Tag: mental health

A Classroom  Management Professional Development Activity

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Get your free Circle of Community™ Preview video here!

Classroom Management Professional Development

Don’t waste your teachers’ precious time this summer! Have them take part in the Circle of Community™, a perfect activity for classroom management professional development.

Circle of Community™ is a team building / community building activity for groups working together in classrooms, teams, families, or on the job.

Cover for Circle of Community a classroom management activity

Works For Both Teens and Adults

In particular, the activity builds social emotional learning (SEL) not only for teens but also for adults. In prior presentations, staff found this professional development tool useful as well as entertaining. Participants receive both personal gain and the ability to practice with the resource before sharing with their students back in the classroom.

Get your free Circle of Community™ Preview video here!

Improve Group Dynamics and Solve Misunderstandings Between Members

An illustration of a stalk of celery trying to mediate between two angry onions

At its core, Circle of Community™ works to resolve misunderstandings between group members. This improves group function, group member relationships, and the group’s success. Furthermore, the activity works to develop communication, problem solving, and goal attainment skills in a fun and engaging way.

How It Works

  • Using The “Identify your Gifts” handout, participants learn about their own and others’ personal strengths and challenges.
  • Then, in their respective “gift” groups, participants work together to solve a fictionalized real-life scenario related to a common critical issue or problem faced by the larger group.
  • Using the provided facilitation questions and learning about personal strengths and challenges, participants begin to see and understand how groups and their members often approach and solve problems differently. Often, staff receive insight into how “diverse” groups with a mix of strengths and challenges are best at solving problems.
  • In the end, all participants receive a “Reaching Our Potential Together” poster, the “Gifts and Challenges” and “Social Styles” handouts, and a special personal gift of a colorful “Totem Card” representing their own “gifts” / strengths.

In Short…

You can’t go wrong with the Circle of Community™ classroom management professional development. Don’t take my word for it – see a preview of the resource below.

Circle of community poster with gifts/strengths and corresponding totem animals
Get your free Circle of Community™ Preview video here!

Build Teen Social Emotional Skills

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Click here for your free Mental Health / Life Skills list

Teen Social Emotional Skills: A Comprehensive List

As a mental health educator, I knew the skills to help teens build their mental health or social emotional learning. These include communication, goal setting and planning, decision making, problem solving, and stress and personal management.

Furthermore, as a Training Specialist for the NYS Adolescent Services and Resource Network, I used a different list of social emotional learning skills. This list included “life skills,” the abilities teens need to gain their independence such as getting an education, budgeting, shopping, cooking, home management, etc.

A picture of a mental health/social emotional learning skills checklist for kids, teens or adults from aws Studios.art

Specific Teen Social Emotional Skills

In addition to the life skills, the resource included a list of “Invisible Skills” for “emotional issues.” These included: establishing identity, dealing with separation and loss; making peace with the past; and resolving survivor guilt. The resource, originally created to guide foster care parents and Youth Workers, can be used with any teen dealing with trauma, isolation, and bullying, etc.

Build Teen Mental Health

Indeed, to build teen mental health – social emotional skills , I have recreated the all-inclusive training list for you. You can access this easy-to-read pdf here free! And, here are resources I have created that are geared to help young people learn these skills.

Let’s All Build Teen Mental Health

A picture of a mental health/social emotional learning skills checklist for kids, teens or adults from aws Studios.art

With this free pdf, I hope to make it easier for any adult – parent, grandparent, relative, teacher, homeschooler, etc., – who is living or working with a teenager – to know and assess teen mental health skills. Let’s all help young people build these essential social and emotional skills!

Do you have a favorite list of mental health skills? Let us know about it in the Comments section.

Click here for your free pdf of my Mental Health / Life Skills list

Managing Fear with Mindfulness is Not Just Sitting and Meditating

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Managing Fear with Mindfullness

With a Mental Health Skill Building Toy

I’m trying to get a toy that helps with managing fear with mindfulness licensed. The toy, or plush – a small stuffed doll – helps kids strengthen mindfulness, a social and emotional skill kids and adults need to be healthy.

This image shows the head and face of the plush toy I am promoting that helps fearful kids and adults better manage their fear and anxiety.
Face of my mindfulness plush

Don’t Let Your Fear Get Big

The doll/plush, designed for kids to take with them where they might experience fear, is a prompt. It reminds its owner that it’s okay to have a little fear – it helps to keep them safe. As well as that the plush reminds kids to not let their fear get big or out of control. Uncontrolled fear holds kids back from doing what they want or need to do.

