Our school community met in Family Teams (multi-aged groups of students) on February 14, 2023.  We promoted ideas of Kindness, Friendship, and showing Care for one another.  But our primary question was exploring How can I be Kind to myself?  We relate showing “kindness to yourself” to choosing appropriate self-regulation strategies to “help yourself be calm, alert, and ready to learn”. 

Our Family Teams activity focused around the statements:

“I can be kind to myself by _________”

“I can help myself learn by __________”

We know that an important part about helping yourself have success as a learner is knowing yourself as a learner.  This connects to our school motto of “Learning to be me”. What are you passionate about?  What gets you upset?  When might you be overly excited? When might you be stressed or tired?  Knowing our self-identity through self-exploration helps us choose the most effective self-regulation strategy for a given learning situation.

We also emphasized the importance of positive self-talk (as opposed to negative self-talk) as a strategy for supporting yourself as a learner. The words in your head from your “inner coach” (not your “inner critic”) are important, as the emotional component to learning is strong!  Believing in yourself and thinking that you can do hard things is important to your success! 

We used these statements to frame our activity:

I can be kind to myself by _________

I can help myself learn by __________

-When I feel frustrated, I can be kind to (help) myself by _____

-When I feel dysregulated, I can be kind to (help) myself by ____

-When I feel tired, I can be kind to (help) myself by _____

-When I feel silly, I can be kind to (help) myself by _____

-When I feel angry, I can be kind to (help) myself by _____

-When I feel _______, I can be kind to (help) myself by ____

Students created hearts to represent the strategies that help them become calm, alert, and ready to learn.