Maureen Healy

Telling an upset student to "calm down" has a 0% success rate. However, showing them how to calm down by actively co-regulating with them yields profoundly positive outcomes. Moving a student from co-regulation to true independent self-regulation is complex, but with the right strategies, children can develop the self-awareness needed to make constructive choices.

As students advance through elementary, middle, and high school, their academic and social worlds become increasingly complicated — meaning our ability to support them needs to level up, too.

What Participants Will Learn:

• The Borrowed Calm Framework: Demystifying the neurobiology of stress and exploring practical calming tools for teachers, parents, and professionals.
• The First 30 Seconds: Crucial, immediate strategies to effectively respond to a highly emotional or overwhelmed student.
• De-escalation Over Confrontation: Proven techniques to defuse a meltdown or conflict without escalating power struggles.
• The Internal Anchor: How to help students build a lifelong "toolkit" of self-regulation strategies tailored to their specific age and needs with consideration of particular traits from perfectionism to worry, as examples.

In an era of rising burnout and complex classroom dynamics, a joyful school environment isn't a luxury—it’s the engine of academic achievement and educator retention.

This transformative keynote moves beyond basic "feel-good" platitudes to deliver a research-backed, highly practical framework filled with ideas and approaches that educators can implement immediately. Drawing on insights from positive psychology and modern educational leadership, this presentation shows how prioritizing joy directly sharpens cognitive performance, reduces anxiety, and reignites a passion for learning in both students and staff without adding to an already overwhelming plate.

Audiences leave inspired and equipped with actionable tools to transform their school culture from the inside out. Some takeaways include:

• Micro-practices for Joy: Walk away with concrete, practical micro- practices that require minimal prep time but yield an immediate, positive shift in classroom climate and staff morale. Technology discussed too.
• The Neuroscience of Joy: Discover how emotional well-being directly drives memory, problem-solving, and academic performance.
• Re-Energizing Classroom Engagement: Dynamic strategies to transform static lessons into curious, interactive learning experiences.
• Cultivating Authentic Belonging: Actionable ways leadership and staff can build a school culture where every student and educator feels valued.

Resilience is not as an innate trait a child has or doesn't have, but as a skill to be developed, through safe supported exposure to challenges.

• The "Action Mindset" over Rescue: Shifting from "lawnmower” tactics (clearing all obstacles) to becoming a supportive sounding board. Kids build resilience when they are allowed to navigate minor failures.
• The "Power of Yet" in Action: Practical ways to reframe academic or social setbacks. It teaches kids that frustration isn't a sign that they lack ability; it's a sign that their brain is actively growing.
• Strategies: Evidence based strategies that build (or repair) resiliency can help students (and adults) form a resilient mindset, as well as deploy tactics in the moment to persevere and bounce back from challenges.
• When Bouncing Back is Hard: Adults are given scripts and practices to help the persistently challenged student persevere, as well as decide when to seek additional support. Chronic stress and worry discussed.

Participants walk away with the latest research and most effective strategies to help students (and themselves) bounce back from challenges in the classroom, at home or in the community.

Children do not come off an assembly line, nor do they process the world in a single, predictable line. They learn in a myriad of ways—through movement, observation, deep immersion, trial and conversation. In today’s world, our core role as parents and educators is not to force every child into the exact same mold, but to serve as guides who help them discover the specific pathway that unlocks their potential.

In this engaging keynote, Maureen integrates cognitive neuroscience with the lived realities of today's neurodiverse children. By breaking down how the brain handles attention, focus, encoding, and retrieval, this presentation reveals why traditional, one-size-fits-all environments often fail non-linear thinkers and offers a clear framework for building environments where every child can thrive.

Some key highlights include:

• Pathway Finders: Why our primary responsibility is observing how a child naturally accesses information, shifting our role from managers of compliance to architects of opportunity.
• The Neuroscience of Learning: A clear, accessible breakdown of how the brain navigates Attention, Focus, Encoding, and Retrieval—and where the process breaks down when we ignore a child's natural processing style.
• Understanding Neurodiversity: How variances in executive function, sensory processing, and working memory impact learning entry points—and why these differences represent unique cognitive styles rather than inherent deficits.
• De-coupling Intelligence from Pace and Format: Practical wisdom on separating a child's true cognitive capability from arbitrary metrics like processing speed or single-format testing.
• Cultivating Sustained Focus in a Fragmented World: Actionable strategies to strengthen a child's attention span, reduce cognitive overload, and build durable pathways for long-term memory retrieval.

We are preparing students for jobs that do not yet exist, using technologies that haven't been invented, to solve problems we haven't even encountered. As generative AI, automation, and global interconnectedness rapidly redefine the workforce, the old-fashioned educational model is no longer sufficient.

In this keynote, Maureen cuts through the noise to deliver a practical roadmap for the future of K–12 education. Instead of looking at technology as a substitute for teaching or distraction, this session highlights how AI and emerging tools can be leveraged to personalize learning, automate administrative burdens, and free up educators to focus on what humans do best: mentorship, critical thinking, creativity, and empathy.

Participants will have a re-energized vision of educating for future success, and a meaningful life. Some key takeaways include:

• The AI-Augmented Classroom: How to integrate AI into instruction, assessment, and lesson planning while teaching critical thinking.
• Shift to Human Capabilities: Why "soft skills"—such as adaptability, emotional intelligence, collaboration, and complex problem-solving—are becoming the ultimate core subjects.
• Rethinking Assessment: Shifting towards portfolio-based, project-driven, and real-world mastery demonstrations versus primarily standard testing.
• Leadership: Concrete steps leaders can take today to future-proof their curriculum, infrastructure, and professional development. Understand meaningful trends and changes that will likely impact your students.

Understanding children’s emotional health and how to help children build emotional regulation and self-awareness is the focus of this program. Participants re-engage with SEL and receive advanced tools to nurture emotional health in themselves, as well as their students and families.

Audience takeaways:

• Clear definition of children’s emotional health.
• Receive the “7 Essential Lessons” of how emotions work, and a plethora of activities to use in K-8 classroom.
• Science-backed tools that helped children foster emotional intelligence even in the toughest of times. Self-reflection scripts shared too.
• Receive special training to build EQ in different populations, especially neurodivergent and special education students.

Invite Maureen to deepen your understanding on how to impart and nurture emotional and social intelligence with today’s students, especially in the age of AI, anxiety and distraction. No questions are off-limits, and Maureen engages with all participants.