This inclusive class is designed to help students manage the emotions of daily life and school. During distance learning, we can help our students find helpful strategies to center themselves when they’re feeling big emotions. We can also use this time to continue to build community and relationships so that students feel it’s safe to come to us when they need their teacher’s support.

We are a Title I school and have a wonderfully diverse population. Eighty-five percent of our students are Latinx, coming from all over Central and South America and the Caribbean (mostly Mexico, Honduras, El Salvador, Guatemala, Cuba, and Colombia). We also have students who are Filipino and Vietnamese. Many are emerging bilinguals, and it’s vital that we embrace their linguistic and ethnic identities. Our school community is family and neighborhood centered. Most of our students live in the community and can walk to school. The families in our school are supportive and are friends with each other.

A few years ago, my co-teacher and I decided to rethink our resource classroom so that we could better support our students’ academic and social-emotional needs. My co-teacher teaches the kindergartners through second graders, and I teach the third through fifth graders. Co-teaching has allowed us to better cover IEP meeting responsibilities and to provide one-on-one behavioral and emotional support, while also tending to both the primary and intermediate resource learning groups. We also have worked together to create an approach to growth mindset and mindfulness that supports our students’ social and emotional growth and well-being. We’ve found this approach invaluable for supporting our students during the move to distance learning.

Growth mindset is the belief that intelligence can be developed. A fixed mindset, on the other hand, is the belief that abilities don’t change. We adopted a growth mindset model because of its transformative power on students with thinking and learning differences. It gives everyone a fair chance to highlight their strengths and to focus on areas that need improvement without judgment or pressure. When students feel that it’s safe to take risks and make mistakes, tremendous learning occurs. Additionally, students need to have metacognitive structures in place so they can learn from their mistakes. Students who hold a growth mindset feel smart when they invest effort and engage with challenging problems, and they’re more likely to be resilient and ask for support when they face a challenge. The growth mindset model combines brain science with mindfulness to empower all learners to understand their strengths and build from their understanding that everyone is a learner.

It’s key that the growth mindset model be incorporated holistically into all parts of the school day. For it to take hold in the classroom, it should be the lens through which all learning takes place. A central part of the framework is understanding that growth mindset is an attitude and a practice you have about yourself. An important aspect is the power of “yet.” For example, “I may not be able to multiply fluently yet. I’m working on repeated addition. And soon, I know I’ll be able to multiply with a deep understanding.”

Growth mindset is also about students being accountable to themselves by learning to recognize and take care of their own holistic needs. A big part of this is learning to take care of social-emotional and behavioral needs. Understanding that all behavior communicates a need, and relying on the principles of growth mindset, in our classroom we encourage our students to take the lead in their own social-emotional growth. This means that we consistently provide tools, strategies, and practice for students to learn about and identify emotions, assess how particular emotions make their bodies feel/respond, learn to implement calming strategies to allow their brain to come up with solutions, and practice enacting those solutions with the help of an adult or peer if necessary.

Learning goals
I can name and identify my emotions.
I can brainstorm strategies to calm my brain and body.
I can talk about my emotions and feelings.