Invisible emotions cause a lot of disruption in children's lives. Handling & preventing something invisible is difficult, especially in a classroom of 20-30 kids, each of them with 3-4 emotions in their heads at once. We live in a world where we buy applications in an app-store to solve any challenge. Yet there are almost none that could help make emotions visible, and tangible. I've designed one.
Tangible tools/apps are the basis of the Scool Days program. We teach educators during an online seminar all the background information they need to implement the basic tools. They prepare their tools during the seminar. The next day they can start the implementation in the class. Kids make their own versions of the tangible tools that will help them express their feelings in a socially acceptable way. The tools help children to communicate with their peers about emotions like anger, fear, and anxiety without hurting each other. The tools are nice, colorful, fun to prepare, tangible, and easy to use. They make anger, fear, etc. visible and allow kids to operate in preventive, "self-control" mode when expressing them. Teachers experience immediate results in handling disruptive behaviors. The regular use of these tools will nurture student/teacher wellbeing, and maintain that as the new norm in a classroom. As a result, "magic happens" is the usual feedback we receive from the teachers.
This innovation re-designs the school ecosystem to nurture a climate where student well-being is the basic. It is a preventive program, a mindset, which can be built and maintained through the use of colorful "tangible tools". We train the members of the entire ecosystem around children: educators (PK-12), psychologists, counselors in the family support system, crime prevention police officials, and victim assistance centers. We work with 500-600 children during the summer break in the frame of corporate employee benefit programs. We train 150-200 professionals. The program was successfully implemented in Spain, at the American School of Las Palmas, the Budapest School, and multiple Hungarian public schools, and showcased at MIT and other conferences in Budapest and Portugal.
Participate in the online workshop, apply for the teachers’ package.
Follow the instructions of the workshop, create your own tools.
Try them out (with people whom you trust)
Introduce in class (this is to set the ground for the new mindset)
Collect kids' opinions
Regularly create opportunities for children to use it. (This is to maintain the new mindset. The results will arrive within 1-3 weeks.)
