Workshops and presentations

• Keynotes
• Keynotes and workshops (1½–3 hours)
• Full-day workshops

Praise from participants
Barbara’s speaking schedule

Barbara Kaiser is giving presentations about challenging behavior all over the world. You can invite her to your conference, school, or center.

Keynote Descriptions

Where Is the Fairy Dust?
If you’re like most of us, you feel frustrated and defeated when confronted with a child with challenging behaviors. The daily struggles sap your energy and joy in teaching. You worry that you’re failing not only that child and his family but the rest of the children in your group as well. Early intervention is key when it comes to children with challenging behavior. The adults who spend many hours a day with them can make a difference in their lives. Designed to help parents, teachers, and caregivers who are working first hand with children with challenging behavior, this keynote address uses an anecdotal approach to identify practical and effective ideas and strategies drawn from research in many fields to prevent and address this behavior.

Opening the Culture Door
Everyone has a culture and our culture is the framework for our lives. Children naturally develop the characteristics that their own culture values. They begin to construct their identity—to understand who they are—from understanding their own culture and by responding to how others see and relate to them. Sometimes a cultural conflict, visible or invisible, causes or contributes to challenging behavior. Maybe behavior that is inappropriate in the child-care setting or school is acceptable—or even desirable—at home. This keynote explores how understanding the impact of cultural influences on both the educator and the child can improve a teacher’s ability to prevent and respond to challenging behavior.

That’s Not Fair!
Making it work: Helping teachers to create an environment that supports all children sometimes means that you have to make it work for that one child you wish could be absent just once in a while. This keynote examines how teachers’ attitudes, biases, and assumptions often impact their effectiveness and influence their response when working with children with challenging behavior. When a teacher creates an environment that enables all children—especially a child with challenging behavior—to succeed, everyone benefits.

Beyond Survival: Building Your Resilience
We may not be able to control everything that is happening in the classroom, but we can control how we respond. When challenging behavior occurs, teachers need to be powerfully present, emotionally responsive, and role models of healthy social and emotional behavior. Personal resilience is the capacity to prevent, tolerate, overcome, and learn from adverse events and experiences. When we lose control of ourselves, our response to a child’s inappropriate behavior can make things worse. Strengthening resilience allows us to moderate our feelings, thoughts, and behaviors, enables us to respond effectively to challenges, and encourages us to develop new skills. Rather than focusing on managing stress, focusing on fostering resilience can be more productive.

back to top

Keynote and workshop descriptions (1½–3 hours)

When you recognize that a child’s challenging behavior is rooted in biological and environmental factors and not a desire to ruin your day, it becomes possible for you to figure out what the child needs to learn in order to succeed. This workshop will help you understand why a child behaves in a particular way and make it much easier to meet those needs and effectively manage inappropriate behavior using evidence-based prevention strategies.

Prevention Is the Best Intervention
Challenging behavior can be prevented when teachers understand its causes and create a responsive learning environment, program, and social climate. This workshop applies research to practice, investigates biological and environmental risk factors and the role of the brain, and helps teachers to redefine the concept of fairness.

“Nothing I Do Works!” Understanding, Preventing, and Responding Effectively to Challenging Behavior
This workshop is designed to help people who are working with children with challenging behaviors by bridging the gap between research and practice. Teachers often feel unable to help a child with challenging behaviors to develop the skills necessary to succeed, and as a result they may not be able to provide a safe setting for the other children in their classroom. This workshop brings together information and skills drawn from neuroscience, psychology, psychiatry, special education, and social-emotional skills programs. It presents the basic facts about challenging behavior and describes strategies for preventing it, addressing it effectively, and teaching alternative appropriate behaviors.

