Join Dr. Christine Mason as she guides us through exercises to increase our conscious awareness of anxiety, how it manifests in children, and what counselors can do to help students in group settings. For this presentation, Dr. Mason incorporates exercises from yoga, mindfulness, breathwork, and meditation, as well as the approach used with children’s mental health and ideas from her book, Compassionate School Practices: Fostering Children’s Mental Health and Well-Being. The session will also include guidelines from Paul Gilbert’s Compassion Focused Therapy and Rick Hanson’s Hardwiring Happiness.
During her two hours with us, Dr. Mason will provide practical pointers about developing your own mindfulness heart centered learning skills and also:
Establishing rapport and building trust
Differences in counseling approaches in small group and individual sessions – what to keep in mind as you lead sessions.
How what happens in the classroom sometimes activates anxiety and what can be done to lessen that adrenaline overload
How to work with anxiety in ways that help children to feel more calm, secure, and ready to learn
What to do if children are dysregulated
Working with students who are quiet, resistant to group sessions, or withdrawn
Considerations for primary, intermediate, and high school students
How to help children identify their anxiety and learn strategies to self-soothe
How to connect with students and build their coping and co-leadership skills
How counselors can guide classroom teachers so that strategies learned in small groups can be operationalized as needed in classrooms.
The session will end with a review of how to sequence what you do and expectations for what could be achieved in 6-8 weeks.
Event times are EDT.