6th Annual RC SELPA Mental Health Symposium: Mental Health Matters

In this session, you will learn some of the Best Practices in Team Building. This session will clarify the differences between Team Bonding, Team Building, and Team Development, teach the value of using Experiential Check-ins, establish the role leaders should play in Team Building, provide guidance and team-building resources, and set a standard for how groups can debrief a session. This session is ideal for leaders who want to get people talking and connecting more deeply. Our time will be interactive, and participants will walk away with clear action items that they can implement with their groups.

This session is highly interactive and models the same self-regulation strategies participants can use with students and clients. Attendees will engage with short video clips and familiar media examples embedded throughout the presentation to prompt discussion, reflection, and real-time skill practice and will allow participants to experience regulation strategies firsthand. Hands-on activities, storytelling and case examples are woven throughout to connect concepts to real classroom and clinical scenarios. Participants will leave having practiced multiple techniques they can immediately implement in educational, therapeutic, and family-based settings.

See how Banning USD used SETH, a district-specific AI support system, to empower leaders, strengthen staff wellness, and build inclusive, resilient school communities. Explore strategies for fostering belonging, reducing administrative burden, and ensuring consistent, equitable support for students with disabilities, ultimately helping leaders create confident teams, sustainable systems, and a culture where every staff member and student thrives.

Participants will leave with actionable ideas to implement systems that support staff wellness, enhance belonging, and improve equity in student services. Leaders will learn how real-time, district-aligned guidance and intentional stakeholder engagement can strengthen team confidence, streamline procedures, and foster inclusive, resilient school cultures ready to sustain high-quality practices long-term.

In this engaging and inspirational keynote, Kyle Greene will deliver his signature message, Serve the Best Lemonade, focusing on the importance of seeing and tapping into the potential of every student. Using a dynamic, live lemonade-making demonstration, he will illustrate how meaningful connections, and genuine relationships can help students overcome adversity, unlock their greatness, and find true success in and out of the classroom. This keynote is designed to empower and inspire educators, administrators, and school leaders to transform school culture and foster student achievement.

Key Objectives:

1. Recognize and Harness Potential: Equip educators with strategies to identify and nurture the hidden potential within every student, advancing growth and confidence.
2. Build Authentic Relationships: Highlight the power of authentic connections in creating supportive learning environments that inspire engagement and academic success.
3. Build Good Student Equity: Show educators how to build good student equity within their students, leading to better classroom management, increased student engagement and success, and a positive classroom culture and climate.

Students often arrive at school carrying emotional stress. Their nervous systems are shaped by overwhelm, trauma, and uncertainty. In response, educators and counselors frequently focus on helping students regulate emotions enough to return to class. While these strategies are important, they may not fully address the underlying emotional experience students are navigating.

This presentation explores the difference between coping, regulation, and true emotional processing. Participants will learn how unfinished emotional responses can remain in the body and contribute to ongoing dysregulation. Through reflection, discussion, and practical examples, attendees will explore how presence, body awareness, and relational safety can help students move toward emotional completion and return to a more regulated and connected state.

In today’s educational and mental health systems, professionals are often tasked with addressing complex student needs—but without a clear distinction between mental health and behavioral health, interventions can become misaligned, inefficient, and less impactful.

This dynamic and practical session breaks down the critical differences between mental health and behavioral health, helping participants **work smarter—not harder—when supporting students, clients, and communities. The session provides a clear framework for identifying when challenges are rooted in emotional/psychological needs versus behavioral patterns, and how to respond with targeted, effective strategies.