Opening the Culture Door
Everyone has a culture and our culture is the framework for our lives. Children naturally develop the characteristics that their own culture values. They begin to construct their identity—to understand who they are—from understanding their own culture and by responding to how others see and relate to them. Sometimes a cultural conflict, visible or invisible, causes or contributes to challenging behavior. Maybe behavior that is inappropriate in the child-care setting or school is acceptable—or even desirable—at home. This workshop explores how understanding the impact of cultural influences on both the educator and the child can improve a teacher’s ability to prevent and respond to challenging behavior.

Time-Out for Time-Out!
This workshop explores alternatives to time-out and the effects of punishment. It examines the use of natural and logical consequences, and provides an overview of Functional Assessment and Positive Behavior Support, important tools that enable early childhood educators to help children with challenging behavior learn appropriate ways to express their needs.

Beyond Survival: Building Your Resilience
We may not be able to control everything that is happening in the classroom, but we can control how we respond. When challenging behavior occurs, teachers need to be powerfully present, emotionally responsive, and role models of healthy social and emotional behavior. Personal resilience is the capacity to prevent, tolerate, overcome, and learn from adverse events and experiences. When we lose control of ourselves, our response to a child’s inappropriate behavior can make things worse. Strengthening resilience allows us to moderate our feelings, thoughts, and behaviors, enables us to respond effectively to challenges, and encourages us to develop new skills. Rather than focusing on managing stress, focusing on fostering resilience can be more productive.

Bullying Behavior: What You Need to Know and What You Can Do about It
What is bullying? Why do kids bully? Who are the children who engage in bullying behavior? Who are the targets of bullying behavior? What is the role of the bystanders? Bullying happens everywhere, whether the school or the classroom is large or small, urban or rural. This session highlights research and best practices in defining, preventing, and intervening when bullying behavior occurs. It will help educators understand the importance of creating a safe and caring environment, explore the difference between bullying and other forms of challenging behavior, and help them to develop the skills to intervene effectively when bullying occurs.

Parents as Partners
Talking to parents about their child’s challenging behavior can be one of a teacher’s most difficult jobs. This workshop provides lots of tips for connecting with parents and creating a team approach to challenging behavior.

Challenging Behavior: The Director’s Role
The principal or director of a school or child-care center is an advocate for the children, the staff, and the school. In this interactive workshop, participants will look at issues related to the director’s role in supporting staff and working with families when there are children with challenging behavior in the classroom.

Can’t Help Loving Them, but … Why Is My Child Behaving This Way?
A Parent Workshop (a workshop/keynote for parents of children with challenging behavior)
One of the most difficult jobs parents face is disciplining their children, especially when they exhibit challenging behavior. Challenging behaviors can occur at home, in child care, in school, or all three. They usually occur regularly rather than once in a while and can make any parent feel inadequate and alone. There are always reasons for a child’s challenging behavior, but it may be difficult to figure them out. They are rarely the result of bad parenting and never because a child is just “bad.” This workshop will help parents to understand their child and themselves and teach ways to prevent and respond to their child’s challenging behaviors more effectively.

Differentiated Instruction
Children feel competent and are able to succeed when the learning environment meets their physical, cognitive, emotional, and social needs. A child with challenging behavior dares you to examine your teaching style and program. If you can meet a child’s needs before challenging behavior becomes necessary, you will enhance his self-esteem and allow him to begin to think of himself as a person who is capable of success. Differentiated instruction means starting where the kids are rather than adopting a standardized approach that presumes that all learners of a given age or grade are essentially alike. This workshop helps teachers learn how to plan varied approaches to what students need to learn, how they will learn it, and how they can express what they have learned.

WEVAS: Working Effectively with Violent and Aggressive States (3-hour workshop)
This workshop presents an overview of the WEVAS strategy that enables teachers to identify their role in a child’s challenging behavior and learn ways to help a child to de-escalate that behavior and successfully rejoin the group.

Building Positive Connections
Your connection with a child is the most powerful tool you have as a teacher. In a safe, caring relationship with an adult, a child finds a secure base for exploring the world. He learns to value himself and believe in his own personal power. He discovers that he can influence the people around him and that they will help him fulfill his needs. With a sensitive, responsive adult as a guide and model, he can learn to understand and regulate his own feelings and he can learn to care about other people, see things from their perspective, and understand their feelings, too.

