Coping Skills in School -
A vital part of Social and Emotional Learning
Inside: Evidence-based research about the benefits of SEL, research around postive childhood experiences to combat ACEs, and practical coping strategies that can be used throughout the day in schools to support kids.
Kids are struggling right now, for so many reasons. As a therapist who has been working with kids, teens, and their families for over 20 years, I see this with my clients. Others are noticing this struggle right now, so much so that a National Mental Health Emergency has been declared for children in the United States. It can feel overwhelming to know what we can do to support kids. Here are some ideas and places to start so that we feel less overwhelmed and can take some practical steps to make a difference in the lives of the students we see.
How we can support kids in schools
When I think about the best ways we can support kids in school, I think about a three prong approach
Social and Emotional Learning
Making sure every child feels known, seen and heard
Practical coping skills and interventions we can use in the classroom and building as we are supporting our students
Social and Emotional Learning (SEL)
What is SEL?
According to the Collaborative for Academic, Social and Emotional Learning, SEL is “the process through which all young people and adults acquire and apply the knowledge, skills, and attitudes to develop healthy identities, manage emotions and achieve personal and collective goals, feel and show empathy for others, establish and maintain supportive relationships, and make responsible and caring decisions.” CASEL uses a framework of a Wheel, that includes these 5 categories:
Self-Awareness
Self-Management
Responsible Decision-Making
Social Awareness
Relationship Skills
When implementing SEL with best practice, these skills are built in the classroom, supported in the building culture, and also supported at home with families and caregivers in the community.
Why SEL Matters
SEL makes a huge impact on students, not only socially and emotionally but also academically.
SEL interventions significantly improved skills, positive attitudes towards self and others, prosocial behavior, and academic performance
Reduced aggression and emotional distress
SEL programs were also able to serve as a protective factor against the development of subsequent problems (i.e., conduct problems, emotional distress, and drug use)
Social and emotional learning interventions increased academic performance by 11 percentile points
And these impacts are long lasting:
students in school-based SEL interventions continued to demonstrate these positive impacts 1 to almost 4 years later
Making Sure Every Child Feels Known
Take a moment and think about your favorite teacher you had when you were growing up. Close your eyes and think about them for a moment. How did they make you feel? How did they make you feel supported and seen? I bet after thinking about them for a couple of minutes, you are starting to smile.
Making sure every child feels known seen and heard in school is powerful. How can we do this?
Some schools are also implementing Advisory, where one or two adults is placed with a group of kids for a year, or over multiple years, to make sure that every student in the building is known.
Here are a couple of videos from Edutopia that I love that share some ways to help us support the kids we have in our schools.
Making Connections by Greeting at the Door - Elementary
Making Every Child Feel Known - Middle School (could also be used at a HS level)
Positive Childhood Experiences
These experiences protect kids from Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs). In fact, having Positive Childhood Experiences is dose-responsive, meaning that the more our students have, the better their adult mental health is likely to be.
Ability to talk with family about feelings
Felt experience that family is supportive in difficult times
Enjoyment in participation in community traditions
Feeling of belonging in high school
Feeling of being supported by friends
Having at least two non-parent adults who genuinely care*
Feeling safe and protected by an adult at home
As people supporting children in schools, we don’t have control of what goes on at home. Please note that the PCEs that are highlighted above. These are things we CAN control. Having traditions that students enjoy in school, helping kids connect with others and feel a sense of belonging are things that we can do to help our students. The one factor I love to share with educators and others in a school who work with kids to emphasize has an asterisk. By genuinely caring about your students, you are a protective factor.
Coping Skills for School
Who could benefit from coping skills?
While all children and teens could benefit, there are some kids who need more support and help to learn coping skills. Here are some of the settings where we can introduce coping skills:
to individual students who needs more support (for example: in individual meetings with a school mental health professional, etc)
in small group lessons (for example: as part of a small group, lunch group, advisory curriculum, etc.)
in SEL lessons in the classroom
Mental Health Professionals in the building make a huge difference! The benefit of a mental health emergency being declared is that there will be more resources to get more mental health support for students in schools.
