August - October

Self-Awareness is the ability to understand one’s own emotions, thoughts, and values and how they influence behavior across contexts. This includes capacities to recognize one’s strengths and limitations with a well-grounded sense of confidence and purpose, identifying personal and social identities, emotions, demonstrating honesty and integrity, self-efficacy, having a growth mindset, etc. 

Self-awareness focuses on identifying the different emotions that we feel. In younger grades, that includes understanding different emotions, what they feel like, what causes them, etc. In older grades, that includes increasing our emotional vocabularies to express different levels of intensity for different emotions, and understanding what are our personal most prevalent emotions. 

In our identity lessons, students focus on the different aspects that make up their identity - which we define as a simple "who I am." We talk about how each part of our identity is often a quality we simply have in common with others, or something that creates a connection with others. However, it is that combination of all qualities that makes each of us unique. Students understand the different qualities that could make up someone's identity (ie interests, family, race, religion, ethnicity, personality traits, etc.), but in the end, they decide what they think are the most important parts of their identity (some students include religion in their identities, some students include family background in their identities, and some students just put their general interests in their identities). In the older grades, students understand how some parts of their identity may be very obvious/above the surface (such as qualities you can see by just looking at someone), whereas other parts of their identity may be more below the surface that someone wouldn't know just by looking at them (such as family background, personality traits, etc.). 

January - February

Social-Awareness is the ability to understand the perspectives of and empathize with others, including those from diverse backgrounds, cultures, and contexts. This includes the capacities to feel compassion for others, understand broader historical and social norms for behavior in different settings, and recognize family, school, and community resources and supports.

In discussing honesty, our conversations ranged from "honesty is the best policy" in younger grades, to, "when is it an ok time to tell a lie" in older grades (ie safety, to help someone, white lie, etc.). There is an old Chinese folktale titled, "The Empty Pot," in which an emperor gives ths children of a kingdom a seed to grow and present to him after a year's hardwork. The main character tries and tries but nothing makes the seed grow. After a year, all of the children in the kingdom present beautiful flowers to the emperor, while the main character presents an empty pot. When confronted, the boy told the truth that he did the best he could but the flower didn't go, and the emperor rewarded the boy and chose him to become the next emperor, as he had given all of the children cooked/infertile seeds to see who would be honest and show integrity instead of cheating and finding a new flower. 

A big focus of conflict resolution focuses on conflicts occurring at recess and within classrooms. At the time of this lesson, we happened to be having an increased amount of conflicts occurring at recess, between students, staff members, and following the rules. 4th-6th graders reflected and brainstormed ideas about what we're grateful to have at recess already, what problems are occurring and what solutions there are. In this same lesson, younger grades focused on specific techniques to solve problems, such as using an i-messge, upstanding, and taking a break. 

Inclusion in Action week happens at all 9 EUSD school sites during the same week - in which each grade levels focuses on learning about a different type of disability to both spread awareness and encourage inclusion. Kindergarten focuses on blindness, first grade focuses on AAC devices/nonverbal, second grade focuses on Autism, third grade focuses on Cerebral Palsy, fourth grade focuses on ADHD and Dyslexia, fifth grade focuses on Down Syndrome and general disability etiquette, and sixth grade focuses on mental illnesses such as depression and anxiety. During these lessons, many students share their own personal examples and connections to the lesson - whether they themself also struggle with some type of disability, or know someone else with a disability.  We talk about how a disability interferes with daily functioning to an extent, and that's why we have different technologies and tools available to make life more inclusive. 

We discussed the importance of having upstanders in our ECC community. An upstander is someone who stands-up to injustices, bullies, and others making un-kind or bad choices. A bystander is someone who stands-by and observes injustice, bullying and unkind choices and does nothing to help the situation. Being an upstander can be nerve-wracking, but we talked about all of the different ways to be an upstander, including speaking up to the bully, checking in on the targeted individual, helping redirect the attention and behaviors, and speaking to a trusted adult. 

A huge part of our self-management unit is learning how to self-regulate. Students learn how emotions are unavoidable - it's ok to feel mad, sad, worried, etc. - but we don't want those emotions to cause to much of a disruption to our daily lives. It is our job to figure out which strategies work best for us to calm down - both in school and outside of school, and knowing the right time/place for different strategies to be used. All students learned/tried out 20+ calming strategies, ranging from breathing exercises, physical outlets/fidgets, distractions, movement, etc., and all students selected their personal 5 strategies that work best for them. 

Growth mindset means that you thrive on challenge, don't see failure as a way to describe yourself but as a springboard for growth and developing your abilities. Your intelligence and talents are all susceptible to growth. A fixed mindset means you believe your basic qualities, like intelligence or talent, are simply fixed traits, and that talent alone creates success without effort. In this lesson, we focus on the fact that most things are hard at first - learning to read, learn a new trick, etc - some of us it might come quicker, some of us might need to practice harder - but in the end, every time we practice, those tasks get easier and easier.

Something challenging for many kids (and adults) is impulse control. Our brains process over 70,000 thoughts everyday - and we know how hectic it would be if we said all of those thoughts whenever they come to our mind. All grade levels learned the acronym "T.H.I.N.K." meaning, before we speak, stop and think, is what you're about to say True, Helpful, Important, Necessary, and Kind. This acronym helps us in both academic settings and social settings. Additionally, some grade levels read the book, "My Mouth Is A Volcano," in which we discussed other strategies to keep "our volcanoes" from erupting. 

Self-awareness focuses on identifying the different emotions that we feel. In younger grades, that includes understanding different emotions, what they feel like, what causes them, etc. In older grades, that includes increasing our emotional vocabularies to express different levels of intensity for different emotions, and understanding what are our personal most prevalent emotions. 

In our identity lessons, students focus on the different aspects that make up their identity - which we define as a simple "who I am." We talk about how each part of our identity is often a quality we simply have in common with others, or something that creates a connection with others. However, it is that combination of all qualities that makes each of us unique. Students understand the different qualities that could make up someone's identity (ie interests, family, race, religion, ethnicity, personality traits, etc.), but in the end, they decide what they think are the most important parts of their identity (some students include religion in their identities, some students include family background in their identities, and some students just put their general interests in their identities). In the older grades, students understand how some parts of their identity may be very obvious/above the surface (such as qualities you can see by just looking at someone), whereas other parts of their identity may be more below the surface that someone wouldn't know just by looking at them (such as family background, personality traits, etc.). 

A big focus of our self-awareness unit is, as the name suggests, being aware of ourselves. Knowing our strengths, our challenges, our qualities, being able to set goals for ourselves, etc. We focus on confidence building, positive affirmations, and being able to keep ourselves motivated.