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What To Do With Big Emotions: Transitioning back to school during a pandemic
If you’re a parent of kids who are in school during a global pandemic. Or if you’re an educator teaching during the global pandemic, then our latest videos might help.
The videos use the Emotion Focused Skills Training program to provide three steps for dealing with tricky emotions that are likely to appear in your home or classroom.
Emotion Focused Skills Training (EFST) in Schools
Rationale for EFST
Teachers and other school-personnel are highly trained as educators. And yet every day, in the course of delivering their lessons and collaborating with colleagues and parents, they face multiple situations and challenges in the domains of emotion, motivation, behaviour, and interpersonal relationships.
Neuroscience helps us to understand these challenges by showing us that emotions are the primary motivator of human behaviour. When emotion is present, a student’s behaviour, motivation and comprehension (or problem-solving ability) are not open to common reasoning. Students’ inability to “hear reason” in the moment of emotion (whether the feeling is loud or silent) can add taxing stress and frustration to the teacher’s already demanding and important job of educating our children.
Empowering teachers and school-personnel with simple skills to manage these and other challenges in their work is the goal of EFST. EFST improves teacher (and school-personnel) well-being, student well-being and the overarching culture of schools.
What is EFST?
Emotion Focused Skills Training (EFST) in Schools is an innovative, ultra-simple and quickly effective teacher and school-personnel support program.
EFST supports teachers and school-personnel by empowering them to navigate the behavioural, emotional and relational challenges of everyday life at school, as well as the demands they may encounter when students, parents, or colleagues face challenges.
EFST fits seamlessly into the programs, initiatives and values that are already an important part of the school’s culture. Yet EFST also provides the piece that was “missing”. Behavioural and cognitive educational interventions are enhanced by empowering teachers and school personnel to work effectively with emotion “in the moment,” to prevent escalation, to de-escalate the situation, and to reduce teacher (and school-personnel) stress. Most importantly, EFST fosters relationships that create the ideal working and learning environments for students and teachers alike.
Emotion Focused Skills Training has a simple structure for learning and teaching emotion and emotion skills that gives teachers and school-personnel simple, practical tools that they can learn quickly and then implement immediately in the classroom, the halls, the office, or the parent interview. EFST is built around the concept of an Emotion-Wise Skill NET to simplify the teaching and learning of emotion skills.
The Skill NET to Navigate the Challenges You Face with Student & Parent Emotions
Navigate Emotions – Enhance Motivation – Transform Relationships
- Navigate the confusing and often painful world of emotions
- Enhance motivation to resolve emotional and educational challenges
- Transform relationships among teachers, school-personnel, students, and parents
“Teachers” include classroom Teachers, Early Childhood Educators, Special Education Teachers and Educational Assistants.
“School-Personnel” includes School Guidance Counsellors and School Psychologists; Administrators such as Principals and Vice Principals; as well as School Board personnel such as Superintendents.