08/27/2026
Oh my gosh — what an absolute BLAST it was to be back in front of the CUPE staff at St. Albert Public Schools!
The energy, enthusiasm, laughter, questions and genuine hunger to learn made this morning so much fun.
We spent our time digging into the escalation stages of the brain and really shifting the focus away from “What do we do when a student is already in Red?” toward the much more powerful question:
“What can we do in Green and Yellow so they don’t NEED to get to Red?”
Because that’s where so much of the work lives.
GREEN is where we build relationships, stretch skills, teach strategies, practise regulation and create capacity.
YELLOW is where we notice the shift, get curious, reduce the load, support regulation and help students use those skills while their thinking brain is still available.
By the time we are deep into RED, the brain has essentially been hijacked by survival. That isn’t the time for teaching, reasoning, consequences or lengthy conversations.
And PBS isn’t only about understanding the student’s brain state.
Where are WE?
Are we Green and regulated enough to support this student?
Or have we moved into our own Yellow or Orange — feeling triggered, defensive, frustrated or needing to regain control?
Because our regulation walks into the interaction before any strategy does.
I am SO excited to work alongside some of these awesome-sauce EAs this year and help bring PBS alive in their classrooms — not as another program or binder sitting on a shelf, but as a way of understanding behaviour, building relationships and changing how we respond to kids AND one another.
One of my absolute favourite parts of this work has always been watching someone have that little “AHA!” moment — when something suddenly makes sense and they realize that changing one small piece of what they do can create a really BIG difference for a student.
All those little changes create waves of change.
Thank you, St. Albert Public Schools, for welcoming me back, for the laughter, the participation and for being willing to learn, reflect and stretch.
I LOVE this work, and I cannot wait to see where it takes me this year!
Want to learn more?
If your school, organization or team is interested in bringing an Infinite Resources Inc. presentation to your staff — specifically Reading the Room Before It’s Red — please send me a DM or email me at [email protected]. I’d love to chat about bringing this learning to your team.
And for those who attended today’s session, if you would like copies of any of the resources connected to the presentation, please feel free to email me at my St. Albert Public Schools account, and I’ll happily share them with you.