About
Samantha Teeboon — behavior specialist, educator, and advocate for the adults too.
For over 15 years, Samantha has supported children, staff, and families across educational settings — from early childhood classrooms to school-aged programs and youth-serving organizations.
Background
Education & focus
Bachelor of Arts
Child Psychology
A foundation in how children develop, regulate, and communicate — and what they need from the adults around them to do all three.
Master of Science
Industrial-Organizational Psychology
Concentrations in workplace wellness, burnout prevention, human behavior, and organizational development — the science behind how teams stay steady.
The book
Move First. The thesis behind the work.
Samantha is the author of Move First: Why Your Brain Will Never Feel Ready — a memoir and behavioral science guide built on the idea that action creates emotion, not the other way around. The nervous system follows the body. Movement comes first; feeling catches up.
That thesis is the spine of Compass. It's why we coach a dysregulated four-year-old through a body-based reset before words, why we train staff to take one micro-action instead of waiting to feel ready, and why organizational burnout breaks when teams start moving — not when they hold one more meeting about it.
William James. Bandura. Fogg. McGonigal. Same science. Different scales — the child, the staff member, the whole organization.
Move First · Samantha Teeboon · 2025
Philosophy
Behavior, staff, and systems — supported together.
Through Compass Behavior Support, Samantha works with daycares, schools, and youth-serving organizations to help teams create calmer, more consistent environments. Her approach pairs practical behavior strategies with the staff support and relationship-based systems that make those strategies sustainable.
The result isn't a binder of policies — it's a team that feels equipped, a culture that holds, and kids who get to be kids in environments built to hold them.