When problem behavior enters the picture, this crucial relationship may falter. The behavior gets in the way, blocking your view of the child and making it a challenge to establish a positive connection. How you relate to the child depends on what you see when you look at the child—and what you see depends on who you are. Whether you’re aware of it or not, everything about your teaching—how you approach and respond to the children, set up your room, choose and present activities, even your knowledge of child development and theory—filters through the prism of your own emotions, family background, education, temperament, beliefs, values, and culture.

The Importance of Social Emotional Learning
Social and emotional skills provide a foundation for safe and positive learning, and enhance children’s ability to succeed in school, careers, and life.

There is no doubt children learn social and emotional skills simply by being in a group, but they learn much more when you teach these skills intentionally and proactively. The preschool years are the optimal time to begin. Experts in the field have found that in addition to helping children make friends and get along with others, social and emotional skills enable them to improve achievement by an average of 11 percentile points.

In the long run, greater social and emotional competence can increase the likelihood of high school graduation, readiness for postsecondary education, career success, positive family and work relationships, better mental health, reduced criminal behavior, and engaged citizenship. Just imagine the jump start we can give today’s children if we begin focusing on their social emotional competence when they are young. The bottom line is that we can no longer deny or ignore the importance of intentionally teaching all children social emotional skills. It is the foundation for creating a safe and caring environment and later becomes the foundation for children to make better decisions, form friendships and most of all feel good about themselves. Great teachers do more than promote the academic learning of their students, they teach the WHOLE CHILD.

back to top

Full-day workshop descriptions

Nothing I Do Works! How Can I Understand, Prevent, and Respond Effectively to Children’s Challenging Behavior?
Have you ever continued to respond in the same way to a child’s challenging behavior even though you knew your approach wasn’t working? Many of us keep doing something that doesn’t feel right or have the desired outcome because we don’t know what else to do. But you can respond effectively to a child’s challenging behavior when you have the appropriate knowledge, strategies, and skills.

When you understand yourself, know which behaviors push your buttons, and recognize that a child’s challenging behavior is rooted in biological and environmental factors and not a desire to ruin your day, you are in a much better position to respond effectively. By bridging the gap between research and practice and bringing together information drawn from neuroscience, psychology, and special education, this workshop will help you understand why a child behaves in a particular way, how to figure out what he or she needs, and how to use evidence-based, proven-effective strategies to meet those needs and manage inappropriate behavior effectively.

Where Is the Fairy Dust? Supporting Teachers When There Is a Child with Challenging Behavior in Their Group
Dealing with difficult behavior is often the number-one concern of teachers of children of all ages. This workshop, which presents the basic facts about challenging behavior and describes strategies for preventing it, addressing it effectively, and teaching alternative appropriate behaviors, is designed to help administrators and others who work with teachers who have children with challenging behaviors in their class.

Teachers often feel unable to help a child with challenging behavior develop the skills necessary to succeed, and as a result they may not be able to provide a safe setting for the other children in their classroom. By bridging the gap between research and practice and bringing together information and skills drawn from neuroscience, psychology, psychiatry, special education and social and emotional skills programs, this interactive workshop will use discussion to look at the director’s, administrator’s, or principal’s role in supporting staff and working with families when there are children with challenging behavior in a school or center.

Opening the Culture Door
Everyone has a culture and our culture is the framework for our lives. Children naturally develop the characteristics that their own culture values. They begin to construct their identity—to understand who they are—from understanding their own culture and by responding to how others see and relate to them. Sometimes a cultural conflict, visible or invisible, causes or contributes to challenging behavior. Maybe behavior that is inappropriate in the child-care setting or school is acceptable—or even desirable—at home. This workshop explores how understanding the impact of cultural influences on both the educator and the child can improve a teacher’s ability to prevent and respond to challenging behavior.

