Free Autism Training for Educators

Stop Firefighting: Proactive Strategies for Teaching Autistic Children

Duration: 35 minutes

Meet Una and Pascal

Meet Una. Frequent biting, hitting, scratching. A team she doesn’t feel confident leading. Planning, paperwork, and dysregulated children all competing for the same hour. She goes to bed most nights thinking she’s failed.

Meet Pascal. Same level of need in his class. Fewer incidents, not because the children are different, but because the day is built differently — communication, sensory needs and emotional regulation are supported before things escalate, not after. When something does happen, the whole team already knows what to do.

Same job. Same demands. Completely different days.

The difference isn’t luck, and it isn’t a personality type. It’s knowledge, strategy, and a proactive plan the whole team is working from.

What you'll learn

In this free training, you'll get practical, evidence-based strategies you can start using immediately:

✔ Why reactive strategies — time out, removing a favourite activity — rarely work for autistic children, and what to put in their place
✔ How to personalise support across the three key areas of need: communication, sensory processing, and thinking & understanding
✔ The iceberg model — how to read what’s underneath behaviour that’s labelled “challenging,” instead of just responding to the surface
✔ How to tell whether a visual or personalised support is actually meaningful to a child, not just well-intentioned
✔ The real difference between proactive and reactive strategies, and why getting the proactive side right is what changes outcomes
✔ How to build a support plan your whole team can follow with confidence — so everyone knows exactly what to do, in the moment, without you

Who this is for

Teachers, educators and teaching assistants supporting autistic or neurodivergent children — in mainstream or specialist settings, whatever your current level of experience or training.

About your host

Steph is an autism & SEND specialist teacher and school consultant with 20 years experience in special needs education, including six years in school leadership. She consults on autism and SEND provision in schools internationally and leads the training platform Autism for Teachers. She’s also dyslexic and has ADHD — her own experience of education is part of why this work matters to her.