This image shows a Barbie doll sitting in a yoga or meditation position. It shows the type of mindfulness toys that are on the market today.
Meditating Barbie

Mindfulness vs meditation

Recently, I asked a colleague in the toy industry to review the “sell sheet” I created. Sell sheets are a one page explanation of a product to potential licensees. After receiving their feedback, I realized, the reviewer did not understand mindfulness. I don’t think they’re alone.

I believe it’s safe to say that most people think mindfulness is the same as meditation. They envision it as sitting on the floor and and quietly calming the mind. Furthermore, while mindfulness can take place while meditating, it is not the only way one can experience this skill. I like this definition from Berkeley.edu (paraphrased below):

Mindfulness is the practice of being aware of your thoughts, feelings, and reactions in the present moment. Moreover, it involves being fully present and engaged with what you are doing. It includes intention, cultivating awareness, and attention – a focus on the present moment, sensations, and thoughts and can be practiced during everyday activities.

Practiced During Everyday Activities

Henceforth – the “practiced during everyday activities” – the not sitting and meditating is the idea behind my plush. The doll is small and can be carried in a backpack or a pocket and is there to remind a kid (or even an adult) to keep their fear small and not let it take control of what they (the kid/adult) might like to do, take a breath and give the slightly scary task a try.

This image shows a little girl with the mindfulness skill building plush in her backpack. It shows how the plush can be taken anywhere where a child might experience fear.

And It Works

I should know. Indeed, I made the plush initially for myself to remind me to keep my fears in check. These fears included working with the toy industry. In addition, another way to think of it is to keep them “small.” Also, this includes taking a breath, letting it out, and giving whatever I was initially afraid of a try. And here I am. Subsequently, I am networking with people in the toy industry (who would have ever thought!). In addition, I am learning the ropes. I am putting myself out there – raw and vulnerable – my “mindful reminding” plush by my side.

Hopefully, this post will help explain and define “mindfulness” a little more. I hope it will help explain my mindfulness plush toy and how it works to boost social and emotional learning.

What About You?

Do you practice mindfulness and do you even call it that? Do you practice it on the go or by quietly meditating or both? Have ever used anything to remind you to be mindful of something? If so, what did you use?

More about mindfulness and the brain here and here.

Lift up Your Spirits this Thanksgiving!

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During the Thanksgiving holiday season, there’s talk, of course, about giving thanks and gratitude. But this aws Studios freebie gives you the opportunity to “gift” the people in your life “permission” to do things they want but often feel like they shouldn’t or don’t deserve to do, a mental health, social and emotional best practice. This includes things like taking a break or a vacation, pampering themselves, or getting that item that they’ve been wanting that doesn’t break the bank. The “Power of Permission Slip” is great for parents, teachers or just about anyone to “gift” family, friends, or students this Thanksgiving holiday! And don’t forget about yourself. You might need your own permission too!

Get Your Power of Permission easy to use pdf Slip. start Gifting Permission Right Away!

What about you? What permission do you see friends, family, students or yourself needing? Let me know in the Comments below. And Happy Thanksgiving!

Conquer Student Anxiety

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Transform Student Feelings of Overwhelm to Confidence

Do you find your students feeling overwhelmed? Students want to do a lot. Furthermore, they deal with expectations from their relationships with family, school and friends. It can feel like it’s all too much. And, giving up might be right around the corner. Roles and Goals™, a social emotional goal setting and planning activity, helps students prioritize their roles. This reduces feelings of being overwhelmed.

This image is an abstract depicting young people looking harried because of all the expectations they have and limited time to do it all.

Create Calm with Goal Setting and Planning

In particular, Roles and Goals™ focuses planning based on the preservation and enhancement student relationships. This includes family, school, teams, and friends. In addition, this planning exercise uses a schedule of one week. Importantly, this is a better than daily planning. It gives them an easier view of the context of their relationships and balancing their time.  

Solves a Huge Mental Health Issue

This image is a close up of the previous image of a young girl trying to keep the hands of a clock from moving. She's trying to stop time.

Roles and Goals™ solves the problem of how, often, young people feel overwhelmed with all that they are expected to do. The activity helps students assess their relationships, expectations, and time by prioritizing and organizing tasks for one week. This reduces overwhelming feelings of expectations by breaking down responsibilities little by little, bit by bit.

Student Focused with Real-World Application

Roles and Goals™ enhances learning by giving students a real-world problem to solve — their weekly schedule — and provides examples and prompts to guide them.

Find out more, get your Roles and Goals resource today and help your students create calm!

