Strategies to Manage Stress in School
Overview
School is not just about academics. Socialization, relationships, fitting in, navigating boundaries, and stressors outside of school that impact school are all just as hard to navigate and learn as skills such as organization, planning, and effective study habits. School is stressful. Access resources and techniques to help manage stress in school.
Courses
Recognizing and Managing Anxiety in the Classroom
This course is designed to help educators navigate the nuances involved with recognizing and addressing anxiety and stress in K-12 students. John Piacentini, PhD, ABPP, Director, Center for Child Anxiety Resilience Education and Support (CARES) joins his colleagues, Monica Wu, PhD, Kate Sheehan, LCSW, and Emily Ricketts, PhD in discussing common manifestations of anxiety. Video vignettes engage the learner to better understand various ways in which anxiety may thwart a child’s academic, emotional, and social development. Practical strategies for individual and classroom use are offered ...
Printable Tools
Back to In-Person Learning: Trauma Informed Tips for Promoting Student Re-Engagement, Wellbeing, and Resilience
This printable tool has practical strategies to support students' wellbeing and mental health while transitioning back to school during the COVID-19 pandemic. School staff can implement these strategies to help increase student safety, build school-wide relationships, and improve self-regulation skills.
Box Breathing
Focusing on the breath is an important regulation tool. Box breathing is a common relaxation technique that can be done anytime, anywhere.
Butterfly Breath
The Butterfly Breath printable provides a guide and rhythm to help children regulate their breathing. Use this handout with children as a teaching and practice tool in order to help them reduce their stress, shift their mood, and prepare them to engage in classroom activities, sports, and social interactions.
Feeling Thermometer With Instructions
We all have moments when we cannot find the words to describe how we feel. So, why not use a color or a number? The Feeling Thermometer uses colors and numbers on a scale that ranges across comfortable feelings to uncomfortable feelings. When working with family members, use the Feeling Thermometer to check in on everyone's feelings. This handout can be used with individuals, groups, or families. This printable tool also includes detailed instructions. For more information on this technique, watch the course, Enhancing Family ...
Videos
Demonstration: Music and Movement With Scarves
Explore a creative and engaging way to teach emotional regulation to children in order to promote their wellbeing. Watch this video for a demonstration of an emotional regulation technique that provides instruction and practice of deep breathing skills for children using music and movement with scarves.
Demonstration: Straw Art
Straw Art is a creative way to teach children deep breathing skills to enhance their wellbeing. Watch this video to see a demonstration of how to guide children to regulate their emotions.
Emotion Regulation: Getting Back to Comfortability Demonstration
A helpful emotion regulation tool is the Feeling Thermometer and its handy color zones for manageable (or less manageable) emotion states. The “green zone” is optimal for learning and communicating with others. Watch this demonstration of how to use the “Getting to Green” handout to identify individual strategies to stay in your optimal performance zone.
Listening In: A Conversation Supporting Students Returning to In-Person Learning
This video is an informal dialogue between a former public school educator and a former school counselor about strategies to promote student re-engagement, wellbeing, and resilience as schools return to in-person classrooms. Together, they share insights on how to spot signs of stress or trauma in students, discuss ways to cultivate safety, and build relationships in the classroom.
Video Series
Educators Overcoming Under Stress
A series of videos to support educators and school staff during the COVID-19 pandemic. Engaging interviews explore workplace resilience and wellbeing, student and family engagement, professional development, challenges, best practices, and preparation for reopening.
Emotions and Resilience in Teaching
Educators have many roles in their students’ lives. This can make the pressures of teaching even more challenging. This series of short videos highlights the stress and trauma experienced by educators and ways to support their mental health and serve as a model for students. The importance of fostering resilience in educators and supporting mental health is emphasized.
Helping Students Manage Stress in the Classroom
The signs of trauma and stress in youth can be difficult for others decipher. This series displays how trauma and stress can impact the mental and physical health of students. These videos explain importance of fostering resilience, including emotion regulation, to supporting student wellbeing.
Introduction to Stress and Resilience
The classroom provides a unique opportunity for educators to intervene when they notice signs of student stress and trauma. This series of short videos provides way to support students’ mental health using trauma informed practices in the classroom. These videos emphasize the importance of modeling emotion regulation and fostering community amongst peers.
Learning Experiences
Mental Health Wellbeing Workshops for Educators to Use With Students
The Department of Mental Health (DMH) School Based Community Access Platform (SBCAP) developed a series of wellbeing workshops to be delivered in high school classrooms. This course was created to help increase students’ wellbeing by strengthening their self-care and wellbeing practices. Our hope is that through these workshops, teachers and school staff can help students prioritize their own emotional wellness in the classroom. Preparation and viewing of the workshops will take less than 30 minutes. The workshops are meant to be completed in a period of ...
Rising Above the Chaos: A Teen's Guide to Taming Stress
This presentation provides youth with information to identify stress, its effect on their daily life and health, and ways to manage it, including tips for building coping skills and resources.
Trainings
The Science of Handling Bullying: Lessons From the UCLA PEERS Clinic
This Stress, Trauma, and Resilience (STAR) Seminar is intended to provide an overview of strategies for handling direct and indirect forms of bullying from one of the only evidence-based social skills interventions for youth with autism and social challenges. Concrete rules and steps of ecologically valid strategies for handling teasing, physical bullying, cyberbullying, and rumors/gossip will be summarized. Role-play demonstrations will be shown and methods for teaching social skills will be discussed. Research outcomes related to the PEERS® social skills intervention will be highlighted by ...
Prevention in Practice
Anxiety Management During Uncertainty
During times of crisis, disaster, change, and uncertainty, we can expect our children to feel more than the usual amount of anxiety. Anxiety thrives on uncertainty and uses the unknown to fuel its thoughts and behaviors. For kids with anxiety disorders, fears and unknowns may become overwhelming. Parents, educators, and other caring adults can help guide children into successful anxiety management strategies.
Helping Children Reduce Back-to-School Stress
Mental health clinicians are often tasked with supporting children with anxiety. With a precarious return to the classroom during a pandemic, this situation is as complicated as it is unique.
Mental Health Activity Guide for Teachers to Use in Classrooms
The Los Angeles County Department of Mental Health (DMH) School Based Community Access Platform (SBCAP) program created a mental health activity guide for teachers to use in classrooms. This guide was created to provide teachers with several activities that will equip students with coping skills, in an effort to support their resiliency.
Strategies to Relieve Student Re-Entry Anxiety: For Teachers
As children return to the structure of classrooms and old routines, some may be experiencing re-entry anxiety. This anxiety reflects an understandable uneasiness about letting go of some of the practices and behaviors that kept us safer during COVID-19.
