Emotional self-regulation is the ability to control our own emotions, rather than our emotions being in control of our personal actions. Self-regulation can be tricky in many situations, especially when we're angry or upset, or feeling any other powerful emotion. Teaching students about emotional regulation is important because having the ability to understand and feel in control of our emotions improves our social interactions and our interactions with ourselves.
Our activity for today was to draw the emotions that we feel when we listen to certain types of music. For example, if we're listening to angry music, a student may choose a red crayon or marker and draw sharp lines, while happy music might result in the use of a yellow crayon or marker and soft, loopy lines. Following the activity, we had a discussion about how we should cope when dealing with certain emotions. For example, we talked about anger. We talked about what anger feels like, and both positive and negative ways to deal with anger. We talked about the importance of taking time to think about our reactions before we react, and the possibility of talking to someone about our emotions before we act. The aim of this lesson was to help students understand their emotions - what they're feeling and why they're feeling it - and how they can respond to periods of intense emotion. Students learnt the importance of discussing emotions and the importance of regulating emotions. The most important lesson students learned is that it is okay to feel any kind of emotion, but it is how we act on our emotions that we must be conscious about.
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Anxiety is a personal struggle of mine. Since I was a child, small things made me anxious. I was scared of the dark, being alone, and cried at the mention of a doctor or haircut. As I grew up, my anxiety and fears transformed. I was no longer scared of the dark, but instead, I was scared of failure. I was terrified of tests. I began having frequent panic attacks at the age of 16. The kind of panic where you can't breathe and you're not sure that you're going to make it through any of this alive. I am so grateful that I had access to the help I needed when I needed it, but in retrospect, I wish I had been educated about anxiety from an earlier age.
Teaching kids about anxiety isn't easy, but it's necessary, because every single child, at some point in their life, has experienced it. For this lesson, we focused on a discussion of what anxiety is, what it feels like, and how we can cope with it. In talking about how we can cope with anxiety, the conversation turned back to mindfulness. We talked about deep breathing, about reminding ourselves that anxiety can't actually hurt us, and about focusing on the present moment rather than the past or future. We talked about distracting ourselves with things like movies or books or video games. We talked about journalling or discussing our feelings with someone we trust, like a close friend. An idea I came up with after the fact is that we could have made a poster as a class detailing ways that we could cope with anxiety. I know that, to this day, there are still small moments in my day where I become anxious. I ask myself questions and obsess over them: are the students understanding any of this? Am I being a good role-model? Keeping a poster in the room with ways to cope with anxiety (both preventative measures and in the moment activities) would be useful not only for students, but for myself as a teacher as well. I encourage you to think about how you can use your own experiences to guide your instruction of your students. What are things you wish you had learned about in school? Pass these things onto your students. Sometimes, as adults, we forget that students, too, cope with daily stressors. Of course, stress does present itself differently in children than in adults. Stress, for children, comes in the form of various symptoms, many of which can be found at this website: https://medlineplus.gov/ency/article/002059.html. Some common symptoms found in children include mood swings, acting out and changes in sleeping patterns.
Over the past few weeks, I have noticed students colouring mandalas. I decided to take the opportunity to show students that colouring can actually be used as a method to cope with stress. The activity that we completed this week involved students colouring mandalas, and an open discussion about various ways that we can cope with stressors. We identified various stressors in our lives (not enough time, pressure from school, etc.) and answered the question: what do we do about these things? I found it interesting that many of the students shared the same sources of stress in their lives. From school to extracurriculars, pressure on students to perform well seems to be rising. After we completed our activity, I asked the students one key question: do you feel less stressed out? The answer was a resounding yes. I know that I personally turn to colouring when I'm feeling stressed or anxious. The number one thing that has guided me through these mental wellness lessons is my own experience with mental health and how I have grown through the act of becoming more mindful and aware of mental wellness. What is self-esteem? Self-esteem is having confidence in one's own abilities, strengths, and worth. This is something that we all struggle with, especially the students that we are teaching in middle school classrooms. The question arises of how we should address the need to build student self-esteem. What activities can we do that help students become aware of their abilities, strengths, and worth? In addition to specific activities, we can build it into our everyday lessons. We can focus on abilities and strengths when assessing student work while also acknowledging areas that students need to grow in. We can respond with positive reinforcement and feedback when students perform well in class activities. We can acknowledge student strengths, encourage a student's peers to acknowledge student strengths, and encourage students to acknowledge their own strengths and worth.
