FocusedKids, a local nonprofit dedicated to teaching social emotional skills to youth, will hold its second annual Fall Fling Fundraiser on Nov. 7 in Carbondale. 

The fundraiser features dinner, drinks, a photobooth, music by local musician Dan Sheridan, a live auction and a paddle raise from 5:30-8 p.m. at Old Thompson Barn, 333 River Valley Ranch Road. Tickets are $50. 

FocusedKids partners with schools from Aspen to Parachute, bringing lessons about the brain and self-regulation to preschool, elementary and occasionally middle-school aged students.

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Amanda Petersen, FocusedKids executive director, was a first grade teacher at Basalt Elementary School for over 15 years and saw a growing need for children to improve self-regulation skills in the classroom. 

“There really began to be this shift in the cultures of classrooms where there was just a lot more dysregulation, parents were starting to become more stressed tied to immigration status and job security and the things that tie us to the stressors of this valley,” Petersen said. “It became really clear to me that my kids weren’t going to be able to learn and be successful academically and be able to show up for each other…if they didn’t have the ability to self-regulate.” 

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Petersen used the FocusedKids program, which was piloted in 2012 by local child and family therapist Kathy Hegberg, in her classroom, before joining the team as executive director in 2017. 

“Being able to support teachers and help them feel better about their job and have tools and resources to be a better teacher and be able to take better care of themselves has definitely been a highlight for me,” Petersen said.

FocusedKids first hosts a two to three hour training session with school staff before teaching three 30-minute lessons, one each week, to children in the classroom. Trainers then return to the schools for monthly follow-up lessons for around one to three years. 

The nonprofit also offers a monthly virtual professional development class for teachers and trains school-based clinicians at the Aspen Hope Center. 

“They’re learning about their brain. They’re learning new tools every week, new mindful practices like mindful coloring, breathing, mindful movement,” Petersen said. “After the end of those three weeks, they’ve really got a great foundation for the teacher and the classroom to start to make some shifts to have a more calm and connected classroom.”

Over 2,000 students every school year learn about breathing, brain breaks and other self-regulation techniques through FocusedKids, according to Petersen. The nonprofit is currently working in 10 schools up and down the Roaring Fork and Colorado River valleys. 

“It works, and it works pretty immediately,” Petersen said. “Teachers really see instantly a shift in the energy in their classrooms, a calmer energy, a more focused energy. All kids want to learn and do their best, but they just don’t have the tools.”

FocusedKids utilizes a fee-based system — schools pay all or a portion of what the program costs, subsidized with donations and grants. 

“We never turn away a school, but we do ask for some kind of financial commitment,” Petersen said. “We also found that the schools that are financially committed, there’s more buy in from the administrators, and that buy in from the administrators helps keep the programming consistent and thriving in the school as well.”

Petersen hopes that with more funding, FocusedKids can provide program refreshers for schools the nonprofit no longer works with. 

“Part of our goal is to serve as many youth and families in our valley as we can, so we have purposefully not gone out of the valley,” Petersen said. “We really want to focus our work in the valley, and there’s always more work to do.”

The upcoming Fall Fling is the nonprofit’s only fundraising event. 

“(The fundraiser) is an opportunity to hear about or learn about an organization having a large impact on the youth and family mental health crisis that we’re experiencing right now,” Petersen said. “To see the impact of a local organization and how they have a proactive, preventative approach to helping kids before they get into crisis, and helping them with everyday coping skills and strategies. It’s a super fun event with great people from the community.”