Helping Students Explore How They FEEL

Emotional awareness is a core skill that plays a role in every challenge students face (both personally and academically). Helping students practice this skill in various ways throughout the school year will, therefore, help them to thrive in every area of their lives. There are three main approaches to help build emotional awareness in your students (beyond running the Open Parachute lessons, which also teach these skills), some of which you might be already doing naturally and some of which might seem new to you:

Using language to express feelings is an excellent building block to help students identify and move through challenging emotions. You can do this by:

a) Speaking about emotions throughout the day.

For example, if you are exploring a book or novel with your class, you can reflect on how the situation in the text might make the characters feel. This can happen at any age or grade level, whether this is new language or reinforcing language they may be familiar with.

b) Naming student emotions when they arise.

For example, if a student is reacting to an assignment by saying, “It’s too hard” or “I can’t do it,” you can say: “It sounds like you are feeling frustrated by this task, is that right?” This can help them begin to identify their own emotions (either they will agree with you, and you can discuss their experience further, or they will disagree, and then you can explore what emotion they are feeling if it’s not the one you named).

c) Asking students about their feelings.

For example, you can check in with students at the beginning of class by asking, “How are you feeling today?" Or if something challenging happens for a student, you can ask, "How did that make you feel?”

Letting students know that emotions are safe to feel and express creates an environment where students experience a sense of connection and belonging, which helps them overcome any challenges they face. You can do this by:

a) Validating emotions where possible.

For example, if your students feel differently about a subject or an issue and disagree about it, you can remind them that each person’s emotions are valid, even if someone disagrees with their reasons for feeling that way.

b) Articulate to students that all feelings are okay, even though all actions are not ok.

For example, if a student is acting in an unkind way to another student after a disagreement, you can say: “Feeling angry is okay, hurting others when you feel angry is not okay.”

Using your own experiences to role model emotional awareness is a powerful tool that can guide students toward exploring their own emotions. As an educator, your students look up to you, and when you show them that you are comfortable to be vulnerable with your own feelings, this gives them permission to become more comfortable with theirs as well. This comfort with emotions will enable them to thrive even when they face challenges.

a) Share your own honest feelings with students.

For example, if something upsetting has occurred at school or in the media that your students are discussing, you can say: "I'm feeling a bit sad about that. How are the rest of you feeling?".

b) Role model the acceptance of your emotions.

For example, if you notice your students are experiencing stress about their schoolwork, you can let them know that this is okay by talking about your own stress and saying: "Sometimes I also feel stressed when I have a lot of work to do, and that's okay!”

For more suggestions on how to scaffold the learning from Open Parachute lessons across the school year, see our Help Article Scaffolding Opportunities.

We also offer training on Creating Resilient Classrooms, which provides an overview of the Being Well Model (Feel, Pause, Think, and Act) and how it can be embedded into every classroom.