Description
The course integrates trauma-informed, brain-based instruction and socail-emotional learning (SEL) with disability-affirming, neurodiversity-affirming, and culturally sustaining practices.
1. Participants will explore how trauma, stress, disability, and neurodivergence (including ADHD, autism, learning differences, emotional and behavioral disabilites, and sensory processing differnces) intersect with brain development, learning, and behavior.
2. The course addresses how historical and intergenerational trauma, ableism, and systemic inequities have disproportionately impacted Indigenous students while also centering cultural stregths, community knowledge, and Indigenous ways of knowing as powerful protective factors.
3. Educators will learn to design inclusive learning environments that support regulation, executive functioning, communication and access to instruction--without pathologizing difference or lowering expections. Emphasis is placed on universal design for learning (UDL), strengths-based IEP practices, culturally responsive accommodations, and collaborative problem-solving that honors student identy, family voice, and Tribal sovereignty.
The course promotes healing-centered, Inclusive approaches that benefits all learners while providing specific tools for supporting neurodivergent students within general education, special education and inclusive settings