![]() The first time I remember it working really well was with one of my students, a boy named Briton. How are students acclimating to the practice? So I’m interested in helping students identify how they’re feeling and teaching them to self-regulate those emotions and calm down by asking, “Do you want to go there ? Do you need some time?” And they usually understand that they do. People experience shit and that’s just part of reality. We’re taught ‘don’t be mad’ and ‘don’t fly off the handle’ but I think that’s bullshit. I really believe it’s not a punishment, and I never want them to have an association of being calm or having time alone with ‘being in trouble.’ I don’t want students to think they are being punished for having big emotions or even for getting mad. If they don’t seem to be managing it, I will ask them, “Do you think you should go to the calm corner right now?” I just pose it to them. What has been your experience getting students to practice self-regulation?Īs the year has progressed I’ve seen children lose their cool. I wanted them to get over its novelty and have it not be viewed as a foreign place, so that when a situation did come up where they were feeling big emotions and needed to calm down, it wasn’t unknown territory. It was like every two minutes, “I fell yesterday at recess, can I go to the calm corner?” They just thought it was cool and wanted to explore and I rode it out because I wanted them to have practice with it and be comfortable going there on their own. I had a running waitlist of kids trying to get into the calm corner when I first introduced it. Getting students to use the calm corner has not been an issue at all. How do you get students to use the calm corner? She told me about her experience getting the corner up and running. This practice leads to fewer outbursts and behavioral disruptions.Ĭhicago South Side elementary teacher, Madeline Olm-Shipman has put a lot of love into her class’s calm corner and understands the value of teaching her insanely hectic classroom of 30+ Englewood first graders to nurture inner-peace and self-regulation. The goal is that the students learn to use the corner regularly and independently as a place for self-regulation when they feel they need to. Typically constituted by comfy seating and sensory calming objects, the teacher guides or invites a student to the calm corner when she notices budding challenging behavior or conflict. Sometimes called the peace corner or the cozy corner, the calm corner is essentially a secluded area in the classroom exclusively used for calming down. When it comes to teaching self-regulation, one approach that Mojdeh Baya and noted peace educator, Linda Lantieri preach is the “calm corner.” The calm corner is somewhat ubiquitous in classrooms today and could be seen as the next-gen “time-out.” ![]() The child is not to be chastised into appropriate behavior, rather, the child should be seen as in control of herself and able to develop emotional self-regulation strategies with an adult’s guidance. Baya writes that attention reinforces behavior: even challenging or inappropriate behavior that receives negative attention is still being reinforced and instilled as an expression tactic because ‘negative attention is better than receiving no attention at all.’ Baya’s approach to emotional development is based on a developmental framework which views children as capable and resilient - the nucleus of this approach being to respect a child’s dignity, selfhood and personhood. Over the past few decades, early education experts like Mojdeh Baya have observed, in study after study, the magical effects that a teacher’s deliberate efforts in giving ‘positive attention’ and fostering self-regulation have on student success in the classroom. From a young age, we learn how to direct the attention of adults and peers towards us based on trial and error with different behaviors. We are born crying bloody murder at the slightest hiccup and lacking any concept of ‘regular.’ Our whole existence is driven by the need to get attention by any means possible, to be heard, to be taken care of. We aren’t born practicing self-regulation.
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