Emotional Well-being in the Classroom

Strategies to improve the emotional well-being of your students

So, we have really been into trying to improve the social and emotional well-being of our students this past year.  Schools can be an ideal place to support the social and emotional well being of students, and we can offer many opportunities to build resilience within our students. When students feel supported and understood, there are usually less discipline problems in classrooms, students can focus on their school work more readily, and students can begin to develop their communication skills. 

Using many of the strategies created by Dr. Daniel Siegel, author of The Whole Brain Child, and Mindsight, as well as, The Yes Brain, and Dr. Joan Rosenberg, author of 90 Seconds to a Life You Love, we have compiled our tried and true strategies and resources when supporting our students’ emotional needs. 

1. Name that feeling: When a student is having a rough time in class, pull them aside. Talk to them about their feelings and acknowledge their emotions. The act of naming an emotion and acknowledging it has a calming effect on students. They feel heard and understood. From there, you can move on to strategies that help to redirect behavior.

2. Strategies to Redirect Behavior- We often use many strategies based on Daniel Siegel’s best selling books to have open and honest conversations with our students. Often times, we are able to quickly connect and redirect unwanted behaviors and move on with our planned lessons. If you are interested in these strategies, we have compiled a list of our favorites for redirecting behavior quickly and effectively. These strategies are some of our go-to moves when it comes to dealing with conflict or behaviors in our classrooms. You can find them in our Teacher Pay Teacher Store.

3. Emotional Well-Being Talking Points- if you have not heard of Dr. Joan Rosenberg, stop everything and google her now. We are in love with her quick and effective strategy for living a life filled with positivity.

We love the ideas she shares in her book 90 Seconds to a Life You Love. Her really simple concepts have profound results. When your student is having a hard time in your class, allow the student to ride out those emotions for 90 seconds. This is sometimes not fun. Feeling frustrated, shame, anger, or embarrassment are never easy feelings to sit with. The purpose is to allow the student to actually feel the emotion, all of it, without pushing it away or trying to change the subject. By truly feeling those emotions now helps so that the student hopefully won’t have to relive them later when they think about the event or a few weeks later when they’re reminded of the memory. Once the student has had those 90 seconds to truly experience those feelings, they can now consider new possibilities for themselves. What positive thing do they want to accomplish in class today? How can recognizing, naming, and riding out the emotion help them to become more self aware and improve their emotional well being in class and in life?

That’s it, teacher friends…it is as simple as that! So, what are your go to methods for dealing with your students’ emotional well-being? We’d love to hear from you. Comment on our Instagram or find us on Twitter.

Until next time teacher friends,

Bottoms Up!