Professional Development Workshops for Early Childhood Educators
Practical, trauma-responsive and neurodiversity-affirming training that helps educators understand what is driving behavior and respond with more clarity, confidence, and connection.
Your team is working hard. But when behavior keeps escalating, the usual strategies, routines, consequences, incentives, and behavior plans may not create the change everyone hoped for. Educators can begin to feel frustrated, depleted, and unsure what else to try when they are already doing everything they were taught to do.
That does not mean your team is failing. It may mean they need a different way to understand what is happening beneath the behavior—and practical support for what to do next.
Help behavior make more sense.
Bring relationship-centered, immediately useful professional development to your school, program, or organization.
“Katie’s course was an incredibly positive experience and left me feeling much more equipped to help students really work through some of the social/emotional challenges they will face in my classroom. ”
When the Usual Strategies Are Not Working, Educators Need a Different Lens
Instead of giving staff one more set of disconnected techniques, Katie helps teams build a shared way of seeing behavior: as communication shaped by development, relationships, sensory processing, experience, and the nervous system.
With that understanding, the question shifts from “How do we make this stop?” to “What is this child communicating, and what support might help next?” That shift opens the door to responses that are both compassionate and practical, while helping educators move from repeated crisis management toward connection, regulation, and prevention.
Training Designed for Real Children in Real Classrooms
These workshops translate research, brain science, and clinical insight into language and tools educators can use right away. The goal is not perfection or a rigid system. It is to help your team feel more grounded, more capable, and more connected to the children in their care.
● Look beneath behavior. Understand what a child’s nervous system, development, or experience may be communicating.
● Respond with clarity. Choose supportive strategies without relying on shame, punishment, or power struggles.
● Create more regulation. Use relationships, routines, movement, sensory supports, and the environment with greater intention.
● Build a shared language. Help educators and leaders respond more consistently across classrooms and settings.
“Katie truly cared about us and our growth as educators. She catered to our needs greatly.”
Early Childhood Workshop Topics
Choose a focused workshop or combine topics into training tailored to your program’s needs.
Trauma-Responsive Strategies for Early Childhood
Using the framework in Katie’s book, Trauma Responsive Strategies for Early Childhood, this workshop explores how trauma and chronic stress can shape development, attention, relationships, play, and behavior. Teams learn practical ways to increase felt safety, co-regulation, connection, and resilience without lowering meaningful expectations.
Understanding and Responding to Challenging Behavior
Behavior is communication—but understanding the message is not always simple. Educators learn to look beneath meltdowns, aggression, withdrawal, avoidance, and repeated conflict, then choose responses that support regulation, skill building, and repair.
Understanding Neurodivergence and Creating Neurodiversity-Affirming Classrooms
Explore how ADHD, autism, sensory differences, giftedness, and other neurodevelopmental variations can shape a child’s classroom experience. Educators practice moving beyond compliance-based expectations toward accessible, affirming support that honors each child while caring for the whole group.
Understanding PDA in the Classroom
Learn how a pervasive drive for autonomy may appear as avoidance, negotiation, shutdown, or escalating distress when demands feel threatening. Educators explore lower-demand, relationship-centered ways to reduce power struggles and support participation.
The Classroom Environment as a Regulator
The environment is not just a backdrop; it can become a third regulator. Teams examine rhythm, transitions, noise, visual load, movement, materials, and physical space to identify practical changes that can help more children feel steady and ready to learn.
Supporting Children Who Have Experienced Foster Care or Adoption
Children who have experienced foster care or adoption may bring histories of loss, uncertainty, disrupted relationships, and identity complexity into the classroom. This workshop offers attachment-aware ways to support trust, belonging, regulation, and connection while avoiding assumptions about a child’s story.
Understanding the Impact of Prenatal Substance Exposure
Prenatal substance exposure and neonatal withdrawal can influence regulation, sensory processing, attention, sleep, learning, and stress responses. Educators build a more compassionate understanding of these differences and learn practical supports that respond to the child in front of them.
Professional Development Shaped Around Your Team
Not every team needs the same training. Workshops can be adapted to your program, age group, current challenges, and shared goals, with examples and strategies that reflect what your educators are navigating now. Training is available online and in person for preschool and elementary educators, support staff, leadership teams, and administrators.
Meet Katie Statman-Weil, EdD, LCSW
Katie is a clinician, educator, consultant, trainer, and the author of Trauma Responsive Strategies for Early Childhood. Before becoming a therapist, she was an inclusive early childhood educator. Her workshops bring together classroom experience, attachment and trauma research, nervous system science, and deep respect for the emotional weight of caring for children with complex needs.
Katie’s goal is always to ensure educators feel heard, children feel supported, and relationships have room to thrive.
“Katie modeled what she taught, made us all feel welcomed and respected. I haven’t learned more about teaching from anyone or anything else.”
Your educators deserve support, too.
If your team is carrying the weight of increasingly complex behavior, Katie can help you create a training that brings more understanding, practical direction, and possibility to the work.
Frequently Asked Questions
Who are these workshops designed for?
Workshops can be adapted for preschool and elementary educators, support staff, administrators, leadership teams, and multidisciplinary groups. Content is shaped to fit the ages your program serves and the roles represented in the room.
Are these trauma-informed workshops?
Yes. Katie uses the term trauma-responsive to emphasize moving from awareness to action. The training helps educators recognize how trauma and chronic stress may affect development and behavior, then make thoughtful changes to relationships, expectations, routines, and the environment. The approach is also attachment-aware and neurodiversity-affirming.
Can a workshop be customized for our school or organization?
Yes. Katie can tailor the focus, examples, and practical strategies around your team’s goals and the challenges educators are experiencing. A consultation before the training helps identify the most useful starting point.
Are workshops available online and in person?
Yes. Katie offers virtual and in-person professional development. She is based in Portland, Oregon; location, scheduling, and availability can be discussed when you inquire.
Will educators leave with strategies they can use right away?
That is the goal. Each workshop connects the “why” beneath behavior with concrete ways to respond, so educators leave with a clearer framework and practical next steps for their classrooms.
Do you offer support after the workshop?
Yes. Programs can pair professional development with follow-up training or ongoing consultation to reflect on what is working, problem-solve new challenges, and support implementation over time.
Ready to support your team?
Tell Katie about your educators, the children you serve, and what has been feeling hardest. Together, you can identify a workshop that meets your team where they are.