You Spoke and We Listened.

We’re excited to introduce our new…

Customizable Training Topics!

We’ve heard so much wonderful feedback about our trainings! We’re thrilled to now offer mix-and-match training topics as yet another way to make Spark trainings an experience that’s tailored to you and your unique team!

Let’s Get Started

“We love Spark Trainings!… My favorite part is how we’re able to customize trainings so they fit our needs.”

Angie O., Owner, Bright Beginnings Learning Center

What type of staff are you looking to train?

(click the button that best describes your team)

Best for experienced staff seeking advanced skills and fresh perspectives, and/or programs which are well-established or well-versed in Spark trainings.

Best for new or mixed experienced staff, and/or programs which are start-up, seasonal, or looking to establish a new culture.

Trainings designed specifically for program leaders who oversee other staff members and/or are responsible for program culture.

“The secret to getting ahead is getting started.”
— Mark Twain

Trainings for Entry Level Teams

Just as we believe all children are capable of success, so too do we believe all staff have the potential to grow into dedicated and reliable team members. To encourage this growth, Spark’s entry level trainings focus on the foundational building blocks of teamwork, communication, resilience, and empathy.

Step 1

To create your 2hr customized training…

  • Explore the training topics below

  • Identify one topic from each category that is most relevant to your team’s current needs.

    • Identify the messages for help that are often hidden within behavioral outbursts.

    • Respond to behaviors with person-first compassion and empathy.

    • Recognize the signs and signals of behavioral escalation in real time.

    • Improve self-awareness of how staff actions impact child behaviors.

    • Evaluate how the physical environment impacts a child’s emotional state.

    • Proactively adjust environmental factors to reduce interfering behaviors.

    • Normalize misbehavior as a child’s best in-the-moment attempt to apply coping skills.

    • Build empathy and approach behaviors with a professional and positive attitude.

    • Effectively reinforce the behaviors you want to see, while reducing reinforcement of those you don’t.

    • Identify the impact of “punishment” of interfering behaviors in behavioral terms.

    • Temper emotional responses to interfering behaviors, seeing the child first and behavior second.

    • Reframe behaviors opportunities to support a child’s growth and success.

    • Learn when an intentful pause is more beneficial that active attempts to deescalate a child.

    • Build staff resilience and patience when managing challenging behaviors.

    • Proactively identify triggers and signals of incoming interfering behaviors.

    • Improve awareness and problem solving in behavioral situations.

    • Confidently and calmly identify helpful actions support staff can take during escalating behaviors.

    • Identify and manage often overlooked objects and items which can quickly become unsafe.

Foundational Strategies & Skills

    • Promote a safe work environment and limit child accidents and injuries.

    • Maintain intentional engagement to encourage safe exploration and learning.

    • Apply non-intrusive and easy to learn behavior management skills.

    • Minimize escalation of interfering behaviors and improve team collaboration.

    • Improve awareness of how staff and children impact (and escalate) one another.

    • Take initiative and gain consistency by stepping outside this pattern.

    • Reevaluate and depersonalize the intent behind interfering behaviors.

    • Explore when defiant behavior may result from an inability to engage (vs simply being unwilling).

    • Evaluate and prioritize behavioral needs following critical action steps.

    • Maintain a wide-angle lens and awareness of the long-term goals of behavioral management.

    • Utilize a planful hierarchy of prompting strategies based on individual needs and abilities.

    • Reduce the frequency of verbal directions from staff while increasing direction following from children.

    • Differentiate between behaviors driven by emotion and those done with planful intent.

    • Adapt staff responses to best support children based on the purpose of their behaviors.

    • Build a team culture which emphasizes and prioritizes children’s strengths over their behaviors.

    • Redefine children’s weaknesses and struggles as areas of resiliency, passion, and creativity.

    • Identify the four functions of behavior - attention, escape, access, and automatic reinforcement.

    • Actively recognize and adapt interventions to best meet children’s in-the-moment needs.

Small Group Problem Solving

    • Improve awareness of staff body language and intentfully use body language as a supportive tool.

    • Personally experience the impact of active body language on our ability to engage.

    • Build cohesion and appreciation for the diverse set of skills each staff brings to the team.

    • Collaborate proactively to identify challenges and creatively solve problems that arise.

    • Effectively motivate and reinforce the behaviors staff hope to see in the children they work with.

    • Apply simple yet effective strategies to encourage behavioral growth and progress.

    • Reduce power struggles among staff as well as between staff and children.

    • Utilize strategies to support de-escalation of behaviors with minimal confrontation.

    • Teach skills and encourage progress in an effective step-wise process.

    • Improve team communication and awareness of individual needs.

    • Recognize both the visible and the more hidden causes of sensory overload for children.

    • Experience the impact of sensory overload on performance and apply strategies to create calmer environments.

    • Promote compassion and understanding for children with interfering behaviors.

    • Align staff with the children they serve, functioning as allies and resources for self-improvement.

    • Improve awareness of the impact of tone of voice - we imply more from tone than the words themselves!

    • Redefine our tone of voice to match a child’s understanding of emotion and meaning.

    • Explore and identify the behaviors or events which personally are challenging for staff.

    • Build teamwork and cohesion through awareness of and planful solutions to these identified triggers.