Positive Behavior Support/Functional Assessment
Functional Assessment and Positive Behavior Support are important tools that enable early childhood educators to help children with challenging behavior learn appropriate ways to express their needs. The premise of Functional Assessment is that every challenging behavior can be thought of as a child's solution to a problem and a form of communication. This workshop will help educators learn how to use Functional Assessments to understand where the behavior is coming from, why it is happening at a particular time in a particular place, the logic behind it, the function (or purpose) it serves for the child, how it can be prevented, and what replacement skills the child needs to learn in order to meet his or her needs appropriately. Even if the behavior is unacceptable, the function seldom is.

Bullying in Early Childhood: What You Need to Know and What You Can Do about It
What is bullying? Why do kids bully? Who are the children who engage in bullying behavior? Who are the targets of bullying behavior? What is the role of the bystanders? Bullying happens everywhere, whether the school or the classroom is large or small, urban or rural. This session highlights research and best practices in defining, preventing, and intervening when bullying behavior occurs. It will help educators understand the importance of creating a safe and caring environment, explore the difference between bullying and other forms of challenging behavior, and help them to develop the skills to intervene effectively when bullying occurs.

WEVAS: Working Effectively with Violent and Aggressive States (1- or 2-day workshop)
Even to the most experienced child-care teacher, it sometimes seems as if challenging behavior comes out of nowhere. But according to the WEVAS intervention, children usually present warning signs. If you can recognize them and intervene early enough, you can prevent challenging behavior and help children return to a competent state where their minds, bodies, and emotions are functioning well and geared up for learning. No matter which state they’re in, children need support and guidance to return to the competent state. The WEVAS strategy helps child-care educators to provide this support and guidance by recognizing exactly where the child is at, seeing things from his perspective, understanding how their own reactions contribute to the child’s behavior, and matching their response to the child’s needs.

back to top

Participants rave about Barbara’s presentations!

“After your workshop I came back to a dozen or more left messages—parents, providers, early ed. college staff, all sharing their thanks for being able to attend the best conference ever! You truly were an inspiration to all who were in attendance. I must honestly say, I’ve been here 24 years, and this is the best response on any event we’ve sponsored. The dialogue among our educators and providers is being shared throughout the community. Barbara, you made quite an impact.” —Wendy Hood, Child Care Resource & Referral, Plumas Rural Services, Quincy, CA

“We were thinking about you yesterday as we prepare to share our workshop notes with our colleagues. I have to tell you how much I loved your workshop and the ideas I took from it. I am using it at home a lot with my own children. We are certainly trying hard to implement it in our classes, too, and I already see some positive changes in the general class behavior. I do not have an ‘Andrew’ this year so I won’t need everything, but it certainly helped me set a different tone in my class. Thanks again for all the tips.” —Julie, Singapore American School, Singapore

“This workshop opened my eyes to things I can do differently. Barbara is great! I loved her enthusiasm. There were lots of opportunities for discussion and exchange of ideas." —Preschool Teacher, Richardson, TX

“Learning about Functional Assessment and Positive Behavior Support using an actual case study was very practical and useful." —Childcare Educator, Baltimore, MD

“Finally, a workshop where I learned some strategies that are useful and realistic. I plan to use them with two of the children in my classroom." —Pre-K Teacher, Baton Rouge, LA

“I have found the WEVAS system invaluable this year working with special needs four-year-olds. It significantly changed the behavior of the child I was working with, after more traditional methods (sending him home, time-out, talking to him) did not work at all.”

“Barbara packed the day with insights about young children and useful strategies for the classroom teacher … we were energized.”

“Barbara’s workshop is not only practical, but full of her own personal experiences.”

“Virtually everyone learned practical strategies they couldn’t wait to try!”

“We were thrilled with the day! Barbara challenged teachers to rethink their classroom management practices and apply new ideas.”

back to top

Where is Barbara going?
Barbara’s speaking schedule

back to top