October 2025
Fall is officially here and the students at my school are getting comfortable and into their routine. They are showing their true selves, feelings and energy levels! One of the concepts I like to teach students is the Zones of Regulation. The Zones of Regulation book is written by Leah Kuypers. Depending on the ages of the students, I teach about these in different ways. For kindergarten, I use the Inside Out characters to show the different zones. For 1st grade through 3rd grade, I use Legos/generic toy bricks (blue, yellow, red, and green) to explore the zones in a hands on activity. I have a lesson here that walks you through it. In 4th-6th, the Zones are shown in the faces of different celebrities-thank you Chat GPT! Then the students draw themselves or use emoji stickers to show the different zones on a chart. If you are not familiar with the Zones of Regulation, I highly recommend learning about this wonderful emotional regulation concept!
September 2025
September 2025
As a school counselor in a private Catholic school, our community was in complete shock when a very similar school, Annunciation Catholic School, experienced a mass shooting on August 27th, 2025. We were preparing for the first days of school as a community. I luckily I had many resources for families and teachers on how to respond to these types of events and we as a school were able to post some helpful information for our families. At the same time, it saddens me to realize how often we needed to send these resources out to families. In wanting to share with others, the resources we sent out to families was Talking To Children About The Shooting and Parent Guidelines For Helping Youth After The Recent Shooting. Both resources are from The National Child Traumatic Stress Network. For the teachers, I encouraged 4 tips on responding to students. These 4 tips are; Listen (what do they know and clarify the facts), Validate (validate their feelings), Reassure (Explain how your school keeps kids safe) and Take Action and Empower (what can they do to help the families?). I hope this was helpful in learning how I responded to these tragic situations.