Description
Felt Safety & Neurodiversity-Inclusive Strategies for Therapy & Classrooms
► Featuring: Kristin Jones, MS, OTR/L
► On-Demand Course: Learners have access to the course for 180 days from the date of enrollment
► Audience: Therapy Providers and Educators seeking to enrich their knowledge of respectful, neurodiversity-affirming strategies to improve connection and engagement with autistic and other neurodivergent young people.
🔓🔓🔓 (Therapy Neurodiversity Collective Members, this course is included in your membership!)
🌟 Course Description:
What does neurodiversity-inclusive therapy or a neurodiversity-inclusive classroom look like in action, and how does “neurodiversity-inclusive” contribute to a student’s sense of “felt-safety”? Move beyond archaic, data-focused approaches with us as we explore real-world case studies to discover practical, actionable strategies that you can use to immediately start building a feeling of safety and connection with autistic and other neurodivergent young people.
An in-depth follow up to Kristin’s popular course, Transforming School Culture into Neurodiversity-Affirming: Step by step directions by an OT who did it, this professional development course is a game-changer for therapists and educators looking to make a real impact!
🎯 What You’ll Discover:
- Embrace Felt Safety: Gain a deep understanding of how to create felt safety with autistic and other neurodivergent students and why doing so boosts achievement of therapy and educational goals.
- Transform Environments: Dive into the dynamics of high vs. low functioning environments and learn why placing the adaptation burden on neurodivergent students doesn’t actually improve “behavior.”
- Communication Revolution: Learn how to recognize and respectfully respond to various forms of communication, ensuring that every “voice” is valued and every attempt at expression is respected.
- Demand Reduction: Learn strategies to minimize demands, thereby reducing stress, enhancing engagement and building connection and relationship.
- Respectful Engagement with Interest-Based Relationships: Understand how to cultivate meaningful connections with your autistic and neurodivergent students. Discover the art of respectfully leveraging a young person’s passions to foster connections and boost their involvement and excitement in learning.
This course promises to fundamentally shift your professional perspective and leave a lasting positive impact on the lives of those you serve.
Included:
☑ Slide handout
☑ Course handout with references
☑ Certificate of Attendance for 1.5 hours of professional development
Kristin Jones graduated from Misericordia University in 2000 with her Master of Occupational Therapy and has been an Occupational Therapist for 23 years. She has worked in multiple pediatric settings including early intervention, outpatient clinic, respectful feeding, and school-based. For the past 13 years, she has been at the Community School of Davidson where she has taken the lead in guiding the administration and staff to become a trauma-informed and neurodiversity-affirming organization. Kristin has a passion for the latest research in brain development and translating this information for teachers to apply in the classroom. Her favorite quote is “if they could, they would”. It is our responsibility as educators to figure out the “why” to provide the most effective strategies for student success and to ensure the student feels understood.
By the end of this presentation, participants will be able to:
- Identify the difference between a low and high functioning environment and list 3 ways to improve a low functioning environment.
- Define the concept of felt safety and explain how this increases the likelihood a goal will be met.
- List ways to respectfully use a student’s interests to build a relationship and increase participation.
