Healing Children offers professional development courses for teachers, school counselors, administrators, and parents in multiple formats — live in-person events, live streams, and on-demand options. College credit is available through Northwest Nazarene University. Whether you have an hour or a full day, we have a course that fits your schedule and your needs.
Full Courses- College Credit Available
Healing Discipline: Finding Joy in Working with Challenging Students
This dynamic, interactive seminar — built on more than 50 years of combined experience — will help you understand children affected by trauma, attachment disruptions, and entitlement. You’ll walk away with practical strategies and discipline tools you can use in your classroom immediately.
You’ll learn:
- The root causes of challenging behavior.
- How to apply the Healing Environment framework to support emotional maturity and positive behavior — without bribing, begging, or coddling students to behave.
- Bring joy and confidence back to your work with students.
And here’s why: because we’re giving you the permission to actually discipline.
College Credit Available!
Healing Discipline: Part 2 The Joy Continues
This continuation course goes even deeper — exploring your personal triggers, belief systems, and the roadblocks that make working with challenging students so hard. You’ll learn how to detach from difficult behavior, strengthen team collaboration, and create individualized Healing Behavior Plans you can put into action right away.
You’ll learn how to:
- Build confidence so you can manage the backlash of setting limits and boundaries with your students
- Understand why behavior expectations have been lowered for students and what you can do about it, aka learning to communicate and collaborate with your team.
- Apply trauma-informed, developmentally appropriate practices without lowering accountability
- Design personalized Healing Behavior Plans for your most challenging students
(Part 1 is helpful but NOT required to take Part 2!)
College Credit Available!
Book Study: Healing Discipline: Hope for Shattered Lives; A Guide for Educators
Why this course?
In the last decade there has been a significant shift in children’s behaviors. In the past teachers had 1 or 2 students every few years that had significant behavior concerns. Now teachers are seeing an increase where they may have a handful of students every year that cause significant disruption to the learning environment. This has had a huge impact in the school setting. Teachers are no longer able to just teach as they are spending a large amount of time trying to manage students’ behaviors. This is occurring at the same time where there has been an increase in accountability for students’ academic performance. This increase in responsibility has been a drain on teachers. Teachers have reported that they often feel like they are in a domestic violence situation with their students. Never knowing when their students are going misbehave or explode.
In this book we will address the dynamics of the behavior, the manipulation and unhealthy control the students are trying to obtain. We have faith and belief the child can change. It is important for the educators to feel support and be heard while implementing strategies where there is an opportunity for authentic behavior change.
This book is about hope—hope that we can establish change in situations that appear hopeless. As we begin to understand our own strengths, weaknesses, histories, and the causes of severe behavior we can then learn how to implement strategies to set up a healing environment for these children. The strategies we recommend are ones that the educator can implement, feel good about and have faith in. This will give our students an opportunity to heal, grow and mature. We want to bring hope to children coming from shattered lives and joy back for the educator and in the school settings!
Educational Goals
- Develop Trauma-Informed Practices
Cultivate an understanding of how trauma and attachment influence child development and equip educators with strategies to support healing and resilience in students. - Enhance Understanding of Developmental Stages
Help educators deepen their knowledge and apply developmental theories, like Erik Erikson’s Stages of Psychosocial Development, to guide effective teaching strategies and improve behavior management. - Create Supportive Learning Environments
Foster the ability to design and maintain healing environments tailored to meet the diverse emotional, social, and developmental needs of students. - Strengthen Relationships with Stakeholders
Build skills to engage collaboratively with parents, caregivers, and colleagues to ensure consistent support for students’ growth and success. - Promote Educator Well-being
Empower educators to recognize personal roadblocks to self-care, develop strategies to overcome them, and maintain their emotional resilience in challenging environments.
Learning Objectives
- Understand Trauma and Attachment
Identify the different types of trauma and their impacts on attachment, development, and behavior, and apply trauma-informed strategies to classroom practices. - Apply Developmental Theories
Explore Erik Erikson’s Stages of Development and discuss how understanding these stages can shape effective teaching strategies and enhance student behavior management. - Design Healing Environments
Analyze the characteristics of a healing environment and create actionable plans to address the needs of a specific student identified during the study. - Engage Effectively with Parents and Teams
Learn strategies for handling difficult parent interactions and navigating challenges with colleagues to help develop collaborative relationships that support student success. - Implement Self-Care Practices
Create a self-care plan that addresses personal roadblocks, incorporates strategies for maintaining resilience, and supports ongoing professional effectiveness.
College Credit Available!
Mini-Teacher Professional Development Courses- Certificate for Hours Available
What is a Healing Environment?
This short course introduces the healing environment. Participants will take a test to know what they naturally bring to the healing environment. Participants will also learn what a healing environment looks like for children with severe emotional and behavioral problems. Understanding what children need will help participants put appropriate behavior strategies in place.
This course combines our modules on the Healing Environment in one easy to access format.
Developing Strong Relationships with Your Students
This course focuses exclusively on how to develop deep, healthy connections with students. The teacher-student relationship is the foundation of any behavioral change. Relationship-building strategies when working with students with challenging behaviors will also be covered. Students can not heal from trauma, entitlement, disruptive attachment without healthy relationships
This course combines our modules on relationship building in one easy to access format.
