Gillian Hanna is a dynamic, engaging and informative presenter with over 15 years of experience developing and presenting training courses and seminars to schools and corporate clients. Seminars and courses currently include:
STOP IT!!! Understanding and Responding to Challenging Behaviours in School: Support, Interventions and Strategies
The STOP IT!!! workshop has been developed to support teaching staff to meet the diverse needs of their students and to limit the incidence and impact of challenging behaviours in the classroom.
The workshop aims to:
Provide a theoretical understanding of the causes and triggers of challenging behaviours
Provide research-based classroom strategies that focus on preventative practice
Provide research-based interventions that limit the impact of challenging behaviours in the classroom
Provide a Behaviour Support Plan framework to assist in supporting behaviourally challenging students at school
Allow Q&A time to discuss specific behavioural challenges
The Anxiety of Autism: Supports, Strategies and Interventions for Assisting Anxious ASD Students at School
Teachers and aides often have students with an Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) in their classrooms who appear anxious throughout their school day. These students can have such intense anxiety that it can disrupt the entire classroom or even a whole school assembly. No teacher, parent or student wants to experience those anxious moments. Teachers would always rather see their students having successful, meaningful and fun experiences at school and want to provide their students with an ASD the proper supports. The barriers to learning and social interaction that anxiety can create suggest that effective anxiety-related interventions and supports are crucial tools for those working with children who have and ASD, and for the children themselves.
This seminar aims to explore the nature, causes and impact of anxiety on students with an ASD. The seminar also aims to provide helpful and practical anxiety management support strategies and interventions to assist anxious ASD students as they navigate their way through school.
Deliberately Defiant? The Impact of Trauma on Learning and Behaviour in the Classroom: Managing Complex Needs at School
We’ve all experienced difficult students in the classroom. Students who constantly disrupt the class, become verbally and physically aggressive for little reason, hide under tables and chairs in the classroom, fly into behavioural outbursts with little warning, and who do not engage with learning. These students can be exceptionally difficult to manage; they are not your ‘average’ behaviour support cases and they present significant challenges to schools.
This seminar explores the impact of trauma on the developing brain, how trauma affects learning in the classroom, and examines why children who have experienced trauma behave the way they do. The seminar also examines why our ‘usual’ or ‘traditional’ behaviour management systems have little impact on these children’s behaviours (and can even sometimes make things worse). Helpful behaviour support approaches, strategies and resources will also be provided and discussed, with a focus on managing primary school aged children.
Mental Health Matters: The Impact of Mental Health Issues on Student Engagement and Wellbeing at School: Supporting Students to Remain Engaged and Participate at School
The metal health of students affects all aspects of the school community. Mentally healthy students are more likely to engage and achieve at school, connect with peers and teachers, and contribute to a positive school community. Schools that promote a positive environment attract and retain more students, build a strong community reputation, and lay the groundwork for academic achievement.
Student mental health is a key foundation for school success.
The Mental Health Matters seminar provides an introduction to mental health in adolescents, discusses the signs and symptoms of metal health issues, and provides a practical, step-by-step process to allow teachers to address mental health concerns in students. The seminar also aims to explore educational implications of mental health issues and discusses class and whole-school adjustments that may facilitate positive mental health
Behind Closed Doors: Supporting Students Who Self-Harm: Strategies, Safety Planning and School Response
The number of adolescents and young people engaging in the typically secretive behaviour of self-harm is growing. Supporting students who rely on self-harm to cope with difficulties such as mental health issues, family concerns, abuse and stress is becoming an increasingly difficult task faced by schools. This seminar aims to demystify the behaviour, identify some of the reasons why it occurs, discuss onset and prevalence, and outline some of the warning signs that may indicate a student is self-harming. The seminar also aims to explore strategies designed to minimize the need for self-injury and offers a school response protocol when supporting students who self-harm.
Dealing With People You Can’t Stand: Listening to and Managing Difficult Personalities To Create Positive Outcomes
In a perfect world, everyone we meet would be nice, polite, cooperative, understanding and flexible. Unfortunately, we don’t live in a perfect world. Some people drive us crazy and we, perhaps, may drive a few mad as well! Those we dislike are inconsiderate, irritating, malign our character, and question our motives.
This workshop explores different, difficult, communication styles and helps us to consider how to make the most out of interacting with the people we can’t stand. The workshop aims to provide useful strategies for listening to and coping with people who we struggle to engage with and provides a framework for boundary setting and self-management in the face of confrontation.
The workshop can be tailored to school and corporate clients.
In the corporate arena, the workshop focuses on interactions between management and staff, interactions between staff members, and interactions between staff and clients.
In school communities, the workshop focuses on interactions between school personnel and parents, interactions between principal class and teaching staff, and interactions between teachers.
Fractured Straws
Look at a straw in a glass of water and it immediately appears fractured. But it only looks that way because our brain interprets the image through distortion. When we determine who we are through our distortions we are tempted to believe that we are right and others are wrong, that we don’t need help, or that we are as stupid, ugly, worthless and unlovable as we fear. Self-awareness is the key to identifying and challenging distorted thinking. This presentation outlines how cognitive distortions develop, how we can identify our own cognitive distortions, and provides insight into how to develop the self-awareness we need to accept who we are and become who we want to be.