This opening session helps you participate in the summit in a way that honors your nervous system—without pressure to “keep up.” You’ll learn a simple pacing plan (before, during, and after sessions) so you can absorb what matters, integrate what you learn, and leave with takeaways that actually stick.

Education is hard—and many educators are tired.

In this hopeful and practical session, 22-year educator and author Patty McLain invites participants to move beyond the idea that burnout is simply “part of the job.” Drawing from lived experience, nervous-system awareness, and her five core practices—regulation, creativity, connection, compassion, and celebration—Patty offers overwhelmed educators small, sustainable tools for caring for themselves and modeling steadiness for students. This session is a reminder that thriving schools begin with supported humans.

Educators care deeply—but care without a framework can become burnout.

In this practical and energizing session, Dr. E’Toyare McDonald-Williams, also known as Dr. Victorious, introduces the A.C.E. Method™: Awareness + Community = Empowerment. Participants will explore how shared language, felt-safety for adults, relational tools, and co-regulation practices can help educators move from overwhelm to intentional, trauma-informed action. This session offers a clear roadmap for becoming a cycle breaker in classrooms, schools, and communities.

Grief is already in the classroom — even when no one has named it.

In this compassionate and practical session, certified grief educator Heidi Dunstan helps educators recognize the many ways grief can show up in students, families, colleagues, and themselves. Participants will learn what to say, what not to say, how to notice behavioral changes without judgment, and how to offer support without becoming a grief counselor or carrying everything alone. This session is an invitation to build connection through presence, validation, and safe-enough conversations when loss or change enters the room.

Before an educator says a word, the room has already begun communicating.

In this session, Renae M. Dupuis explores how physical environments send powerful cues of safety, threat, belonging, exclusion, overwhelm, or welcome. Participants will consider how lighting, sound, seating, clutter, visual messages, sensory input, movement pathways, and accessibility shape what the nervous system experiences before instruction, conversation, or correction ever begins.

This session invites educators and school leaders to look at classrooms, offices, hallways, and gathering spaces through a TraumaWise lens — asking not simply “Is this space functional?” but “What does this environment communicate to the people who enter it?”

Exploitation rarely begins with obvious danger. More often, it develops gradually through attention, validation, secrecy, dependency, unmet needs, and digital spaces where young people may be seeking connection.

In this practical prevention-focused session, forensic nurse examiner and founder of Boundless Her, Cerise Woodard, helps educators recognize early warning signs, understand student vulnerability gaps, and respond in ways that reduce shame and increase safety. Participants will leave with a clearer understanding of their role: not to investigate, but to notice, connect, support, and refer.

What if the behavior we label as defiance, avoidance, disruption, or disengagement is actually a nervous system trying to survive?

In this deeply practical session, criminologist, lived-experience advocate, and trauma system specialist Dawn McCarty invites educators to look beyond behavior and ask better first questions. Participants will explore how hypervigilance, shutdown, control, pleasing, and avoidance can function as survival adaptations—and how predictable, dignified, connected responses can increase felt-safety without abandoning structure or accountability.

Felt-safety cannot be demanded, assumed, or assigned by the adults in the room. It must become believable to the nervous system over time.

In this session, Renae M. Dupuis explores how educators and helping professionals can begin rebuilding felt-safety when students, families, staff, or communities have experienced harm, instability, or broken trust. Through the TraumaWise lens of predictability, dignity, and choice, participants will learn how small, consistent signals of repair can reduce threat, protect agency, and create safer conditions for learning, relationship, and support.

This session offers a practical foundation for understanding felt-safety as an ongoing repair practice, not a promise of perfect safety.

Educators and helpers are often praised for being strong, capable, and endlessly available—but what happens when years of giving slowly become a grief no one has named?

In this honest and deeply compassionate session, Dr. Heather Hughes explores the loss of self that can happen inside helping professions and invites participants to distinguish devotion from depletion. Through the image of scaffolding, grief, and a permission letter written to oneself, participants will be invited to name what they are carrying, tell the truth without perfection, and begin creating a safer container for healing.

Educators spend their days holding space for others—but where do they go when they need support themselves?

In this compassionate conversation, grief educator Maria Belanic explores the power of validation, community, and truth-telling in healing. Through stories of loss, resilience, and recovery, participants will discover why support is not about fixing people—it is about witnessing them, creating space for their experiences, and learning that receiving care is just as important as giving it.

Connection is not created by forcing disclosure, fixing pain, or asking people to be more vulnerable than they have capacity to be. True connection begins when people are safe enough to be known at the pace their nervous systems can hold.

In this session, Renae M. Dupuis explores connection as a trauma-informed practice rooted in story, capacity, truth, and consent. Participants will consider how educators and helping professionals can create relational spaces where people are witnessed without being pressured, supported without being over-carried, and invited into belonging without losing themselves.

This session offers a compassionate framework for connection that honors both the person sharing and the person holding space.

Many educators enter the profession because they care deeply—but what happens when caring becomes self-abandonment?

In this powerful conversation, trauma recovery coach Brooke Deanne explores the hidden “good girl” survival identity that teaches people their worth comes from being useful, responsible, agreeable, and endlessly available. Participants will learn how these early survival patterns contribute to burnout, nervous-system depletion, and disconnection from self—and how small, sustainable practices can help educators return to themselves while creating healthier classrooms.

Reading isn’t just about skills; it can be a safety ritual. In this practical, shame‑free session, educator and advocate Emily Remsen reframes literacy as a daily way to whisper “you belong” — especially on hard days. You’ll learn three flexible tiers you can rotate by energy and need: read to (you carry it), read with (shared turns or shared audio), and read near (parallel presence). Each tier is designed to lower threat and increase choice so perfectionism, avoidance, or “not at grade level” don’t hijack the moment. Emily offers sensory‑smart tweaks (cozy nook, fewer words, movement breaks, audiobook + print pairing, font/format options), plus gentle prompts that move beyond quizzing to curious conversation about feelings, choices, and values. Y

Start where you are; let reading time become a felt‑safety anchor that naturally bridges to connection — no gold stars required.