Curriculum

Take a look at the core curriculum every educator follows in our foundational Trauma Camp Basics program.

The Path of Progress

STORY

SCIENCE

SELF-AWARENESS

SKILLS

Trauma Camp Basics walks educators through the essential stages of becoming a trauma-informed practitioner.

Getting Started

  • The Code of TIPs: Learn the essential ‘code’ for trauma-informed work: where deep care meets healthy boundaries.
  • On Being “Good Enough”: Trauma-informed teaching starts with embracing your own humanity—and knowing that your mistakes and repairs matter more than perfection.
  • The Power of Relationships: Relationships wound and heal—we’ll all cause harm, but we can learn to repair with courage and care.
  • Your Guide from the Side: Get to know your instructor, and how this work is as much personal as it is professional - for all of us.

Story

  • The Plant in the Meadow: Explore how the Indigenous concept of interconnectedness offers a profound shift from Western science, and how both are useful in TIC.
  • The Core Experiences of Trauma: Uncover Dr. Judith Herman’s elemental facets of a traumatic experience, as well as those that restore and repair.
  • The Developmental Difference Between Abuse & Neglect: Learn how each reshapes the brain, and how to conceptualize mending what was broken or missed.
  • Violence & Cognitive Dissonance: Uncover how violence and cognitive dissonance fuel cycles of harm—and how expanding our understanding of abuse will break them.
  • Vulnerability vs. Resilience: Learn about the particular patterns of stress that develop either vulnerability or resiliency in children and adolescents.
  • Emerging Diagnoses: Explore two emerging (and relevant) diagnoses in the field of traumatology — Developmental Trauma Disorder and Complex Post-Traumatic Stress.
  • A Contagious Disease: Violence spreads like a disease - but so can healing. Explore Dr. Gary Slutkin's epidemiological approach to interrupting communal cycles of harm.

Science

  • The “Why” of the Brain: Understand the primary objectives of the human brain, and how you can track these underneath all human behavior.
  • Parts of the Brain: Learn the four primary parts of the brain, what they’re responsible for, and the different languages each different part speaks.
  • Association: From Pavlov’s dogs to trauma triggers—learn how trauma links senses, memories, and survival responses in your students.
  • Use-Dependence: Discover Dr. Bruce Perry's 'Use-Dependence' principle: Neural pathways thrive with practice and fade with neglect—spot how this shapes your work with students.
  • What Creates a Person’s Reality: Discover how a child’s brain interacts with its environment, and how this develops and creates their particular reality.
  • Determining Factors: Trauma isn’t one-size-fits-all. Unpack the four factors that determine the severity of a traumatic experience for children and adolescents.
  • The Sequence of Development: Unearth the bottom-up and inside-out development of human brains, and track this from their most simple to complex functioning.
  • Sensitization & Tolerance: From sensitized alarm systems to stress-tolerant brains—discover how we can shape long-term stress responses through relationship and regulation.
  • The 5 F’s: Decode the 5 automatic stress-responses to threat, and understand your students' survival responses through this neurobiological lens.
  • Novelty: Learn about the role of Novelty in activating the stress-response system in humans, so you can begin to anticipate this inside your classrooms.
  • The Spectrum of Stress-Responses: Every human response to threat falls on a continuum of activation. Begin to track what part of their brain a child is reacting from.

Self-Awareness

  • Our Relationship to Our Emotions: Explore your inner world by examining your own relationship to your emotions, and how this affects how you show up with your students.
  • Our Window of Tolerance: Learn Dr. Dan Siegel’s concept of the Window of Tolerance, and identify where yours is throughout the school day.
  • It’s Not Personal: Learn about one of the biggest culprits in adult dysregulation at school—taking things personally—and how to set up a healthy internal boundary system.
  • Challenging the Pathology: Examine common pathologies that are taught or picked up about children’s behavior, and begin to see them through an adaptive lens.

Skills

  • Unconditional Positive Regard: Listen to the philosophy of humanistic psychologist, Dr. Carl Rogers, and how this mindset can support you in your TIC practice.
  • Relational Interventions: Safety isn’t automatic, nor is it passive—it’s built. Learn how building safety through micro-moments actively rewires nervous systems for trust.
  • Barriers to Engagement: Explore how every student’s relational history builds invisible pathways—or roadblocks—to connection, and how to navigate them skillfully.
  • De-Escalation: Adopt and utilize these simple and applicable non-verbal physical shifts that staff can use at any time to de-escalate a situation with a student, colleague, or parent.
  • Rupture & Repair: When humans rupture (because they will!), learn how cleaning up your side of the street contributes to building safety, trust, and respect with students.
  • Sequence of Engagement: Discover the neurobiological order of operations for effective repair and problem-resolution.
  • The “Help Me, Help You” Engagement Strategy: Learn the step-by-step process for intervening on difficult or disruptive behavior in this in-depth workshop recording.

Extras!

  • Acing ACEs Training: Learn how childhood adversity rewires brains and bodies—and why this science is non-negotiable for trauma-informed educators.
  • The Fidget Formula: A powerful PDF that walks you through over 25 neuro-friendly tools and techniques (i.e., “fidgets”) that actively support regulation in the classroom.
  • Social Stories Training: Master the art of Social Stories—a proven tool to help students (or entire classes) navigate and process confusing or overwhelming situations with clarity and confidence.

Key Facts

  • Average Length of Lessons: 7-15 minutes each
  • Worksheets & Audio: Included in every lesson
  • Asynchronous: Available anytime, anywhere
  • Certificates of Completion: Available upon request

Are you ready to learn more about Trauma Care Basics for your staff? Sign up for a Discovery Call now!

Sign Up Now!