The Whole Class Surfs Together: Creating a Shared Regulation Language for Your Room

In this session, occupational therapist and author Tracey DeMaria joins host Greg Santucci to talk about giving a whole classroom one shared language for regulation. Tracey is a school-based OT with nearly 30 years of experience, adjunct faculty at Moravian University, and the author of How to Surf the Waves: A Sensory and Emotional Regulation Curriculum.

She explains why sensory and emotional regulation are one nervous system rather than two professional territories, why the antecedent a teacher spots is usually the last straw rather than the cause, and why the calmest child is not always the most regulated. Together they walk through the ocean vocabulary of her curriculum, waves, surfboards, lifeguards, sharks, storms, and tsunamis, and why big waves are not bad. A large part of the conversation is implementation reality: how a school-based OT with a heavy caseload and no administrative authority gets a shared regulation language into a classroom, from being useful first to easing a wave check-in into morning circle.

Educators, school-based service providers, and parents will come away with a vocabulary kids want to use, body tools and brain tools that are person specific rather than one-size-fits-all, and a realistic playbook for getting in the door. Grounded in Tracey's clinical work and her own neurodivergent experience, this session is a practical, warm case for teaching body awareness, self-advocacy, and belonging instead of compliance.