Teaching Resiliency Strategies in the Classroom

Funded May 17, 2019

The MindSpark Learning Institute on "Building Resilient Classrooms with Social Emotional Awareness" was a workshop that promoted productive classroom management. I am passionate about bringing engagement and rigor to my classroom. But as an educator, I also need to provide the tools for teenagers to deal with stress. This conference provided me with ideas where I can support myself as well as my students with social and emotional well-being.

Through this workshop, educators from all over the US learned about SEL (Social-Emotional Learning). Tools were given to build self-resiliency in the classroom and ideas on how to seamlessly merge those practices within the already established lessons. One the highlights of this event was learning how to take care of myself, and using those same methods to teach to the students. For example, using different breathing techniques to ground and focus myself. Then, using that same technique to integrate into a lesson, where my students can begin to use breathing as a daily skill to deal with performance anxiety. Then integrating that into a routine classroom practice for all to use before every test. The use of this practice is great for any student, but more relevant since most of my students live below the poverty line and several come from single-parent households. The goal would be to give them new ways to deal with every day stress that happens outside of the classroom.

The MindSpark seminar gave me various techniques such as writing "permission slips" to ourselves on specifics that we want to accomplish. These can be used daily to set focus on a positive classroom intention; weekly to set emphasis on personal performance and learning plans; and by semester where students can prioritize goals. Thanks to MindSpark I came out with this and many other ideas that I am looking forward to easily implementing in my classroom this upcoming year!”

With gratitude,

Mrs. Stephenson