Regulating, Reflecting and Reframing: Trauma-Transforming Practice in Education (Level 2), Melnick, Spring 2026

Course Number:	EDU 5710
Instructor:	Dave Melnick, LICSW
Location:	Online
Dates and Times:	April 29 - August 02, 2026. Six online synchronous meetings totaling 25 hours. The remainder of the course takes place in an asynchronous, independent format.
Credits:	3 Graduate Credits
Tuition:	$1,920. Set by and payable to VT-HEC

Course Description

Schools have long served as hubs of learning, relationships, and civic life. Today, educators are doing this work under conditions of unprecedented complexity—shaped by chronic stress, racial reckonings, and sociocultural trauma. Many of the pedagogies, discipline practices, and belief systems still guiding schools were not designed for these realities—and too often intensify harm for both students and adults.

This advanced course invites educators to move from reactivity toward a more responsive and effective understanding of human behavior and school culture. Grounded in the developmental sciences, pro-equity work, and the lived realities of school communities, participants will examine not only what happens in classrooms and schools—but why—and how our own nervous systems, beliefs, and positional power shape daily practice.

The focus of this course is on trauma-transforming work and our collective responsibility to deepen our understanding of the stress response system (SRS) at individual, relational, and organizational levels. We will make a distinction between learning trauma-informed strategies and engaging in true culture change. Culture change embeds essential human capacities—such as humility, emotional literacy, cognitive agility, and tolerance for ambiguity—into how we teach, lead, and relate to one another. Participants will explore how school culture is produced through everyday interactions, language, policy, beliefs, and power dynamics, and how educators — regardless of role — can influence that culture through regulation, reflection, and reframing.

Transforming trauma is also deeply personal work. It requires not only a sustained commitment to the growth and well-being of students and families, but also a willingness to examine and expand our own capacity to change. 

Participants will strengthen three core capacities essential to trauma-transforming practice:

• Regulate: Strengthening individual and collective regulation by recognizing stress responses in ourselves, our students, and our systems—and practicing strategies that restore safety, predictability, dignity, and connection.
• Reflect: Advancing reflective practice as a professional responsibility by slowing down decision-making to examine implicit beliefs, narratives, and action patterns shaped by experience and context.
• Reframe: Developing reframing as both a mindset and a social justice practice, transforming meaning-making around behavior from blame and control toward curiosity and relationship. Reframing is treated not as a technique, but as a disciplined practice—rehearsed, modeled, and integrated into daily interactions.

Audience: All PK-12 educators, SU/school leaders, mental health professionals and support faculty with a bachelor’s degree who have prior learning in trauma and trauma-informed schools. Completion of any VT-HEC Level 1 graduate trauma course is highly recommended.

Throughout the course, participants will engage in shared readings, media, and reflective exercises to examine how dominant ideologies and power structures continue to shape educational spaces. By the end of the course, educators will be better equipped to function effectively under real-world conditions—contributing to learning environments that are equitable, responsive, and sustainable, where both students and adults are supported not just to cope, but to grow and thrive. 

Course Goals & Objectives

Will be posted in March.