Course Description:
Today’s classrooms are beautifully diverse — and beautifully complex. Students arrive with a wide range of learning profiles, nervous system needs, lived experiences, and strengths. Creating a classroom where all students feel safe, connected, and regulated isn’t just a “nice extra” — it’s the foundation for meaningful academic engagement.
In this course, we’ll explore the real-world obstacles that can get in the way of building that kind of environment — from misunderstood behavior to regulation challenges to systems-level stress. Through the lenses of trauma and neurodiversity, we’ll unpack common behavioral presentations and reframe them as communication rather than defiance.
Most importantly, we’ll move beyond theory. Together, we’ll examine practical, classroom-wide design strategies that increase predictability, connection, autonomy, and access for all learners. Participants will leave with concrete tools, mindset shifts, and immediately usable supports that can transform both classroom climate and student outcomes.
Audience
All Pre K – Grade 12 Educators
About the Instructor
Julie B. Cullen, LICSW, Ed.M. is a therapist, educator, and lifelong student of how kids’ brains, and school classrooms, actually work
She earned her Bachelor’s degree in Psychology from the University of Vermont and went on to receive both her Master of Social Work and Master of Special Education from Boston University. Her early clinical career began in residential treatment, where she received intensive training in Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) and developmental trauma treatment. She served as both clinician and Clinical Director at this agency, before transitioning into therapeutic public school work.
In 2012, Julie opened her private practice and continues to work closely with children, adolescents, and families. She also provides integrated behavioral health services at Bedford Pediatrics in Bedford, MA, partnering with pediatric providers to support the whole child.
As a course instructor, Julie blends neuroscience, real-world case examples, and just enough humor to make complex concepts feel accessible and immediately usable. She is especially passionate
about helping educators and clinicians understand executive function, regulation, trauma, and neurodiversity through a strengths-based lens. Participants leave her sessions with practical tools they can use the very next day — and a refreshed perspective on the students (and children) in their lives.
Julie believes that when we understand behavior through the lens of stress and skill development, everything changes — including outcomes.