One activity that helps to build self-esteem is a gallery walk, in which each student writes their name on a piece of paper, and then students walk around the classroom writing positive comments on each person's paper. Some of the feedback that I received from students is that this activity made them feel good because they had the ability to compliment individuals that they might not talk to on a regular basis, that they could connect with someone other than their close friends. They loved giving compliments as much as they did receiving them. They found the importance in acknowledging the strengths, abilities and worth of other students and themselves. Following this activity, I encouraged students to keep their paper with them, whether in their locker or at home somewhere safe to review for whenever they feel like they're struggling with their self-esteem. We have to remember that as teachers, it's important to be confident in not only the strengths and abilities and worth of our students, but also our own strengths, abilities, and worth of self. We receive what we radiate. Building a positive community begins with us. When I asked my grade seven class what mindfulness is, I didn't expect an immediate answer, but after a couple of guesses, a hand went up, and a student provided a perfect example: "it's like when you're eating an apple and you focus on what the apple tastes like and the texture, stuff like that." My heart soared. That is exactly what mindfulness is.
I went on, keeping it short and simple, when I explained that mindfulness is being aware of our bodies and our senses and what's going on around us in the present moment. We then went through a guided imagery practice, followed by a discussion. Did that exercise relax you? Do you feel less stressed that you did before? The importance of teaching students mindfulness rests in the things we can avoid during our practice, such as anxiety. I asked the class, "what can we do when we start to feel anxious?" Despite having just learned what mindfulness is, many of them were surprised to realize that they have been practicing it without realizing. Listening to music, drawing and taking deep breaths were all answers that they supplied, and all of these practices are practices of mindfulness, of remaining in the present moment. So, how do we incorporate mindfulness in the classroom? My number one suggestion is to incorporate practices as brain breaks. Short, guided imagery practices, a few yoga poses, or even a breathing exercise are several ways to help students be mindful, and reduce potential stress and anxiety. Try mindfulness out in your classroom, and don't forget, the best way to teach a practice is to practice it yourself! As part of my final internship as a student teacher, I was asked to complete a professional inquiry project. There were plenty of ideas that ran through my head, but the idea of educating students about mental wellness kept nagging at me, so I decided to follow my heart and it led me here. The first lesson that I decided to teach students was about positive self-talk. The task was simple - choose a positive word to describe yourself, and write it down. They would then be displayed on a class bulletin board. At first, some students struggled. Other students jumped into it with enthusiasm. As students wrote and coloured, I wandered between desks, noticing the words they had written: happy, beautiful, leader, joyful. Human. And then I came across a student that had picked the word "annoying." I stopped. Annoying isn't a positive descriptor. When I set out on this journey, there was one primary goal in my mind: make a difference in one student's life. After a chat about positive self-talk, the student changed his word to unique and stayed in at lunch to finish the assignment. The goal was to introduce students to the idea of thinking positively about themselves. To use positive descriptors instead of focusing on the misconstrued negatives that they might have come to believe. And with the words displayed on the bulletin board, we are reminded daily of our strengths and positive characteristics. At the end of the day, I will know with confidence that at least one student will go home thinking that they are unique, instead of annoying. |
AuthorTaryn Rombough is an Education student at the University of Lethbridge in her final internship at Wilson Middle School. She is passionate about pumpkin spice lattes, teaching kids to love learning, and the pursuit of mental wellness for all. ArchivesCategories |