Events
July 2023
NNSTOY Conference 2023, Louisville, KY
Turning the Tide--How Sensational Awareness Can Help Heal a Nation in Trauma
Susan will be presenting a 1 hour breakout session with California State Teachers of the Year Nichi Avina and Sovey Long-Latteri on July 14, 2023 in Louisville.
As a united force, teachers can turn the tide on our nation's mental health crisis. Through simple classroom exercises, based on the Community Resiliency Model of Elaine Miller Karas, teachers and their students can create safe communities that mitigate the effects of ACES (Adverse Childhood Experiences), developmental trauma, and the ever-pervasive toxic and chronic stress lingering in our schools and communities since the COVID-19 Pandemic. The educational practices covered in this keynote will give teachers hope and empower them with strategies that will bring back the joy of learning in community with their colleagues and students.
April 2020
Community Resiliency Model—Family Resiliency Program
8 hour webinar with Elaine Miller-Karas and Susan Reedy
The Community Resiliency Model (CRM)® Family Resiliency Program (CFRP) webinar series is a four-module online parenting program which will help you learn the skills of the Community Resiliency Model. CFRP is designed to share simple tools you can learn to help yourself and your child during times of stress.
For purchase through Trauma Resource Institute
February 16-18, 2020
Attachment and Trauma Network: Trauma Sensitive Schools Conference
Atlanta, Georgia
Susan will be presenting Community Resiliency Model: Developing Resiliency in the Classroom with Inez Tiger, Director of Wellness at The Rabbi Jacob Pressman Academy
The Community Resiliency Model® (CRM) is a skills-based, stabilization program that helps faculty, staff, and parents learn to re-set the balance of their own nervous system after a challenging or traumatic event so they can effectively support the children within their wider social network. CRM’s goal is to help to create “trauma-informed” and “resiliency-focused” communities that share a common understanding of the impact of trauma and chronic stress on the nervous system and how resiliency can be restored or increased using this skills-based approach.
One of the fundamental goals of CRM is to help individuals learn how to read their nervous systems in order to notice sensations associated with nervous system activation (i.e. "high zone" or "low zone" responses.) By focusing on the natural biological responses to trauma, one is able to move from the idea of a traumatic response as a sign of "mental weakness" and see it as a normal physiological response to threatening circumstances. Learning the language of sensation allows children and adults to access the felt-sense of their experiences--that includes both the mind and the bod--and provides them with the opportunity to bring the body back into a regulated state from the bottom up. This approach is particularly helpful when top-down approaches involving cognitive functioning are not accessible due to a traumatic response.
In this workshop, participants will not only learn the 6 wellness skills of the CRM but will be provided with the opportunity to experience the more pleasant and neutral sensations associated with the wellness skills. Participants will also get an overview of how trauma impacts the body and the nervous system and explore how to use the wellness skills in classrooms and at home as a means to shift children out of fight-or-flight reactions into more regulated and engaged states. By building the skills of tracking, resourcing and grounding, children (and adults) begin to understand their previously overwhelming or frightening body responses as normal, biological responses to stressors and not as “mental health” conditions and feel more confident in their ability to bring their nervous system back into balance and engage whole-heartedly in the world.
April 9-10, 2018
California Foster Youth Summit
Susan will be presenting The Community Resiliency Model with Edwin Weaver, Executive Director, Fighting Back Santa Maria Valley
In the movie, Resilience (2016), Dr. Nadine Burke-Harris states that children coming into preschool with an ACE (Adverse Childhood Experience) score of 4 or more were 32 times more likely to have a behavioral problem or learning disability. We have developed The Community Resiliency Model ™ to help combat those issues. CRM’s goal is to help create “trauma-informed” and “resiliency-informed” individuals and communities that share a common understanding of the impact of trauma and chronic stress and how resiliency can be restored or increased using this skills-based approach. We will discuss their partnership with school districts and how that has allowed them to provide training for school counselors, teachers, substitute care providers and foster youth in the CRM Skills. You will receive information on a free App where you can finish you CRM training and practice the skills for self-care or use it to teach others.
October 14, 2017
41st California Annual Foster Parent Training Conference
Susan will be teaching a 1 1/2 hour Community Resiliency Model Skills class for foster parents
“After a traumatic experience, survivors often experience a cascade of physical, emotion, cognitive, behavioral, and spiritual responses that leave them feeling unbalanced and threatened. This hour-and-a-half presentation will focus on resilience to trauma through the teaching of key concepts of neurobiology and education about stress/trauma, which serve as a foundation for learning the wellness skills of the Community Resiliency Model® (CRM). The session will begin with an explanation of how adverse experiences affect the brain and body, and then will discuss neuroplasticity – the brain’s natural ability to reorganize itself through the formation of new neural connections. It will then transition to an overview of the six wellness skills that make up CRM. While the presentation will touch on these skills in relation to youth, the focus will be on using skills for self-care. Q&A to follow.”
Great Wolf Lodge
12681 Harbor Blvd
Garden Grove, CA
