Beyond the Surface: Using Play Therapy to Engage Teens (MS and HS ONLY)

The Office of the State Superintendent of Education (OSSE), in partnership with The Next Place Therapy Services are pleased to offer Beyond the Surface: Using Play Therapy to Engage Teens. This training is for middle and high school school-based clincians only!

Working with teens in play therapy requires creativity, flexibility, and attunement to identity development, autonomy, and emotional complexity. This interactive 1-day training equips clinicians with developmentally responsive play therapy strategies to effectively engage adolescents who may be guarded, resistant, or unsure about therapy.

Participants will explore how play therapy evolves across developmental stages and how expressive, experiential, and symbolic approaches can deepen emotional access and strengthen therapeutic connection with teens. The training integrates neuroscience, attachment, and identity development with culturally responsive practice.

This workshop is experiential and includes hands-on activities, case discussion, and directive and non-directive teen-friendly interventions.

During This Training, Participants Will:

• Explore developmental considerations specific to adolescents in play therapy.
• Examine resistance, disengagement, and relational ruptures through a play therapy lens.
• Participate in expressive and symbolic interventions designed specifically for teens.
• Practice adapting sandtray, art, games, and storytelling for adolescent clients.

Who should register:

• This training is ONLY available to school-based behavioral health providers (social workers, school psychologists, community-based organization clinicians, counselors, DBH school-based clincians) placed at DC public and public charter middle and high schools.
• Participants placed in a school will recieve a play therapy materials for their school as a part of their participation.
• Clinicans that work with elementary popluations should email [email protected] to be placed on a waitlist, and will be notified if there is additional space.

Registrants who are not eligible school-based providers will have their registrations canceled.

Know what’s Happening Next — before everyone else does.

Get App

Host or Publisher OSSE Healthy Schools and Wellness Programs Team