Confident people have a certain air about them. It’s a combo of presence and ease. They seem to own the space and, at the same time, have room for others. There’s a sense of standing tall in their skin, knowing their worth. The good news is that we can teach kids to be more confident! […]
I was totally unaware of how many social cues and clues I was missing until I started studying improv. So how did improv change all that for me? And most importantly, how can improv improve the quality of your students’ awareness of social clues? They learn to pay attention. Improv games and exercises are entertaining […]
After an especially trying SocialEyes Together® SEL group, discouraged by our students’ insufficient progress, I dumped my frustration on my co-leader, Jean. Emily had spent 45 minutes intermittently spewing negativity like a surprise hailstorm and Reggie was a master at that stealth distraction executed below adult radar detection that is the bane of every teacher’s […]
Being a teacher is tough. You bring together 10, 20, sometimes 30 humans into a classroom and are expected to teach them valuable lessons and watch out for them. What makes this especially tricky is that each of these human beings each come with their own personalities, their own abilities, their own stories and experiences, […]
Starting a social emotional learning group benefits the whole school community. They are the perfect delivery system to teach our students kindness and emotional wellness. And guess what? These qualities ripple throughout the school community. Caring is contagious! When planning a new SocialEyes Together group, we like to follow a tried and true format. Laying […]
Socially-challenged or not, we are ALL wired to be selfish. Taking care of ourselves is how we’ve survived as a species. Taking care of each other is how we build community and enter heart-based living. Anybody can learn how to be kind. Improv is one way to teach this social emotional concept while having fun! […]
A child’s imagination is the door to all possibilities. Teaching our kiddos to connect their hearts to their future by using their imaginations can be a counter balance to all that creativity-sucking screen time they were born into. That may seem a bit dramatic, but for many, there hasn’t been a need to entertain themselves […]
It’s hard to be thankful on command. Yet, this time of year, we are inundated with reminders to do just that. “Thanks” is literally in the name of the holiday. And every year, like clockwork,Thanksgiving is thrust upon us at the end of November. And we are asked to give thanks. Sometimes on command as […]
“Be yourself, everyone else is taken. In order to be oneself, one has to take risks, to accept that one is not perfect and to be courageous enough to say what one really thinks” Oscar Wilde When our students were little, they had a fairly easy time being themselves. This probably was true up to […]
Being social is by nature messy. The rules are vague and morph (often without fair warning) depending on a multitude of factors. Before you utter a word, you might consider who you’re with, what emotional state they (and you) show up in, what kind of interaction it is, and what is expected of you in […]