Healing Discipline in a Nut Shell: Causes of Shocking Misbehavior and What You Can Do
Understand the root causes of shocking misbehavior in the classroom and simple, practical steps you can implement today.
In this 2 1/2 hour, 13 part video training course, participants will get a introduction to causes of severe behavior, the healing environment and strategies for working with students with severe emotional and behavioral problems.
Objectives for the one day training:
- Participants will learn what a Healing Environment is.
- Participants will gain a better understanding of the underlying causes of severe behavior, which includes trauma, attachment, development, temperament, and entitlement.
- Techniques will be learned on how to manage disciplinary problems in the classroom.
Adult Self-Control and Self-Care
In this training, we will spend time exploring our needs, priorities, emotional triggers, and roadblocks that get in the way of taking care of ourselves. As we delve deeper into understanding ourselves, we can more easily set boundaries with students, form healthy relationships with students and colleagues, and develop strong teams. When educators have a better understanding of themselves, they are less likely to take student behavior personally; therefore, they can make connections and set healthy boundaries that can lead to healing for their students.
This course combines our modules on adult self control and self care in one easy to access format.
Developing School Teams that Promote Student Healing
It takes a team when working with and teaching children with severe behavior and emotional issues, and being a good communicator is an essential element to the team process. Educators will learn how to communicate their thoughts and feelings and be able to work with others who may have a different point of view. This package will cover what is a team in the educational setting, how to manage team disagreements, and how to deal with undermining from team members.
This course combines our modules on teaming and team building in one easy to access format.
Introduction to Boundaries: Whose Responsibility is it?
To set healthy boundaries, we need to understand our responsibilities and roles. We also should know our personal boundaries within those responsibilities and when we are taking on someone else’s responsibility, role, or job. In this module, we will discuss roles and responsibilities, and if we are taking on someone else’s responsibility, how and when to politely hand it back.
It Takes Two to Help Kids Thrive
Kids today are struggling—and the adults in their lives are too. Classrooms are overwhelmed with behavior challenges, teachers can’t teach, and parents feel like they have tried everything yet still face tantrums, avoidance, refusal, emotional outbursts, and constant pushback. Many children are glued to devices, lack motivation, or retreat into their rooms. Others rush toward risky choices—substances, impulsivity, or unhealthy relationships—long before they’re ready.
When kids are not developing emotional maturity at the pace they should, it leaves families, schools, and communities feeling discouraged and divided. Parents think schools aren’t doing enough; schools feel like their hands are tied; and kids fall through the cracks.
This series gives adults a shared framework—a developmental roadmap, common language, and practical tools—so we can approach these challenges from the same direction instead of pointing fingers. When we understand what emotional maturity looks like at each stage, why kids fall behind, and how to respond consistently, we can problem-solve together and help children move forward in healthy, age-appropriate ways.
Participants will benefit from learning directly from licensed mental health experts across multiple fields—including addiction, launching young adults, education, and parenting.
Underlying Causes of Severe Behavior and Emotional Problems: Why are we Seeing So Much Misbehavior
This short course will provide a better understanding of children who have suffered from disruptive attachment, trauma, and entitlement, which are often the root cause of inappropriate and/or out-of-control behavior in the classroom. Participants will also learn how healthy and unhealthy development impacts behavior. With this understanding, the educator can implement appropriate behavior strategies.
This course combines our modules on the the underlying causes of severe behavior in one easy to access format.
How to Set Boundaries and Structure with Students Who are Out of Control
To set healthy boundaries, we need to understand our responsibilities and roles. We also should know our personal boundaries within those responsibilities and when we are taking on someone else’s responsibility, role, or job. In this module, we will discuss roles and responsibilities, and if we are taking on someone else’s responsibility, how and when to politely hand it back.
The Five-Minute Plan (a structured time-out)
Setting boundaries with students can be a challenge. Knowing how to do this in a healing way with children with severe behavior and emotional issues takes extra skill, technique, and self-awareness. We cover one strategy that is easy to implement and help students develop emotional regulation and self-control, which will help them be successful.
This course reviews the 5 minute reset strategy.
Continuing Professional Development Hours
Our online courses qualify for continuing education and professional development credit hours. Our two main courses provide college credit! With our certificate of completion, our classes will contribute to your required hours in order to keep your license up-to-date. Once you complete your chosen course, we can verify the completion and provide you with the certificate for presentation to your respective state board. They are accredited through Northwest Nazarene University and are currently valid in the following states:
- Arizona
- Colorado
- Connecticut
- Idaho
- Iowa
- Maryland
- Massachusetts
- Michigan
- Montana
- Nevada
- New Mexico
- North Dakota
- Oregon
- Pennsylvania
- South Carolina
- South Dakota
- Tennessee
- Texas
- Utah
- Virginia
- Washington
- Wisconsin
- Wyoming
We are in the process of adding new states to the list. If your state was not listed please check with your state department of education and/or check back periodically as we update this list for time-to-time.
Depending on your situation, it may not be clear which course is appropriate for you to take. No problem! Contact us and we can help you to make the right choice. We are available via email at info@healingchildren.com or via phone at 1-888-311-1883.
