School staff are faced with the challenge of meeting both the emotional and social needs of all students. This can be a challenge with typical learners but it can be more difficult with those students who have mental health issues or have experienced trauma. These students present as difficult to engage and display problematic behaviour such as anger and low tolerance to frustration. These behaviours get in the way of teaching and leaning and can cause a great deal of irritation for both students and teachers. What many people do not understand is that when a student has a disruptive life style or has experienced trauma he or she spends much of their day in the primal brain. This fight, flight or freeze mode limits their capacity to learn. The outwardly aggressive behaviours they displace disrupt the classroom, requiring time and attention. When a student gets to this point, no matter how much time is invested in behaviour incentives for good behaviour, traditional behavioural approaches to classroom management and the punitive approach is simply not effective.

The Compassionate classrooms approach is a workshop for educators to understand and learn strategies in prevention or reduction of challenging behaviour, improve learning outcomes and increase student engagement.