Social-Emotional Teaching & Learning in the Trauma-Informed Classroom

PLN 11b, EDCE 6540
4.5 CE credits
135 ACT 48 credit hours

Course Description:

Students, teachers, and administrators experience pressures to perform with rising expectations and ever-changing standards. Educators must find a way to remain balanced, calm and positive while managing an ever-increasing workload. Mindfulness, the simple act of being present - moment-by-moment - is an age-old practice whose benefits are now backed by brain science. Participants learn simple, mindfulness-based techniques to help re-energize their capacity to teach, learn, and lead schools while managing day-to-day stress.

Phase 1 of the course provides a safe space for participants to explore and develop their own mindfulness practice against the backdrop of PLN’s Four Lenses of Learning. In Phase 2, classroom-based mindfulness strategies are introduced and practiced to promote student self-regulation and focus.
 

Schedule:

Grades will be awarded in August 2025.

PLN 12c, EDCE 6240
4.5 CE credits
135 ACT 48 credit hours

Course Description: 
Educators who teach with an understanding of the social-emotional brain have classrooms that are well managed, have fewer discipline problems, increased student learning, and less job stress. Course participants learn how to best reach the explosive child, the disconnected child, the child of trauma and the chronically inattentive child. They explore what the emotional brain teaches us about the best way to structure lessons and build a safe learning community.

Participants consider their students' social/emotional developmental issues and needs at various ages, how gender differences impact learning, ways to lessen anxiety, fear and avoidance and systems of classroom management that align with brain-based research and the PLN frameworks. Participants apply the concepts and strategies, reflect in ongoing journals and develop a final project as they learn about related topics of interest including the biology of emotion and how it impacts learning, self-concept, and self-advocacy.

Schedule:

Grades will be awarded in December 2025.

PLN 32, EDCE 6310
4.5 CE credits
135 ACT 48 credit hours

Participants learn about the PLN research-based frameworks of The Five Reading, Writing, Talking Processes and The Four Lenses of Learning against the backdrop of brain biology with the goal of understanding the positive effects of research-based literacy practices for all learners across the curriculum. Participants experience engaging PLN best practices and comprehensive discussions about how the biology of the brain is impacted by (and impacts) student learning. Assignments include classroom try-outs, professional readings, reflective journals and a final project that integrates brain biology and literacy-rich best practices into a comprehensive curriculum unit.

Schedule:

Grades will be awarded in Spring 2026