During my early days in the classroom, I found myself routinely exhausted dealing with disruptive and challenging behaviors.  Through phenomenal mentors and training opportunities, I learned many challenging behaviors are often the byproduct of a child's environment and inability to adequately express themselves.  I learned careful observation will often reveal factors contributing to the escalation.  Factors can include such things as improper sleep, hunger, shyness, or the inability to ask for help or wait a turn.  These types of limitations would make any one of us irritable, but children acting out of these frustrations are often negatively disciplined, isolated, or put in 'time-out'.  That just doesn't seem kind, does it?

 

I believe children are people pleasers, they want to be 'good', but they need to be taught the skills to succeed.  Social emotional skills need to be intentionally taught, role-modelled, and practiced until they become learned. With this in mind, I designed a classroom environment rich with activities to promote positivity, emotional awareness, and kindness.  I developed a thoughtful curriculum that included cooperative play and displays of love.  I shared social stories embedded with opportunities to empathize and reflect, music to teach social skills and friendship, and puppetry, loads of puppetry, to role-model and promote positive behaviors.  Children flourished in this setting and went on to become caring, confident, empathic students.  They acquired a working emotional vocabulary to express their fears and frustrations.  They became self-sufficient at problem solving and were eager to help others.  They learned to share, offer, wait, and take turns.  They began seeking opportunities to make new friends and practice acts of kindness.  Whether in your home or classroom, I firmly believe implementing a more positive approach to discipline and intentionally supporting the acquisition of social and emotional awareness, produces happier, more compassionate children.

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Today, with all the uncertainty and changes in our lives, I believe it is more important than ever to provide our children with a strong emotionally expressive vocabulary, the confidence to be themselves, and the kindness to love, respect, and include others unconditionally.   I am very pleased to now be able to offer my classes virtually, until we can safely be together.

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