A Synergetic Approach to Education

Overview

A Synergetic Approach to Education (SAE) is a 23-hour program for school-based and clinical mental health professionals who want to apply Synergetic Play Therapy principles within school settings. The program focuses on bringing a clinical lens into collaboration with educators—without defaulting to quick solutions or losing depth.

SAE addresses a common challenge in school-based work: the tension between clinical understanding and educational systems that require immediate action. Participants learn how to stay grounded in their clinical thinking while working within these realities—making intentional decisions about how to engage, communicate, and collaborate in moments that matter.

What You’ll Learn

This program builds participants’ capacity to

• Embody Synergetic Play Therapy principles within complex school-based situations—working with discernment rather than defaulting to urgency, answers, or quick fixes
• Make moment-to-moment decisions about how to engage in ways that are responsive to educators’ roles, context, and constraints
• Translate clinical understanding into school-based practice through language, timing, and actionsthat bridge the tension between clinical insight and educational realities
• Use clinical skills to support collaboration and shared problem-solving without directing, prescribing, or positioning yourself as the expert
• Create conditions for insight and change to emerge through relationship, allowing new understanding and options to develop organically
• Help educators recognize underlying patterns driving behavior, including the connection between neurophysiological states and classroom dynamics
• Support educators in preparing brains and bodies for learning, using both top-down and bottom-up approaches in practical, usable ways
• Model and support regulation in classroom environments in ways that benefit both students and educators without adding additional burden
• Work with barriers and challenges through curiosity, helping shift stuck patterns without reinforcing resistance or urgency

How the Program Progresses

Class 1 – Who Are You in the Lives of Educators?

Class 2 – The Neurobiology of Behavior from an Educational Lens

Class 3 – The Process of Developing Self-Regulation: Adding the Missing Elements

Class 4 – Brain-Aligned Strategies and Practical Neuroscience

Class 5 – Developmental Mindsets Paradigm

Class 6 – Creating Regulatory Environments from a Multi-Tiered Lens

Class 7 – Obstacles and Perceived Adult Challenges

Class 8 – Obstacles and Perceived Student Challenges

Class 9 – Moving Through Perceived Challenges

Class 10 – Shifting Paradigms: Utilizing a Regulatory-Focused Approach

Class 11 – Our Role in Shifting Perception

Class 12 – Tying it All Together

What Does This Have to Do With SPT?

This program is grounded in Synergetic Play Therapy principles because SAE builds from a clinical framework, not an educational one. The way you understand behavior, regulation, and relationship in SPT is what allows you to engage in school-based work without defaulting to surface-level solutions.

SAE does not reteach SPT. Instead, it assumes that foundation and focuses on what it looks like to carry that lens into collaboration with educators—where different expectations, timelines, and pressures are at play.

Program Prerequisite:

This program requires that you have taken a Level 1 Introduction to Synergetic Play Therapy® program. This includes the completion of one of the following:

• Online or In-Person Introduction to Synergetic Play Therapy® program
• Six-Day Synergetic Play Therapy® Intensive Training (no longer offered)
• Synergetic Play Therapy® Supplemental Course (no longer offered)

If you have not yet completed one of the above programs, you can meet the prerequisite by taking the Fundamentals Course through the Synergetic Education Institute.*

*The Fundamentals Course has been created specifically for individuals who wish to take SAE but have not yet completed a Level 1 Introduction to Synergetic Play Therapy® program. This course will take you through key Synergetic Play Therapy® principles, creating a foundation on which to build.

Please note: This course has been pared down to focus on specific concepts to prepare students for A Synergetic Approach to Education, and, therefore, is not a full replacement for the Level 1 Introduction to Synergetic Play Therapy® program.  Should your goal be to apply for the Synergetic Play Therapy Certification program, you must complete the entire Introduction program.

Who This Program Is For

SAE is for those looking for a clinically focused pathway forward in your work with schools. If your work is grounded in mental health practice and you are seeking discipline-specific integration rather than wanting strictly an educator focus, this program is for you. If you do want to focus on an educator lens we have another program, Evolution of a Synergetic Educator, that meets those needs.

SAE focuses on working meaningfully within the realities of schools; supporting anyone with a mental health lens — school counselors, psychologists, social workers, or those doing clinical work — wanting to apply therapeutic principles in collaborative school-based work.