and worries, balancing structure and rigidity, and supporting those with a history of trauma and challenging home lives. Her suggestions will be based on her many years of clinical experience and experience translating psychiatric concepts into easy actionable steps for educators and families. She will also discuss how taking care of ourselves and building our own resilience allows us to better continue to support children and families and allows us to boost our, and their, capacity to endure and perhaps even thrive.

October 2 and 16, November 6 and 13, and December 4, 2020

In this 10-hour webinar series, Dr. Nancy Rappaport (and several guest experts) will deepen our understanding of how to respond to students with threatening behavior in substantial ways. She’ll also help us explore the necessary cultural changes we need to make in order to effectively support students and keep our communities safe and connected.

Questions to be considered:

• How do we as educators/clinicians build relationships with dysregulated kids?
• How do we teach schools about the impact of structural racism and implicit bias which impact student achievement?
• How do we support the patterns of kids on the spectrum who are perseverative on violent themes or who express themselves in provocative ways?
• How do we appropriately implement safety assessments and build a culture of safety?

Presented by Dr. Rappaport and Dr. John Sargent

Cultivating the ability to strengthen families is vital to supporting children and adolescents in crisis. Attendees gain the ability to look at clinical problems as challenges for the family to resolve with help of the child and adolescent psychiatrist and develop skills that enable them to foster this collaboration. In reviewing cases presented by attendees, presenters look at common themes of families that are “stuck” and discuss approaches that enhance closeness, encourage effective limits, and build understanding and support in the family. Attendees learn to use encouraging interactions within and with families to alter problematic relationships and promote effective family function and recovery.

Download the flyer with registration form here!

Many children face adversity with traumatic abuse, neglect, or special needs that often leads to apathy, learning problems, or aggressive behavior. Dr. Rappaport presents a comprehensive, accessible, and flexible framework for intervention with traumatized children and their caregivers. As the author of the influential book Behavior Code: A Practical Guide to Understanding and Teaching the Most Challenging Students, she will share the FAIR plan method of understanding and improving behavior in challenging students which looks at the function of the behavior, accommodations, interventions, and nurturing responses to traumatized children. Dr. Rappaport will offer new strategies for healing support to promote resilience and motivation in the children who need us the most. Dr. Rappaport will use interactive case studies to allow participants to engage with the FAIR plan method right away.

Dr. Rappaport also has provided assessments and consultation to schools for over twenty years addressing whether a “child is safe to be in school” and her research shows that many times these are students with significant trauma. She will provide critical information about building a safety assessment team as well as provide an overview of warning signals for substantive threats while also emphasizing context and nurturing developmental competencies in traumatized children.

Helping young people succeed includes understanding and managing challenging behaviors while finding ways to sustain our passion for the work and avoid burnout. This presentation uses stories and research findings to discuss how to build resilience in adolescents and ourselves, and how to keep ourselves “in the game” when working with children with challenging behavior.

Helping young people succeed includes understanding and managing challenging behaviors while finding ways to sustain our passion for the work and avoid burnout. This presentation uses stories and research findings to discuss how to build resilience in adolescents and ourselves, and how to keep ourselves “in the game” when working with children with challenging behavior.

This webinar presents an overview of a comprehensive school safety assessment approach for students whose behavior raises concern about their potential for violence. This presentation will draw from Dr. Rappaport’s research and clinical work as a child psychiatrist consulting to schools to present a model that can help prevent school violence while getting students and families the services they need. Targeted school violence is rare, making schools relatively safe places. However, every school must assess be familiar with basic concepts for quickly and comprehensively assessing the safety of students who are volatile and may make threats, write a hit list, destroy property, or post concerning content online. The safety assessment model emphasizes understanding the context of the behavior and helping adults mobilize the resources needed to address the student’s and family’s needs and enhance the student’s safety, connection, and well-being. The content will draw from Dr. Rappaport’s publications, research, and experience with safety assessments in schools, as well as the work of the Safe Schools Initiative, Cornell & Sheras, and others.

Tuesday, February 5, 2019, 1pm and 6pm

Two-day Training through PESI, 12/5-6/2018 – in person in Dedham, MA or via webcast!

‘Understanding Adolescent Trauma Through Authentic Connection’ is a one-day symposium designed for professionals in the addictions and behavioral health fields — primarily addiction/mental health counselors, social workers, psychologists, and family therapists.

2:00–3:30pm
Managing Challenging Behavior: Helping Struggling Adolescents
Nancy Rappaport, MD
Nancy Rappaport is a board certified child and adolescent psychiatrist and is currently a part-time associate professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. Her research, teaching, and clinical expertise focus on the collaboration between education and psychiatry. Working as a science teacher at an innovative elementary school in Harlem, NY where she advocated for support for struggling families was a life-altering experience and inspired her to enter medical school. Dr. Rappaport received the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry’s Sidney Berman Award for the School-Based Study and Treatment of Learning Disorders and Mental Illness in 2012. She also received Cambridge Health Alliance’s Art of Healing Award in 2013—an award given to one who “transcends boundaries, joyfully embraces humanity, and profoundly inspires the healing of body and spirit.
Many children face adversity with traumatic abuse, neglect, or special needs that often leads to apathy, learning problems, or aggressive behavior. Dr. Rappaport, author of the influential book The Behavior Code: A Practical Guide to Understanding and Teaching the Most Challenging Students, will present the FAIR plan method: a comprehensive, accessible, and flexible framework for intervention with traumatized children and their caregivers. This method of understanding and improving behavior in challenging students looks at the function of the behavior, accommodations, interventions, and nurturing responses to traumatized children, with an emphasis on building relationships.