Students having difficulty regulating their emotions for a multitude of reasons can go to the Peace Room to re-center and talk to someone. A Peace Room is a room with a designated staff member trained in mindfulness and counseling practices. Typically, this room is a relaxing space where students can go to take a break and engage in mindfulness activities (e.g., kinetic sand, meditation prompts, coloring, yoga, and stretches).

How can a Peace Room be used?

• Students become aware of when they need time to go to the Peace Room and can ask when they become dysregulated.

• Typically a staff member can call the room and ask them if there is space at the peace room. Next, students will be written a pass to use the room.

• Taking a trauma-informed approach, students who are dysregulated may benefit from talking to someone and learning skills to manage their feelings rather than being sent to the office. As a result, Peace Rooms can minimize on disciplinary referrals.

• Peace Rooms can be an intermediary step to sending students to guidance, thus reducing traffic to guidance through a shorter, skills based intervention and leaving services for students who have more intense mental health concerns.

For more information or tips on implementing a Peace Room in your school, please contact Dr. Christopher Liang (christopher.liang@lehigh.edu).

Group counseling, which involves a number of students working on shared tasks and developing supportive relationships in a group setting, is an efficient, effective and positive way of providing direct service to students with academic, career and social/emotional developmental issues and situational concerns (American School Counselor Association [ASCA], 2020). Group counseling can help reduce social isolation and negative emotions, as well as increase positive peer relations and a sense of belonging. In group counseling, affect, cognition and behavior are emphasized. In alignment with a trauma-responsive approach, the goal of a small group is to create a climate of trust, caring, understanding and support that enables students to share their concerns with peers and the school counselor or school psychologist (ASCA, 2020).

See below for examples of small group, evidence-based Tier 2 interventions that teach students emotional regulation, coping, stress management, and problem-solving strategies (Keperling et al., 2017).

Social-Emotional Interventions

• The Curriculum-Based Support Group Program (CBSG): designed to increase resiliency and reduce risk factors among children and adolescents (ages 4-17 years) identified as being at elevated risk for early substance use, future delinquency, and violence

• I Can Problem Solve (ICPS): universal school-based program for enhancing the interpersonal cognitive processes and problem-solving skills of children (ages 4-12 years); typically this has been used class-wide but it also can be delivered by a group leader to a small group of children

• Life Skills Training (LST): school-based substance abuse prevention curriculum that aims to modify drug-related knowledge, attitude, and norms

• Promoting Alternative Thinking Strategies (PATHS): enhances social-emotional development through teaching self-control, self-esteem, emotional awareness, social skills, friendship, and interpersonal problem-solving skills, while also reducing aggression and other behavior problems for children in preschool through elementary school

• Strong Kids: brief curricula designed to teach social and emotional skills, promote resilience, strengthen assets, and increase coping skills of students; three programs have been developed for various age groups (PreK, K-2, and grades 3-5)

• Zones of Regulation: uses a cognitive behavioral approach to increase self-awareness, self-regulation, and problem solving abilities; can be used with both small groups and at a universal (Tier 1) level.

Interventions for Externalizing Behaviors

• Coping Power Child Program: preventative intervention for at-risk children in the late elementary and early middle school years (ages 8-12); based on cognitive behavioral therapy and the key factors of social competence, self-regulation, problem solving, and positive relationships are addressed

• The FRIENDS Programs: cognitive-behavioral interventions that focus on the promotion of resilience to prevent anxiety and depression in childhood through adulthood; four age-specific programs are offered (ages 4-7, 8-11, 12-15, and 16 and older)

• The Incredible Years Child Programs: aims to strengthen children's social and emotional competencies by focusing on topics such as anger management, problem-solving skills, manners, learning friendship, and conversational skills; the small group component is known as "Dinosaur School" and is for ages 3-8 years

• Making Proud Choices!: decision-making intervention about sex, designed to be educational and culturally sensitive for adolescents ages 12-18

Interventions for Internalizing Behaviors

• The Adolescent Coping with Depression Course (CWD-A): skills-based small-group treatment program for actively depressed adolescents ages 9-18; consists of core components such as increasing social skills and pleasant activities, and decreasing anxiety and depressive symptoms

• The Cools Kids Child and Adolescents Anxiety Management Program (Cool Kids): individual or group program involving children and adolescents ages 6-18; teaches anxiety management skills, including identifying anxious thoughts, feelings, and behaviors, and challenging these thoughts, approaching avoided situations, and using coping skills for bullying

• Coping Cat: cognitive-behavioral group intervention that assists children ages 6-17 years in recognizing anxious feelings and physical reactions to anxiety, being cognitively aware in anxiety provoking situations, and developing a plan to help cope with the situation

Interventions for Trauma

• Cognitive Behavioral Intervention for Trauma in Schools (CBITS): a school-based group and individual intervention for students in grades 3-8 who have experienced some form of trauma; designed to reduce symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), depression, and behavioral problems

• The Grief and Trauma Interventions for Children (GTI): an individual or group intervention designed for children ages 6-12 with post-traumatic stress due to witnessing or being a direct victim of violence or a disaster

• Bounce Back: a school-based group intervention for elementary students exposed to stressful and traumatic events; designed for students in grades K-5 and teaches students ways to cope with and recover from traumatic experiences

Mindfulness Interventions

• Learning to BREATE (L2B): a mindfulness-based curriculum created for class-wide or group settings; intended to strengthen attention and emotion regulation, cultivate wholesome emotions like gratitude and compassion, expand the repertoire of stress management skills, and help students integrate mindfulness into daily life

• Mindful Awareness Practices (MAPs): exercises (e.g., meditation, yoga, belly breathing, Tai-Chi, etc.) that promote a state of heightened and receptive attention to moment-by-moment experience; exercises promote awareness of self through sensory awareness, attentional regulation, and awareness of thoughts and feelings, awareness of others, and awareness of the environment

Additional Considerations

• If the above small group interventions are not feasible at your school:

  • Considering implementing Check-in/Check-out, a popular, easily implemented, and evidence-based Tier 2 intervention, which consists of student/mentor check-ins and frequent feedback on student behavior.

  • Offer brief check-ins to students in need. Check in with students of concern individually and/or work with your school team to identify who the student should check in with (i.e., trusted adult of the student's choice).

During this time, it is critical that schools partner with community organizations to support families experiencing poverty, addiction, domestic violence, homelessness, mental health, and/or trauma. Resilient Lehigh Valley is a cross-sector coalition dedicated to creating a trauma-responsive and resilient Lehigh Valley. On their website, linked here, educators and school personnel can access resources and request trainings that support social/emotional development and teach coping skills to students, educators, and caregivers through a trauma-responsive perspective.