Teacher Resources

Hello to our Amazing AMS Colts Staff!

The Counseling staff would love to support you the best way possible. Below you will find resources that may be helpful for you, and your students during this school year. Please reach out to us if you need any support with anything.

We appreciate all of your hard work and dedication to our students!

Best,

AMS Counselors

Release Tension With This Targeted Meditation TechniqueWhen you are stressed, you may be carrying stress in your body without realizing it. A body scan meditation can help you locate and release it.

SEL Corner:

The information below is focusing on the SEL tenet of Self-Awareness. We will post videos and information on how to promote self-awareness in your students.

The ability to accurately recognize one’s own emotions, thoughts, and values and how they influence behavior. The ability to accurately assess one’s strengths and limitations, with a well-grounded sense of confidence, optimism, and a “growth mindset.”

* Identifying emotions

*Accurate self-perception Recognizing strengths

*Self-confidence

*Self-efficacy

Self-Awareness Activities to do with your Students!

Overview: This interactive activity will guide students through a set of scenarios to help them understand how to approach bullying as an ally and up-stander. Students can work through a variety of scenarios and build responsible decision-making skills when it comes to navigating a bully.

Instructions for Implementation:

“It's important to know how to handle bullying, even when we aren't the ones getting bullied. We try to be an ally and an up-stander when we notice others getting bullied.”

How can I help my students self-regulate?

First of all, recognize the amazing energy and potential in your students. Teenagers can tell if you really see them, rather than just look at them (or, worse, look through them). Until you can see the wonderful, flawed people before you, you can't effectively teach them.

Once you connect with students, you can try these simple, free minilessons to help them gain strategies for self-regulation.

Strategy 1: Teach students about their brains. Just as we help students understand how puberty changes their bodies, we should help them understand how it changes their minds. Teach "Understanding the Parts of the Brain." Then discuss how the reward center (the limbic system) is fully developed in the teenage brain, which is why teenagers experience emotion so profoundly. Afterward discuss how the prefrontal cortex is still rapidly developing—the spot that is transforming them from 13 year olds to adults.
Strategy 2: Help students connect with their emotional centers. Instead of repressing students' feelings, we should recognize them and help students understand them. Teach "Checking the Emotional Thermometer" to give students a quick way to gauge the intensity of happiness, sadness, hurt, anger, love, or other feelings. Then discuss how feelings aren't right or wrong—they just are. The right or wrong part comes into play when people choose what to do with their feelings.
Strategy 3: Teach the 5-5-5 breathing strategy. Given that emotions are more intense during the teenage years, students need strategies that help them manage stress, anxiety, anger, and other intense feelings. Teach "Using 5-5-5 Breathing to Calm Down." Afterward, ask students to share stories about situations in their day so far (or yesterday, if it's first hour), when they could have used such a strategy. Have them watch for situations that arise later in the day and try 5-5-5 breathing.
Strategy 4: Promote positive self-talk. If a student is feeling bad, persistent negative thoughts can create a downward spiral. Help students recognize these thoughts, stop them, and replace them with positive thoughts—a first step in self-regulation. Teach "Using Positive Self-Talk." Discuss how this strategy helps break a negative fixed mindset and develop a positive growth mindset.
Strategy 5: Help students set goals. Self-regulation begins in the moment, with recognizing moods and dealing with them appropriately. Self-regulation, however, can also grow into the future. Teach "Setting and Reaching Goals." Discuss how students can set goals in school and beyond. Ask them to think about who they want to become in one month, one year, and five years. Then ask them what doable steps they can take in the short term and long term to reach their goals.

Relationship Building Through Movement

Overview: In this lesson, students will explore a guiding question focused on teamwork and then engage in movement by learning a new dance and discovering its cultural origins. After engaging in movement, students work in small teams to create a new or revised sequence that expresses personality traits of the group. Dance provides students with an active way to engage in teamwork and explore how each group member brings different strengths and plays an important role. Collaborating on a dance also develops communication skills.

Instructions for Implementation:

Introduction: Being part of a team means being able to rely on each other to accomplish something together. That means you need to do your part because your teammates are relying on you.

Have you ever been let down by a member of a team? What can you learn from this when thinking about your own role on teams?

Today’s challenge is to work with your group to create a movement sequence that expresses the personality traits of the members of your group.

Get Moving: To get warmed up, try out some new ways of moving with the SEL Journeys Dance of the Month. (You can sign-up for free by clicking on the "Activate Your Account" button on the right side of the screen.)

Respond and Connect: After engaging in movement, split students into teams of 2-4 students and revisit today’s big idea with the following activity:

As a first step, think about how you would complete this sentence: "A positive word or phrase to describe me is ...." Now take a moment for each group member to share their answer.
Next, help each other come up with a gesture or pose that captures the personality trait each person shared.
Now, you can add these traits to the steps from today’s dance, or you can make up your own steps. You can take another look at the steps to get some ideas. Think about how you can add personality traits to these moves, or decide if you want to make up entirely new moves.
Now work with your group to make a movement sequence that expresses the personality traits of each group member. Once you have a plan, rehearse it a few times together. If time permits, groups can volunteer to show their final sequence to the rest of the class and explain how the new dance expresses the personality traits of the group.
Final Student Reflection: How did it go with your team? Did you do your part to contribute ideas? Did you learn something new about your teammates?