When to introduce coping skills
Here are some ideas of good times to introduce coping skills to kids. Administration and teaching staff should think through your own school’s daily and weekly schedule to see what would work best for your environment.
At the beginning of the day
Advisory Periods
Lunch Bunch/Lunch Groups
Before/After lunch
Before/After Recess
At the end of the day
At beginning or end of class
At a transition time during the class
Deep Breathing Strategies
People usually roll their eyes initially when they hear “breathing is important”. But I will continue to say it and explain why. It’s so simple, yet has such a big impact on your body’s physiology.
When you are calm and relaxed, your body is in “rest and digest” mode. You breathe normally, your heart rate is lower and your muscles are relaxed. However, when stress or anxiety or anger occurs, your body automatically switches into “flight, fight or freeze” mode. Your muscles tense up, your heart rate increases and your breathing becomes more shallow.
Taking deep breaths, instead of shallow breaths, is one way to tell your body to get back to resting and digesting. That’s why deep breathing is important!
Luckily, there are some fun ways to teach kids deep breathing techniques
Helpful Hint: Instead of saying "let’s take deep breaths” try “let’s try slow breaths”. It encourages the kind of breathing we’re looking for that will calm them down.
breathing prompts
Breathe in like you are smelling a flower, breathe out like you are blowing out birthday candles
Smell the hot cocoa, cool the hot cocoa or smell the soup, cool the soup
Pretend your belly is a balloon. Breathe in and make the balloon bigger, then breathe out and make the balloon shrink.
Deep Breathing Gifs/videos
Go Noodle offers several breathing videos, here are two of my favorites
On and Off (like a Progressive Muscle Relaxation)
I like to use GIFs like the one below for my teen clients.
Relaxation Strategies
Imagine Your Favorite Place
Have them think about taking a mini vacation, and use all their senses - What do you see? What do you hear? What do you feel? Is it warm or cool? What do you smell? What do you taste?
Listening Activity
This helps kids focus and be mindful for a few moments! Share that you’ll be doing a listening activity where they stay quiet for a few minutes and notice the sounds
What do you hear outside of the room? (30-60 seconds)
What do you hear inside of the room? (30 - 60 seconds)
What is happening in your body? Are you tired, hungry? (30 - 60 seconds)
Check in afterwards and see what everyone noticed. Did anyone notice something new?
Distraction Strategies
Play is a natural stress reliever for kids, plus it can also be a way to help kids connect with one another.
Here are some games that can be played at school, as a break, indoor recess, lunch bunch or as an after school activity:
Connect Four, Clue, Chess, Sorry
For kids who need help working together - Peaceable Kingdom (Mindware)
Card Games - Set, Uno, Uno Flip, Dos, Skip-bo
Perspective taking - Battleship, Hedbanz, Guess Who
Teen faves - What do you meme?, Picwits, Apples to Apples, Exploding Kittens, Unstable Unicorns
Talking games - would you rather?, 2 truths and a lie
And here are some ideas for school clubs:
Knitting Club
Book Club
Cribbage
Coloring Club
Board Game Club
Sports Talk Club
Anime Club
Pokemon Club
Gardening
Yoga Club
Art Club
Musical Theater/Play
Movement Strategies
Small Body Movements
Fidgets
There are so many great fidgets available that can help kids focus, listen better or pay better attention in the classroom. It’s helpful to explain to children that this is a tool, not a toy. As long as the fidget is used as a tool for focus, not a toy for playing, it can be helpful in the classroom.
Knitting or crocheting
The @weareteachers Instagram page posted this story of a student knitting in class as a way to manage anxiety, and that it made this student more able to participate. How cool!
Big Body Movements
Sometimes it’s helpful to get kids moving around the building as a helpful brain break. Here are some ideas:
Take a walk to the office
Empty the recycling
Passing out papers
Walk to a water fountain, take a sip and walk back to the classroom
Sensory Strategies
We can set up classrooms in ways that are helpful to setting the stage for focus and learning. Here are a few things that could help kids.
