Giving students with emotional issues an outlet is something that should done by all school teachers. Often times children are dealing with stressful situations at home, or at school and they keep all their emotions inside. Letting students know that there is someone to talk to privately about their issues, is incredibly important.
Here are some brilliant ways that teachers have been able to connect with students and offer them emotional help. Sometimes all it takes is someone to listen to make a major difference in a child’s life. With bullying being such a prominent issue for young people and stresses at home being more and more common — giving a child time to express their concerns, fears and stresses to a trusting adult is so very important.
This teacher has her students write their name on back of a sticky note and place it on the chart each Monday. She then talks privately throughout the week with each child about where they placed the sticky note and if they need to talk. A weekly check in on her students. ❤️❤️
This is such a brilliant idea! One could also make it a little more private, but simply having students write the emotion and their name on a sticky note, folding it up and placing it in a bucket — weekly.
This teacher has personal handshakes with every single one of his students. Every morning, fifth grade teacher Barry White Jr. of Ashley Park Elementary School in Charlotte, North Carolina, greets his students with special handshakes every day before they enter class.
Besides the incredible memory of Mr. White Jr., this tactic personalizes a relationship with each one of his students. This allows the teacher/student relationship to have a very trusting component. It is simple acts like this, that gives the student a particular level of comfort with their teacher, thus allowing communication between student/teacher to flourish.
This is will also allow the teacher to read the energy and emotional level of each student on a daily basis prior to coming to class.
Karen Wunderlich Loewe’s has her 7th and 8th graders ‘leave their emotional baggage’ at the door.
The middle-school English teacher began the school year with a lesson in emotional literacy, asking her students to write whatever “baggage” they carry on pieces of paper — from cancer to divorce to losing a pet and suicide — and leave them at the door.
These are just a few of the awesome ways teachers have gone above and beyond to connect with their students. If you have any other awesome and unique ideas, please share in the Facebook comments!