Interactive Learning Activity

When you’re ready…

  • Click the “I’m ready” button

  • Input your chosen topics in the form.

Step 2

“I am still learning.”
— Michelangelo (at age 87)

Trainings for Experienced Teams

Exceptional staff members emphasize self-improvement, seeking new ways to expand and modernize their knowledge and skills. Spark’s trainings for experienced teams resonate with this willingness to learn and ask questions, providing tools and approaches that amplify success.

Step 1

To create your 2hr customized training…

  • Explore the training topics below

  • Identify one topic from each category that is most relevant to your team’s current needs.

    • Recognize and avoid falling into often overlooked behavioral traps.

    • Improve self-awareness and staff’s ability to anticipate long-term results of their actions.

    • Instill a community culture where children actively support one another.

    • Recognize and reinforce small moments of success which are often overlooked.

    • Increase staff confidence, engagement, and creative thinking.

    • Improve future behavioral results by finding the growth among even the worst days.

    • Reduce escalating behaviors by intentfully adjusting your strategies.

    • Disengage confrontations of ego / power struggles between staff and children.

    • Identify routines and strategies which support individual’s unique needs.

    • Encourage a program culture where children normalize and support each other’s differences.

    • Reduce behavioral outbursts to “no” responses from staff.

    • Encourage children’s emotional growth through validation and collaboration.

Advanced Strategies & Skills

    • Redefine success when working with children as a goal we can reach even on the hardest days.

    • Increase comradery, compassion, perseverance, and ultimately retention of staff members.

    • Reduce behaviors in vehicles through proactive management strategies.

    • Improve safety with planful seating plans and body positioning.

    • Approach behaviors from a strengths-based mindset.

    • Redefine weaknesses and utilize children’s strengths to encourage self-sustaining behavioral solutions.

    • Understand why children may respond to new limits with increases in behavior.

    • Approach necessary limit-setting with confidence and preparedness.

    • Recognize communication of our needs as a life-long learning curve worth investing in.

    • Improve the clarity and frequency of children’s communication and staff’s ability to interpret these messages.

    • Successfully and safety return children to program after a behavioral incident.

    • Encourage person-first strategies based on validation and momentum building.

Small Group Problem Solving

    • Identify opportunities to leverage small moments of success into behavioral progress.

    • Reduce the severity, duration, and intensity of interfering behaviors.

    • Maintain unobtrusive and often “invisible” safety practices throughout your program.

    • Minimize physical injuries to staff and children, and minimize property damage due to unsafe behaviors.

    • Understand your team’s unique communication styles.

    • Improve consistency and clarity of communication between team members.

    • Redesign and/or reorganize the physical space your team works in to improve behavior management.

    • Identify locations which can be repurposed to best facilitate de-escalation of behaviors.

    • Provide adequate processing time for children, particularly during behavioral episodes.

    • Reduce the duration of behaviors and build rapport with children who are struggling.

    • Help staff find value within their specific and unique role in larger picture of your program/ organization.

    • Improve collaboration between staff and leadership.

Interactive Learning Activity

When you’re ready…

  • Click the button at the right

  • Input your chosen topics in the form.

Step 2

“Leadership and learning are indispensable to each other.”
— John F. Kennedy

Trainings for Program Leadership

Spark’s leadership topics are designed with the understanding that strong leaders have a dynamic understanding of a wide range of skillsets: relationship building, conflict management, critical thinking, employee motivation, innovation, adaptability, and many more.

Step 1

To create your 2hr customized training…

  • Explore the training topics below

  • Identify one topic from each category that is most relevant to your team’s current needs.

    • Identify the warning signs and impact of burnout, and vicarious trauma.

    • Apply accessible and effective management strategies and resources.

    • Redefine the relationship between your program staff and leadership.

    • Encourage collaboration, open communication, and empower professional growth.

    • Find the balance between being “too close” and “too distant”.

    • Effectively communicate professional boundaries to your staff.

    • Boost awareness of how stress impacts decision making.

    • Reduce reactive responses and act more intentfully when faced with workplace stress.

Leadership Strategies & Skills

Small Group Problem Solving

    • Utilize a behavioral pathway tool to identify where behaviors likely originate for the children you work with.

    • Identify high-probability strategies to support the staff working with these children.

    • Differentiate between staffs’ personal values and the values set by your organization.

    • Utilize effective strategies to support staff with value conflicts.

    • Respond to unexpected schedule changes, delays, or behaviors with confidence.

    • Implement strategies to return to routines smoothly and efficiently.

    • Adapt program rules and norms for safe and valuable community trips.

    • Maintain safety by defining clear roles and responsibilities for community settings.

Interactive Learning Activity

    • Create a program action plan which combines clear structure with flexible responses.

    • Build consistent language, expectations, and resources for leaders and the staff they support.

    • Build a novel set of program rules that are effective, relatable, and memorable for children.

    • Generate buy-in with the children in your programming, increasing instruction following.

    • Harness your staff’s existing intrinsic motivations by dispelling common motivational myths.

    • Apply creative and collaborative strategies to improve team cohesion.

    • Improve staff’s ability to learn and retain behavioral management skills from leadership.

    • Utilize a teaching and training approach emphasizing confidence building for staff.

When you’re ready…

  • Click the button at the right

  • Input your chosen topics in the form.

Step 2