The Power to Heal: Trauma-Sensitive Early Education

Saturday, April 5, 2025
9:00 -12:00 PM EST
12:15 –2:00 PM EST Optional Part 2 with Lunch –Separate Registration is Required, provided in your confirmation email.
Registration is required for both. 

The Power to Heal: Trauma-Sensitive Early Education

In the United States over one in four children will experience or witness a traumatic event before the age of four. Research has shown that traumatic experiences in early childhood often have lifelong effects on language, memory, and academic learning, as well as emotional well-being. Because the brain develops at such a rapid pace during the period between zero and five, early intervention to address this public health crisis is critical. Yet, most early childhood classrooms are not equipped to recognize and address the needs of children, families, and caregivers who have experienced trauma. (McConnico, N; Boynton-Jarrett, R; Bailey, C: and Nandi, M; Zero to Three, May, 2016) 

The conference will provide an understanding of how to recognize trauma in young children and how one can provide a trauma-sensitive classroom for all children. A focus on hope and healing establishes a strengths-based foundation for interventions at the classroom level, empowering caregivers to meet some challenging behaviors that traumatized children often initially manifest. This approach aligns with principles in the Circle of Security, including the vital role of emotional connection that teachers and other significant adults can provide, which is necessary and facilitates the healing process. 

Afternoon Session

Join us for an additional afternoon session for a deeper dive on implementation and practice of strategies from the Circle of Security-Classroom.

The afternoon session will provide an opportunity for attendees to reflect in small groups about how the morning session shows up in their own work. The focus of the afternoon gathering will be to explore how to implement strategies from the Circle of Security- Classroom in their own practice and scope of service.

There is no additional fee for the afternoon session.

Renée Boynton-Jarrett, MD, ScD, a pediatrician and social epidemiologist, is an associate professor at Boston Medical Center and Boston University School of Medicine. She is the founding director of the Vital Village Networks. Vital Village uses a trauma-informed lens to improve community capacity to promote child wellbeing and advance equity through dedicated collaborative partnerships, research, data-sharing, and community leadership development in Boston and nationally through the NOW Forum and CRADLE Lab. Her scholarship has focused on early-life adversities as life course social determinants of health. She has a specific concentration on psychosocial stress and neuroendocrine and reproductive health outcomes, including obesity, puberty, and fertility. She is nationally recognized for work on the intersection of community violence, intimate partner violence, and child abuse and neglect and neighborhood characteristics that influence these patterns.

Lisa B. Fiore, PhD is Assistant Dean and Director of Post-Baccalaureate programs in the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences and affiliated faculty in the Child Study and Human Development Department at Tufts University, MA. Her current research emphasizes social-emotional learning and development, building and sustaining relationships in educational settings, and promoting strengths-based environments and awareness of the multi-generational effects of adverse childhood experiences (ACEs). Dr. Fiore is the author of several books, including: Grit, Resilience, & Motivation in Early Childhood; Assessment of Young Children: A Collaborative Approach; Your Anxious Child: How Parents and Teachers Can Relieve Anxiety in Children; and Building Trust between Faculty & Administrators: An Intercultural Perspective. Dr. Fiore obtained her Ph.D. in Developmental and Educational Psychology from Boston College, an M.A.T. from Tufts University, and a B.A. in English and American Literature from Brandeis University.

Lisa McElaney, MS, LIMH is an Early Childhood Mental Health Consultant and Child Parent Psychotherapist (CPP) in the Center for Early Relationship Support at Jewish Family and Children's Service of Greater Boston (JFCS) where she provides reflective supervision and develops training programs for educators, practitioners and home visitors. A Tier II Level Coach and certified facilitator of Circle of Security - Parenting and Circle of Security - Classroom, she facilitates groups for early education and care staff, new hires and parents at Horizons for Homeless Children and The Dimock Center. She is Co-Developer and faculty in JFCS' year-long certificate training program: Through an Equity Lens - Training for Early Childhood Mental Health Consultants. She is Chair of the Program Committee of the Board of the Children's Trust of MA. Prior to her work as an infant/parent mental health specialist, McElaney was Principal Investigator on nine studies funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) related to prevention/promotion of women's and children's health.

Learning Objectives
At the conclusion of this program participants will be able to: 

1. Identify two classroom behaviors that alert an educator to early childhood trauma. 
2. List two interventions initiated by the teacher at the classroom level that will facilitate healing for traumatized children. 
3. Describe two principles presented in Circle of Security that contribute to attachment and connection between children and the adults in their lives. 

Schedule

8:45 Coffee
9:00 Main Program
10:30 Break
11:00 Q+A
12:00 Program ends
12:15 –2:00 Optional Part 2 with Lunch –Separate Registration is Required, provided in your confirmation email

Recording
This event will not be recorded.

Event Cancellation Policies & Procedures
Any program participant requesting their individual program registration be canceled, must submit their request in writing via email tothe BPSI Office at team@bpsi.org. For fee-based events, a request for cancellation (and refund using the original form of payment) must be received no later than 48 hours in advance of the event. Requests received later than 48 hours prior to the event will not be processed or accepted. All approved refunds are subject to a $10.00 administrative fee. If BPSI cancels an event, all registrants will receive a full refund of fees paid (no administration charge) no later than two business days following the scheduled date of the event, using the original form of payment.

Grievance Policy
Please address any questions or concerns about your experience at this or any program or event you have attended at the Boston Psychoanalytic Society and Institute to the Program Chair, via the Senior Administrator/Continuing Education Administrator, BPSI, 141 Herrick Road, Newton Centre, MA 02459; team@bpsi.org; 617.266.0953.

The Boston Psychoanalytic Society and Institute, Inc., 141 Herrick Road, Newton Centre, MA 02459, does not discriminate on the basis of race, creed, color, sex, age, sexual orientation, national origin or handicap in the admissions, administration of its educational programs, scholarship programs or employment.