Good boundaries are essential for healthy relationships. Being empowered to say “no” is an effective boundary tool and deterrent to bad behavior. When working in groups, saying “yes” builds a bridge to co-creating. Saying “yes” means you’re open to what the other kids have to say. Some of our students have trouble saying yes and […]
How to Teach Your Students Not to Jump to Conclusions
To the complete horror of the little girl and her grandma watching, a man picks up a blackish, four inch substance lying on the ground near his dog’s butt and happily takes a bite. The man looks up at them, smiles with a huge dark chunk visible between his teeth, and quickly registers their disgust. […]
3 Tips to Help Students Use Their Imaginations
Imagination is your bridge to the unseen, the unknown, the infinite possibilities in the field of dreams. Through our imagination we conjure up future scenarios (intentions/goals/desires), make meaning out of our current situation (drawing from prior knowledge), re-vision our past (review/analyze/adjust), and picture ourselves in other’s shoes (empathy). Wow! We can help our students to […]
Cultivating Confidence in Students with Social Challenges
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! […]
How Improv Helps Students Learn Social Cues
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 […]
How an “All or Nothing” Attitude Brings You Down and What To Do About it
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 […]
Breathing Fingers: A Mindfulness Exercise for Students
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, […]
4 Tips for Forming a SEL Group
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 […]
Using Improv to Teach Kindness to Socially-Challenged Students
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! […]
3 Fun Exercises to Help Kids Develop Their Imaginations
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 […]