Your Nervous System Is Your Best Classroom Management Tool: A Regulation Guide for Teachers
Your nervous system is the classroom's nervous system. That's the central idea of this episode — and the reason Amanda Werner saved the classroom for last in this...
Co-Regulation for Real Families: What Works, What Doesn’t, and What I Learned the Hard Way
You can't co-regulate with someone if you're dysregulated yourself. That's the single most important thing Amanda Werner has learned from years of parenting a...
I’m a Meditation Teacher Who Still Eats Doritos When She’s Stressed: Nervous System Regulation for Real Life
You can't regulate a classroom from a dysregulated nervous system. And you can't regulate a nervous system you don't understand. In Part 1 of a three-part series on the...
I Moved to Uruguay: A Teacher’s Honest First Month as an American Expat
What happens when an American teacher who spent many years teaching English Language Development (ELD) students becomes an immigrant herself? In this deeply personal...
How Parent-Blaming and Compliance-Based Interventions Shaped Autism History
If Part 1 of this series was about what was lost in autism history, Part 2 is about what replaced it — and the damage it caused. In this episode of the Empower Students...
How a Broader Understanding of Autism Was Deliberately Buried
Why do so many misconceptions about autism still persist in our schools — even as we know more about autism than ever before? The answer is buried in history. In Part 1...
Consequences Are Just Punishments With a New Name: A Different Approach to Student Behavior
What if the next time a student lies, sneaks, or breaks a rule, instead of reaching for a consequence, you reached for a conversation? In this episode of the Empower...
Self-Acceptance for Teachers: A Meditation Teacher’s Honest Guide to Surviving End-of-Year Chaos
What happens when a meditation teacher stops meditating — and decides that's okay? In this deeply personal episode of the Empower Students Now podcast, host Amanda...
An Autistic Teacher Explains the Neurodiversity Movement (And Why It Matters for Your Students)
What is neurodiversity — and why should teachers care? In this episode of the Empower Students Now podcast, host Amanda Warner — a certified meditation teacher, 16-year...
Paradoxical AuDHD: A Poem About Contradictions, Overwhelm, and Self Understanding
On the Empower Students Now podcast, host Amanda Werner shares that she pursued an autism diagnosis at 43 after years of researching autism following her child’s 2021...
Why Diagnosis Matters: My Adhd and Autism Journey as a Parent and Teacher
Host Amanda Werner shares why she is discussing her family’s diagnostic journey, describing years of feeling overwhelmed and not understanding why daily life felt so...
Rethinking “Defiance”: When Students are Drowning, Not Disobeying
Host Amanda Werner discusses how schools often misinterpret student “defiance” as willful disobedience when it may reflect nervous system distress, trauma responses,...
How to Teach Collaborative Problem Solving Skills
In this episode of the Empower Students Now podcast, host Amanda Werner dives into the essential skill of collaborative problem solving. This episode is part of a...
What Made Me Suspect I’m Autistic: A Teacher’s Adult Diagnosis Story and Classroom Takeaways
Amanda Werner hosts an off-the-cuff episode of the Empower Students Now podcast about what led her to suspect she was autistic and eventually seek a formal adult autism...
Teaching Emotional Regulation to Students
Amanda continues her Empower Students Now series with short classroom slideshow lessons available via email sign-up here by focusing on emotional regulation. She...