In the first Professional Development session of the 2025-2026 school year, Amanda Petersen facilitated a thoughtful group discussion that included an introduction to FocusedKids. Amanda explained how this PD series is an important part of FocusedKids outreach to provide mental wellness, mental health, and mental wellbeing support for teachers. These sessions serve as an opportunity for teachers to take an hour for themselves and to learn tools and strategies that support their wellbeing so that they can show up as their best selves for the kids in their classroom. Oftentimes teachers don't have the time to reflect or sit back and problem solve, looking at a situation in a calm and regulated way. FocusedKids aims to provide teachers with the opportunity think about their kids and how they're approaching them, as well as what shifts they might want to make.
After participants shared a bit more about themselves, Amanda explained the PD series format. With 8 total sessions, FocusedKids will offer teachers up to 16 hours in Professional Development credit. To earn the additional credit, teachers will be expected to create 4-5 lesson plans that demonstrate how they are using the FocusedKids model. This is optional, however, in addition to the base 8 hours for attendance.
To kick off the session, teachers shared in a grounding followed by a reading about how supporting adults provides them with the emotional toolkit they will need both for themselves and for the children in their care. Amanda then shared some of the very real impact of FocusedKids in partner schools today – teachers report that with just a few weeks of consistent practice, students are better able to focus, transition smoothly, and use language to describe their feelings. All of these factors have reduced time managing behaviors. Teachers also report improvements in their wellbeing.
Amanda then explored the idea of stress tolerance using a scale of one to five. For example, if stress tolerance is low, then a teacher or student might be easily triggered (0-2), whereas if stress tolerance is high (3-5), a teacher or student may be able to manage more things coming towards them with ease. The group then discussed practices that support stress tolerance, and how to apply this same concept to students. There's so much in the day that teachers don't have control over, but what do they have control over? And how can they tune into that to support their wellbeing?
Following this, Amanda dived into the three key players of the brain and how to use this language in conjunction with the idea of stress tolerance. Then teachers further discussed classroom challenges and practices.
If you're interested in learning more from FocusedKids, check out the Calm and Connected Educator Course linked below, along with the Calm and Connected Educator Workbook. The next PD session will center on all things Mindfulness with FocusedKids trainer Rebecca Segal on November 3rd. To register for the remaining PD sessions, click HERE.
Professional Development Recording
Professional Development Resources
