ABSTRACT

There is an important correlation between social emotional wellbeing and the atmosphere of the school. Children first learn from their families and then from outside sources in their community. As early educators we need to strive to also be a model of healthy social emotional skills for our students; because, not all our children are going to have the ideal model to learn these crucial social emotional skills. When children have big emotions we need to not take their behavior personally. When a child is acting out they are trying to communicate a need to us that they have no other way to communicate. If we approach the children calmly, being an example of how to handle these big emotions as well as helping to guide them through labeling the emotions and trying to understand these big emotions, we create a positive climate for learning. To meet the need of having the highest quality of care to offer the children in our program, we need to have access to more professional development. These opportunities need to help give our teachers further training in the areas of trauma and mindfulness so that the teachers can be that role model for the social emotional skills our children need in order to be successful in their journey of education.