How Emotion Coaching supports students in distress
School staff members are learning a new approach to helping students in emotional distress that aims to build connections between adults and young people.
We Help with Emotion Coaching is a two-step process to help elementary and secondary students who are in what social workers and mental health experts call ‘emotional dysregulation.’ That is the inability to manage the intensity and duration of negative emotions such as fear, sadness, or anger.
“When students are dysregulated, they can’t listen or learn,” said HWDSB social worker Jan Wynne. “The first step in Emotion Coaching is validation. It is the tool to get young people back online so everyone can move to the second step.”
Validation is a simple tool in which adults assure students that they are listening, taking the young person’s concerns seriously, and understand their feelings. That validation piece creates a connection and is essential before heading into problem-solving the issue.
A six-year-old may be crushed that “the love of their life” won’t play with them at recess, says David Hoy, the Board’s manager of social work and mental health lead. To the child, it’s a real loss, while an adult might immediately jump to trying to reassure them that they have lots of friends to play with or plenty of time to find the love of their life.
“The child may feel dismissed. Many times adults want to avoid the emotion or the negativity,” Hoy said. “Allowing and acknowledging the emotion helps kids calm down and get back online.”
That’s when they can listen, be reasonable, and think clearly. And that’s when a caregiver can offer comfort, reassurance or space, or help students with problem solving or redirection of their focus.
But it’s often not about solving the individual problem. After all, what’s the solution to the six-year-old’s broken heart?
Rather, the big-picture goal is to improve the relationships between students and staff, says Hoy. The specific objective is to increase the number of students who say there is at least one caring adult in their school.
Surveys of elementary students have found that many students don’t believe there is a caring adult in the building. Of course that isn’t true, but it is how young people are feeling, says Hoy.
“The way educators are engaging and showing their caring may not be resonating with kids,” Hoy said. “As adults, we understand we are showing care in all the things we are doing inside and outside the classroom, but to a child it may not look that way.”
There are many reasons it is critical that children feel cared for, but especially because people ask children to seek a helping adult when they are in trouble or feel unsafe. If children don’t feel they get the help they need, Hoy says, that undermines that important message.
The hope is that as the coaching takes root and adults model validation, students will naturally learn to use it themselves in their own interactions, says Hoy.
Emotion Coaching is broken into eight modules and is based on the work of psychologist Dr. Adele Lafrance, who worked with HWDSB to implement the training. A board-wide implementation team included social workers, teachers and principals.
The program is being delivered to all school staff – including caretakers, office administrators and educational assistants – in 10- to 15-minute sessions during monthly school staff meetings. Embedding training into staff meetings is a new concept for HWDSB and, if successful, could be applied to other topics, says Hoy.
Feedback after the first session showed a large percentage felt Emotion Coaching was helpful and that they were confident they could implement it.
“This isn’t just about interacting with dysregulated students,” Wynne said. “This will work with anyone who is overwhelmed and stressed, including colleagues.”
Franklin Road Principal Stephen Yull, a member of the implementation team, believes Emotion Coaching will have “tremendous results in demonstrating our caring to students.”
He has already employed the method with children, teachers and parents.
“You go into difficult conversations with a different mindset,” Yull said. “You prepare yourself to really listen, validate and support. It makes an amazing difference.”
Updated on Thursday, January 09, 2020.