During the pandemic, adults who work with children and families have risen to the challenge of finding new ways to connect, 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 practical concepts and tools that participants can use to continue this work: 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 during uncertain and challenging times.

Participants will be able to:

1. Describe strategies for connecting with and supporting students, including those with trauma histories and those who are neurodiverse, during the pandemic
2. List strategies for building long-term resilience
3. Describe techniques for addressing children’s worries and anxieties and communicating in age-appropriate ways

This full-day workshop for individuals or school teams will allow schools to understand how a safety assessment team fits into a complete approach to school safety and will present a comprehensive school safety assessment approach for students whose behavior raises concern about their potential for violence. Role play and case studies will be used to deepen understanding.

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.