Name

Teaching, Smarter Not Harder:  Supporting Today’s Youth Through Intentional Learning Environment Design

Audience

All  Educators

Presenter Name(s)

Ryan Sherman, DBH

Presenter Bio(s)

Ryan Sherman, DBH, is a behavioral health clinician, researcher, and district wellness leader with over 15 years of experience supporting the mental health of children, adolescents, and families. He currently serves as the Director of Wellness for Medway Public Schools in Massachusetts, where he leads all district-wide mental health, social-emotional learning, and family engagement initiatives. In this role, he designed one of the most comprehensive school-based mental health frameworks in the state and works daily with teachers, administrators, students, and families to address the real-world developmental challenges facing youth today.

In addition to his clinical and district leadership roles, Dr. Sherman serves as a senior professor and researcher in social-emotional learning at Bay Path University. His teaching and research focus on skill development, resilience, family engagement, school mental health systems, and the environmental factors shaping modern childhood. He is the co-author of The Fourth Tier: Modernizing MTSS for Student Mental Health, published by Bloomsbury.

Description

Today’s students are entering classrooms with gaps in social, emotional, and self-regulation skills that directly affect learning, behavior, and engagement. These gaps reflect broader shifts in childhood environments, including increased device exposure, reduced unstructured play, and shifting family dynamics. 

This course helps teachers reframe classroom challenges through a skill-development lens and provides practical, teacher-controlled strategies for designing learning environments that support today’s learners, without adding new programs or workload.

Participants have the option of taking this as a (1) credit course or (2) credit course. 

One Credit Course (5 Modules)

One Credit Course (5 Modules)

Module 1: Understanding How Environmental Factors Have Shaped Today’s Learner

Module 2: Understanding the Environmentally Generated Skill Gaps

Module 3: Identifying Skill Gaps That Manifest as Classroom Behavior

Module 4: Identifying Classroom Structures for Supporting Student Skill Gaps 

Module 5: Identifying Instructional Approaches for Supporting Student Skill Gaps

Two Credit Course (10 Modules)

Module 1: Understanding Today’s Learner

Module 2: Wired for Disruption: The Impact of Technology on Youth Development

Module 3: The Effects of an Engineered Childhood

Module 4: Environmentally Generated Skill Gaps

Module 5: Skill Gaps that Manifest as Classroom Behavior

Module 6: Classrooms and Instructional Approaches that Support Self-Regulation

Module 7: Rebuilding Attention and Executive Functioning

Module 8: Teaching Social Awareness and Collaboration

Module 9: Building Resilience and Independence 

Module 10: Synthesis and Classroom Action Plan

Synchronous / Asynchronous

Asynchronous

Location

Online 

Dates & Times

June 15 – August 15, 2026

Approximately 12.5 hours – 30 hours asynchronously online

PDPs

12.5 PDPs or 25 PDPs

Credit

Pending approval, participants can choose to apply for (1) credit or (2) credits for an additional fee of $75 or $150, respectively to Bay Path University

Cost

$275 ACCEPT members;  $325 non-members for (1) credit course

$500 ACCEPT members;  $600 non-members for (2) credit course

Registration Deadline

Rolling Admission