Education: Tina obtained her Bachelors of degree in Social Work from the University of Kansas in 1998 and her Master’s degree in Social Work from the University of Michigan in 1999.

Tina states that her focus and training has been with children and trauma, school-based mental health services and crisis response.  She has studied and attended trainings with Dr. Bruce Perry, Daniel Hughes, EMDR, CISD and multiple play therapy conferences.  She has also completed Level 1 Theraplay training, Level 1 Conscious Discipline Institute training and multiple trainings for Social Thinking.

Experience: Tina has experience working as a school social worker, community outpatient therapist, in-home family therapist, adjunct faculty at the University of Kansas (MSW) and served as a board member for the Kansas Association for Play Therapy.

Tina has 19 years of experience as a school social worker in general education and special education settings.  Tina has also provided therapy services through her private practice for the past two years.  She began her early career working with children in domestic violence.  She also worked as a therapist in community mental health and foster care in the Kansas City area for 3 years.  For the past 10 years, her work has focused on creating trauma sensitive environments within the school and with parents using Conscious Discipline and Theraplay, as well as supporting students with social cognitive challenges at school and at home.   Her approach to supervision is to incorporate the use of play therapy for experiential learning, self-awareness as a clinician and critical thinking within the process of supervision.  She hopes to help clinicians create questions to guide their practice and explore for themselves what they need most to help their clients and grow their knowledge base.  She believes the supervisory relationship is based on trust, guidance, challenge and comfort with the supervision process.