In this post, I’d like to answer a really thoughtful and important question asked by Beth, a middle school science teacher in California. She commented that many students she works with have diagnoses of ADHD, anxiety or depression, but even beyond that, middle schoolers just experience a lot of emotions all day every day – boredom, excitement, fatigue, or highs or lows in reaction to finding out their crush thinks this or that about them. I think she said it beautifully when she said “I swim in a sea of emotions every day!”
Her question is this: From the front of the classroom, what statements are helpful for students with anxiety and ADHD to hear from their teachers?
First, to all of you educators out there, thank you for the work you’re doing! And Beth, the most important part of your question that tells me you’re already on the right track is the fact that you are noticing students’ emotions and recognizing them all as impactful and meaningful to the students. Truly, that is probably the most supportive thing you can do for students.
As far as other ways to support students with big emotions in a group setting, there are a few different resources and approaches that might be helpful.
One of my favorite approaches to supporting social-emotional development in schools is the RULER approach developed through Yale’s Center for Emotional Intelligence (https://www.ycei.org/ruler). Their acronym stands for the following, as posted here: (https://www.rulerapproach.org/about/what-is-ruler/)
R: Recognizing emotions in oneself and others
U: Understanding the causes and consequences of emotions
L: Labeling emotions with a nuanced vocabulary
E: Expressing emotions in accordance with cultural norms and social context
R: Regulating emotions with helpful strategies
The RULER approach is a comprehensive system that I strongly encourage schools to seek training for that provides teachers, staff, students and even students’ families with skills to support healthy emotional development. But in the meantime, let’s talk about ways you can implement now. This approach is bringing together existing and ongoing research about different ways to support kids’ emotional development into one program and it mirrors a similar process I use with kids and families in individual therapy.
The first step to managing emotions is to recognize them and be able to label them. One of the ways you can do this in a classroom setting is when you ask about their days or how everyone is doing, you might take 2-3 minutes to pause, let them know you heard them and help them use more specific words to describe their emotions.
For example, when you ask a teenager how they’re doing, they say either look at you blankly or may you get a “Fine.” Usually we accept that and keep moving. It’s a great start because it lets them know you care. But there are some things we can do to adjust our question to push them towards more specifics.
One option is to ask questions that help them identify specific experiences tied with labeled emotions.
For example, sometimes in my college classes or sessions with teens, I’ll ask “What are some of the exciting things people have had going on today?” “What are some of the biggest stressors floating around the room today?” “What’s been the most confusing part of your day yet?” Obviously you won’t have time for all students to answer, but many of them will reflect on it and you’re able to model some of those RULER qualities. Oftentimes you can follow up with your own answer to model those skills, adjusted to be developmentally/classroom appropriate. 🙂
Another option instead of just asking broadly how they’re doing is to do a survey of sorts. For example, you could have them use their hands to show “how much” of different feelings they’re experiencing in the moment (palm to palm meaning 0, stretching arms wide meaning a ridiculous amount). I use a script like this “Okay, I’m curious where you all are at this morning. With your hands, can you show me how much happy you’re experiencing? Okay, what about bored? Tired? Excited? Frustrated? Stressed?” Yes, I realize that’s not grammatically correct, but they roll with it.
Again, you won’t be able to respond to each student individually, but you could model your own responses at the same time. Take a few moments to scan the room and make eye contact with students in between. Even if you can’t respond to each of them individually, it’s a way to engage each of them, let them know you care about their specific emotions, and also give them practice 1) labeling emotions, 2) assessing/measuring their emotions, 3) recognizing how they can experience multiple emotions at once. Afterwards, you can make a comment that you appreciate them sharing with you and taking a minute to check in, you hope that they find a few more things to add to the happy or decrease the stress, and hopefully the thrilling lecture on techtonic plates will help!
Those are a couple ways that I sometimes open my classes or sessions as a brief check-in. It allows you to demonstrate that you recognize their emotional experience and also consider it meaningful and important. This is especially important in the culture in the US, where there is a pervasive assumption that “teenagers are just emotional” or “teenage problems are silly,” which tends to teens feel like their emotions are not important or correct, even though they don’t have the option of just not feeling them.
If there has been a specific difficult event affecting students and you’re looking for what to say in front of the classroom, work with your administration and school counseling system to determine potential approaches. But sometimes if there has been something I know multiple students are affected by, I’ll start out the class with a direct question about it “So it’s been really hard to hear that school might go online again because of COVID. I feel disappointed about that and also stressed because it’s hard to be in limbo. What are you guys experiencing with this?” Or you could take a poll by the raise of hands of how many feel stressed, frustrated, excited, relieved, nervous, don’t care, etc. There aren’t good or bad emotions here – treat it with curiosity and let any emotion be an acceptable response. In the case of specific events, it’s often good to follow up with a brief conversation about things that might help and a hopeful perspective – again, your school team may be able to offer examples and specifics of that. But if you don’t have any guidance, a response that conveys hope and confidence that they can get through this is recommended. For example, “All of those reactions totally make sense, it’s just a really [sad, stressful, frustrating, etc] event. I feel stressed as well, but I also know that it’s going to get better, and I’m confident that you guys can handle whatever comes! And I hope you know that me and all of your other teachers are here to help however we can.” After this response, you could give some ideas about potential ways to improve their mood if you have time and space, or it’s okay not to if you don’t have the time.
Two important notes:
First, your students love when you’re genuine and share your own experiences. But it’s also VERY important that the adults in their life are seen as safe, grounded spaces. If you’re like me, there are days when you really don’t feel like everything is dandy and going to be okay or you’re wrestling with your own fatigue, stress, anxiety, or grief. It is important 1) that you find ways to support your own mental health and 2) that you keep some distance between those experiences you’re having and your students. Teens who are already dealing with a life full of emotion tend to try to take on others’ unresolved or very strong emotions into their own experience, which may lead to more harm than good. When you model recognizing, labeling, understanding your own emotional experience, take care to model appropriate expression and regulation of that emotion.
Second, don’t sweat it if there are students who choose not to participate. Don’t call them out in a group or repeatedly ask them to respond. Hopefully they are at least reflecting on the questions and seeing it modeled, and you can address any concerns you have individually with them.
One very cool resource available to teachers and school staff right now (I believe at no cost) is an online training by the Yale RULER program called “Managing emotions in times of uncertainty and stress.” https://www.coursera.org/learn/managing-emotions-uncertainty-stress
There are also some good resources through: https://www.teachforamerica.org/stories/mental-health-resources-for-educators
Hopefully that answers the bulk of the question for Beth, but I realize there are other components to this that I can’t address here. In a couple of follow-ups, I’ll talk about some activities you could integrate into your classroom teaching that are quick ways to promote good emotion regulation and mindfulness, as well as ways to respond to individual students in distress. Thank you teachers for all you are and do to support your students! Please reach out to others for support and help as you’re managing all the normal school stressors + a global pandemic – just like your students, your emotional, mental and physical experiences are also important. Things will get better, but anything that helps along the way is important!