A Neuroscience- and Attachment-Informed Approach to Understanding Student Behavior

Regina Lester-Harriat, LMSW, Assistant Professor in-Residence
Monday, May 18
9 am – 12 pm
3 CECs

Registration Fee: $75

10% discount for UConn SSW Alumni and current SSW Practicum Instructors

This interactive training introduces school-based and clinical professionals to a neuroscience- and attachment-informed framework for understanding student behavior. Moving beyond traditional behaviorist interpretations, this session explores how the autonomic nervous system, trauma exposure, and attachment experiences shape students’ responses to stress, authority, and learning environments.
Participants will examine fight, flight, freeze, and fawn responses as adaptive survival strategies, and learn how these responses often manifest in school settings as defiance, withdrawal, avoidance, or compliance.

Through case-based application and practical strategies, the training emphasizes the importance of co-regulation, relational safety, and culturally responsive, trauma-informed interventions.
Grounded in school social work practice, this session bridges theory and application, equipping participants with tools they can immediately integrate into their work with children, adolescents, and families.

Participants will be able to:

• Describe the role of the autonomic nervous system in shaping behavioral responses in children and adolescents.
• Identify fight, flight, freeze, and fawn responses and how they present in school and clinical settings.
• Explain the connection between attachment experiences and nervous system regulation.
• Apply a neuroscience-informed lens to reinterpret student behavior and reduce mislabeling.
• Implement practical co-regulation and relationship-based strategies to support student engagement and emotional safety.