Use Sounds
play calming music or nature sounds like the ocean, lake, rain, etc as kids come into class to set a calm tone
play music for a dance break
Listen to audiobooks/kid friendly fiction or non-fiction podcasts as a break or during a transition period
Create a Visually Calm Classroom
Be mindful about how you set up the classroom from a visual perspective. Setting up a classroom is a balance of having engaging materials without being overwhelming. Think about what needs to be on the walls, vs. what is excess. Think about setting a calm space using peaceful images and using natural light as much as possible
Create a Sensory Room
Here’s a video of a school in Connecticut that’s created an entire sensory room that can be used by students throughout the day.
Processing Skills
The most beneficial thing we can do is to help our students identify what they are feeling. When they are able to name their emotion, it becomes easier for them to self-regulate. Here are some simple ways to encourage feelings identification at school:
Thumbs Up, Thumbs in the Middle, Thumbs Down Check in
This can be done as kids come in to the classroom or once everyone is seated before you start a lesson to get a visual picture of how kids are doing. If you’re noticing a kid who is always putting their thumbs down, perhaps it’s time to share that information with the mental health professional in the building to see if they need more support.
Use a feelings faces chart
Using a visual like a feelings chart can help kids get familiar with the different types of feelings that there are, and practice with identifying which ones they are feeling throughout the day.
This is a video of an activity that one school is using as a way to connect and check in about the things that are stressing kids out, as well as get out a little bit of pent up energy.
Other Helpful SEL Interventions for School
Create a Peace Corner
Schools all over the country are designating spaces where kids can identify their feelings and use coping skills as part of SEL curriculum. In fact, CASEL has identified "peace corners" as a general practice that helps support SEL in your classroom and school. It goes by a lot of different names (Peace Corner, Calm Down Spot, Reset Space, Cool Down Corner, Chill Out Zone, etc) but the goal is the same - help kids identify feelings, use a strategy in the space, then return to the classroom in better space to do the work.
In the space, kids can:
identify how they feel
Pick a skill or two and use those skills for 5 to 10 minutes
return to the classroom and re-engage in the classroom expectations
Ultimately, the purpose is to help students identify healthy coping skills that work for them and become lifelong tools.
Make a Coping Skills Toolbox
A Coping Skills Toolbox is an individualized kit that you create to help a particular student calm down when they are upset, anxious or worried. This is a place where you can keep visual reminders of the coping skills that work for a student, as well as the materials needed to utilize those coping strategies. For example, in the coping toolbox below, this particular student liked blowing bubbles and shape breathing to take deep breaths. They also liked popping bubble wrap and using fidgets. To make it easier for the student, we put these coping skill items in the box so it’s ready to use!
In order to get the most benefit from this, create this kit before an issue occurs and have it available for the child in their classroom or a space where they go when they need to take a break. When the coping skills are available, it’s more likely that students will be able to use them when needed.
Please remember that by being a non-parent adult who genuinely cares, you are creating a positive childhood experience for your students. Thank you for all that you do every day.
Learn more about Janine Halloran, M.A., LMHC
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Resources
Bethell C, Jones J, Gombojav N, Linkenbach J, Sege R. Positive Childhood Experiences and Adult Mental and Relational Health in a Statewide Sample: Associations Across Adverse Childhood Experiences Levels. JAMA Pediatr. 2019;173(11):e193007. doi:10.1001/jamapediatrics.2019.3007
Dunesbury, L (2015, September 30). What Does Evidence-Based Instruction in Social and Emotional Learning Actually Look Like in Practice? A Brief from CASEL’s Program Reviews. Retrieved from https://eric.ed.gov/?id=ED574862
Durlak, J. A., Weissberg, R. P., Dymnicki, A. B., Taylor, R. D., & Schellinger, K. (2011). The impact
of enhancing students’ social and emotional learning: A meta-analysis of school-based
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Taylor, R. D., Oberle, E., Durlak, J. A., & Weissberg, R. P. (2017). Promoting positive youth development through school-based social and emotional learning interventions: A meta-analysis of follow-up effects. Child Development, 88(4), 1156–1171.