EMPOWERMENT
WORKSHOPS
Giving you the confidence to build safe spaces for grief, connection, and belonging.
Interested in bringing this to your classroom or school?
Email smosher@campkita.com for pricing.
Empowerment Workshops for Educators
You care deeply about your students. You see them on their best days, and their hardest ones. But after a loss in the school community, even the most seasoned educator can find themselves wondering:
What do I say? What if I say the wrong thing? How can I help?
The Empowerment Workshops for Educators, created by The Kita Center, were designed with these moments in mind. In the aftermath of loss—whether through death, displacement, or disruption—students often turn to the adults they trust most: their teachers. While educators are not therapists, their steady, familiar, and compassionate presence can become one of the most powerful sources of healing.
This workshop is about learning how to sit beside grief, listen to what it needs, and create environments where students feel seen, heard, and valued.
You can access the Educator Empowerment Workshop materials in three ways:
WHAT TO EXPECT
Empowerment Workshops for Educators provide trauma-informed, developmentally responsive tools to help school professionals support grieving students—not by solving grief, but by cultivating dignity, emotional safety, and authentic connection in everyday classroom life. Designed for real-world educators, this series centers belonging, resilience, and sustainability—for students and staff alike.
While this workshop is not exclusively focused on suicide loss—as many of The Kita Center’s programs are—it thoughtfully incorporates heart-centered postvention strategies throughout. Because suicide postvention is suicide prevention.
Only when grief is seen, acknowledged, and honored can school communities begin to heal, and open their minds to learning again.
WHAT YOU'LL LEARN
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Understanding Grief in the School Setting
Recognizing the diverse forms of grief, how they manifest across developmental stages, and how grief impacts the classroom environment.
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Belonging Work in the Wake of Loss
Strengthening peer relationships, classroom connection, and community rituals that nurture belonging after loss.
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Dignity-Centered Communication
Practical strategies for validating emotions, honoring autonomy, and fostering emotional trust through everyday communication.
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Empathetic Listening & Non-Verbal Communication
Deepening presence and attunement to student grief through active listening and non-verbal support practices.
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Creating Brave and Safe Spaces
Building environments where students feel emotionally safe to experience, express, and move through grief within a connected community.
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Self-Care & Emotional Boundaries for Educators
Building emotional resilience, recognizing compassion fatigue, and setting healthy boundaries to support sustainable, relational care.
PROGRAM OVERVIEW
Who This Workshop Is For:
This workshop is designed for teachers, school staff, and school counselors who want to deepen their understanding of grief and strengthen their ability to support students navigating loss.
Throughout the lessons, we explore a wide range of grief experiences—including death-related grief, ambiguous loss, collective grief, identity-related grief, and heart-centered postvention after a suicide loss. We also recognize that supporting grieving students begins with supporting yourself.
Our Core Commitments:
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Grief is not a problem to be solved. It is a reality to be honored.
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Belonging and dignity are not luxuries. They are foundations for healing.
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Educators deserve support too. Sustainable care starts with caring for ourselves.
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Small, intentional acts of presence shape long-term healing.
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Participants will receive a certificate of attendance outlining session objectives and instructional hours. Please confirm with your licensing board or supervisor if these hours are eligible for CE/PD credit.
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Interested in bringing this to your classroom or school?
Email smosher@campkita.com for pricing.
About the Workshop Developer
Steven Karaiskos, PhD
Educator & Bereavement Specialist
With over 23 years in education, Steven Karaiskos, PhD is a seasoned educator and expert in emotional well-being and grief support. He began his career as a kindergarten teacher and has since supported learners of all ages—from early childhood through adult education—while helping schools worldwide build compassionate, emotionally safe learning environments.
Today, Dr. Karaiskos facilitates grief support groups for teens and young adults through The Kita Center and other bereavement organizations. A suicide loss survivor himself, he has experienced grief himself and brings both personal insight and professional expertise to this work.
His approach blends classroom-informed perspective with trauma-aware, dignity-centered strategies to support grieving students and the educators who care for them.
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