Create a Safe, Connected, Ready-to-Learn Classroom.
Nervous Systems in the Classroom: practical polyvagal tools for all students. A six-module course on why students escalate, shut down, and melt down, and exactly what to do about it, taught by Dr. Michael Taylor, who learned these tools the hard way in special education behavioral settings.
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The Need: You Cannot Teach a Dysregulated Brain
Every educator knows the moment: the demand was small, the reaction was enormous, and nothing you said helped. This course explains why. A student's nervous system reads safety and threat automatically, long before thinking gets a vote, and a student sliding down the ladder from safe-and-connected into fight, flight, or shutdown cannot access learning, reasoning, or your consequences.
Dr. Taylor's course gives you the map and the tools: the polyvagal ladder for reading what state a student is in, co-regulation for lending your calm when they've lost theirs, somatic grounding for anchoring a panicking student in the present, predictable transitions that stop meltdowns before they start, and repair that turns the worst moments into stronger relationships. The most important pivot comes first: it starts with the adult. Your regulated nervous system is the tool every other tool depends on.
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ENROLL NOWMeet your session instructor,
Dr. Michael Taylor
Dr. Michael Taylor, Special Education Director of the Bryant School District in Arkansas, brings a background in training and counseling to the hardest settings in education. His perspective was forged in special education behavioral classrooms, facing everything from verbal abuse to physical outbursts, where he discovered that the most impactful pivot of his career was the simplest: regulating himself first, and asking what a student's behavior was communicating instead of taking it personally. In this course he translates polyvagal theory into tools any educator can use the same day, told through the real classroom stories that shaped them.
Is This Course Right for Me?
- Are you a special education teacher serving students with emotional or behavioral needs?
- Are you a general educator with a student whose outbursts derail the whole room?
- Are you a paraprofessional on the front line of escalations every day?
- Are you a counselor, social worker, OT, or related service provider supporting regulation goals?
- Are you an administrator rethinking a discipline system that isn't changing behavior?
- Are you a parent living the after-school meltdowns at home?
Then this course is for YOU!
What Will You Learn in Nervous Systems in the Classroom?
You will learn how to:
- Understand the polyvagal ladder: the ventral (safe and connected), sympathetic (fight or flight), and dorsal (shutdown) states, and how to read where a student is
- Understand neuroception: how nervous systems detect safety and threat before thinking begins
- Regulate yourself first, and use your own calm as an external regulatory system for a dysregulated student
- Implement co-regulation in real moments: proximity, pacing, minimal language, and patience measured in minutes
- Use somatic grounding to anchor a panicking student through their senses
- Design low-stimulation environments that stop assaulting sensitive nervous systems
- Build predictable, rhythmic transitions using first/then structure and clear visuals
- Lead repair and reconnection after ruptures, the step traditional discipline skips and the one that changes behavior long-term
Everything in this course is practical, classroom tested, and designed to support real world special education teaching.
Enroll today to regulate your classroom!
Who is NASET?
The National Association of Special Education Teachers (NASET) is the leading professional organization dedicated exclusively to supporting special education teachers across the United States.
Committed to advancing excellence in the field, NASET promotes high professional standards, ongoing development, and advocacy to ensure that children with special needs receive the best education possible.
Founded by and for educators, NASET provides a trusted platform for research, resources, and recognition in special education.