Prepare Students to Work in Groups with this Fun Classroom Management Activity

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Hate Working in Groups?

A student I know hated working in groups.  It made them feel uncomfortable and worthless. One group member always took charge, boss others around and no one challenged the domineering leader.  The groups usually got the project done but not without a lot of stress to their mental health with bad feelings and angst about working together— not only for the student but for everyone else except for you know who. What was missing was preparation for classroom management with groups.

Then, in a group activity, the student learned a way to prepare to work in groups and resolve conflicts before they can happen.

Prepare to work in groups to resolve conflicts before they happen

Enter “What’s Your Style?™” – Classroom Management with Groups

What's Your Style? is a fun and engaging classroom management activity

In the What’s Your Style?™ activity, the student discovered the “social styles model.” With this information and social emotional skills, things changed. The student not only learned why bossy members did what they did but also why the student did what they did and why. Since their encounter with What’s Your Style?™, the student – now in the workforce — approaches working in groups with confidence, knowledge, skills, compassion, and tolerance.

A Classroom Management Activity?

Yes, classroom management with groups is best accomplished through activities that engage students (see another here). With minimal lecture, What’s Your Style?™ helps students learn about the model through a fun group performance exercise. In addition, they assess their peers’ presentations and individually reflecting on their learning.

It’s so Hard to Get Students to Work Together These Days

With the What’s Your Style?™ activity, students first practice with like-minded peers. Once they learn the model, students are made aware of their own strengths. Furthermore, they learn the strengths of their peers with differing ideas. This then illustrates how teams or groups of mixed strengths and developing characteristics acquire more problem solving success.

No Time? Little Funds?

See for yourself!
prepare to work in groups and resolve conflicts with What’s Your Style?™
YOUR students will thank you for And what could be better than that?!

Mental, Emotional, and Social Health with Toys? Yes, with MESH!

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MESH + Toy Industry + aws Studios

While perusing an issue of “The Toy Book,” a toy industry trade magazine, I came across a mention by Editor in Chief James Zahn in his editorial about “MESH,” a new acronym for “mental, emotional, and social health.” For me, this was a ‘needle in the haystack’ discovery. To find a link from the toy industry to me — a mental health educator, picture book author/illustrator, and toy designer — was a jump for joy moment.

Where did this MESH acronym come from?

I needed more info. After a little searching, I found a podcast about “MESH” by The Toy Coach, Azhelle Wade. In this podcast, Azhelle interviews Rachele Harmuth of ThinkFun and co-originator of the MESH acronym. In short, seeing how mental health issues were increasing worldwide in children and teens, Harmuth, with years of experience in the toy industry, wanted to know if there was a way to help families — kids and parents — build their resiliency to mental illness with play and toys.

Combining Mental Health Education and Social Emotional Learning (SEL)

Harmuth then partnered with resiliency expert Dr. Deborah Gilboa and the two came up with the MESH term combining both the fields of mental health and social emotional learning. Genius! And it’s about time. For the past few decades, the fields of mental health education and social emotional learning (SEL) operated separately and siloed. Harmuth and Gilboa have combined the two fields — the skills of mental health and the “Pillars” of SEL— into the following eight skills:

  • Problem solving
  • Perseverance
  • Adaptation
  • Conflict resolution
  • Self-regulation
  • Self-advocacy
  • Cognitive skills
  • Communication strategies

Then they identified four areas where toys and games can build these skills:

  • A focus on problem solving and perseverance
  • Encouraging storytelling
  • Presenting new or increasing challenges over the duration of play and
  • Drawing children and their adults together in play.

[Find out more here at MESHhelps.org]

What’s all this got to do with aws Studios?

I was initially perusing “The Toy Book” because I have been trying to learn more about the toy industry. And I was doing this because I created a toy, specifically a plush (a stuffed fabric toy), designed to help kids build their MESH skills. Currently, I am trying to license the toy to a licensing manufacturer, aka a licensee.

Mental, Emotional, and Social Health Skill Building Through Toys and Play

I am thrilled to see a connection between mental health skill building and the toy industry. Like what the industry has done by connecting toys and games to STEAM, the interdisciplinary approach to learning that combines science, technology, engineering, arts, and mathematics, the MESH movement is doing the same. It’s making connections to current toys and games on the market that build one or more of the mental, emotional, and social health identified skills.

There’s no better way to build mental, emotional, and social health — MESH — skills than through toys and play!

How have toys helped your kids build their mesh Skills? Tell us in Comments
check out my MESH skill building activites here