May is Mental Health Awareness Month, a time to convey consideration to the significance of psychological well being and the sources accessible to help it. It is necessary to acknowledge the influence of excellent psychological well being on total well-being, tutorial success, and financial outcomes. As an educator, you play a essential function in selling psychological well being consciousness and making a constructive and wholesome studying atmosphere to your college students.
By selling psychological well being consciousness in your classroom, you’ll be able to assist your college students develop essential abilities like emotional regulation, self-awareness, and empathy. These abilities can enhance their confidence, engagement, and total tutorial success. Similarly, while you prioritize your individual psychological well being and well-being, you’ll be able to higher help your college students and create a constructive and supportive college tradition.
At Microsoft, we consider that expertise can play a worthwhile function in supporting a scholar’s psychological well being. That’s why we have developed instruments for psychological well being like Minecraft Education material kits and the Reflect app in Microsoft Teams for Education that can assist you promote self-awareness and social-emotional studying. These instruments may also assist you to determine traits or modifications in your college students which can be supported by information.
Building emotional intelligence by play
Minecraft Education is a game-based platform that conjures up inventive and inclusive studying by play. It has captured the hearts of tens of millions of scholars around the globe, and we have harnessed its energy to create material kits that may assist college students discover subjects like historical past, math, and even psychological well being.
Our Minecraft Social Emotional topic equipment is designed to assist college students follow mindfulness and study their feelings in a enjoyable and fascinating method. The equipment comprises a variety of actions designed to assist college students develop emotional intelligence, study to manage their feelings, and construct empathy and social consciousness. Self-regulation is a crucial life talent that helps college students to handle their feelings, conduct, and ideas. Students who can regulate their feelings are higher geared up to deal with stress and deal with tough conditions.
In these actions, college students can study to determine and perceive their feelings, mirror on them utilizing Flip, and join with one another by mindfulness. The equipment actions additionally promote different essential abilities like inclusive design considering and drawback fixing by empathy.
I notably like ‘The Mindful Knight’ world the place you’ll be able to go on a aware journey, together with a respiration train levitation spell.
– Ellie Finch MA MBACP, counselor and social employee who makes a speciality of supporting kids and fogeys
Learn extra about Minecraft Education at Get Started with Minecraft Education or Minecraft Education Teacher Academy. You may also take heed to the Educator Insider podcast episode on The Mindful Knight.
Monitoring and supporting scholar feelings with Reflect
As an educator, you recognize that supporting your college students’ psychological well being is essential to their tutorial success and total well-being. Microsoft Reflect an app in Teams for Education, is designed that can assist you prioritize your college students’ emotional wellness by making a secure house for them to mirror on their feelings and construct self-awareness.
With our new strategy to studying and new instruments like Reflect serving to college students to grasp their feelings extra, we noticed an instantaneous enchancment in scholar development and contentment whereas studying. – Antoinette Hamilton, computing lead for Richmond Academy
Using the Reflect app to handle feelings and enhance focus
In addition to creating customized check-in questions, the Reflect app additionally incorporates respiration workout routines to assist college students handle their feelings and enhance their focus. Research has proven that only one minute of centered respiration can have a major influence on scholar studying, and the Reflect app makes it simple for educators to include this follow into their class routine.
Reflect’s pleasant character, the Feelings Monster, not solely helps college students learn to handle their feelings, but additionally gives steerage on concentrate on their breath and interact in sluggish, deep respiration. This important talent may help calm the physique and scale back emotions of stress and nervousness, making it simpler for college students to organize their physique and thoughts for studying. After checking in with the app, college students can take just a few seconds to follow deep respiration with the assistance of the Feelings Monster, due to Reflect’s user-friendly design.
With the Reflect app, you’ll be able to create customized check-in questions that encourage your college students to open up and share their emotions whereas constructing emotional vocabulary. This lets you get to know your college students higher and supply customized help that meets their distinctive wants. By utilizing Reflect, you’ll be able to empower your college students to develop necessary abilities like emotional regulation, communication, and problem-solving.
The want for this data is kind of excessive. The feelings are incredible, and the kids perceive the vary of feelings and have gotten used to utilizing them. But the help we are able to present the kids now, the emotional help, is the whole lot. Not each scholar can speak in regards to the issues which can be bothering them as a lot, however in its cute little method, the Reflect monsters not solely encourage them to make use of completely different sorts of language and discover their feelings, however in addition they really open them up in a method that they wouldn’t naturally speak to an grownup. – Antoinette Hamilton, computing lead for Richmond Academy
Regular check-ins with Reflect may help you monitor your college students’ feelings over time and determine any modifications or patterns. And, with the brand new check-in concepts gallery and “Ask it once more” button, it is simpler than ever to give you inventive and galvanizing questions that maintain your college students engaged and motivated. You may also use Together view in Reflect to get a fast learn on how the category is feeling.
Together view makes it simple for educators to take a fast learn on how college students are feeling and if they’re able to study.
Reflect affords a number of new options that can assist you prioritize your college students’ psychological well being. You can now choose simplified emotion vocabulary when making a check-in, which reduces cognitive load for college students and gives them with fewer, extra primary feelings to pick. These choices make it much more inclusive and accessible for all of your learners.
When college students choose an emotion phrase they get a visible cue with the Feelings Monster and a definition to assist them determine their emotion.
In addition, the app permits college students to listen to the definition of every emotion phrase learn aloud in a method that emotes the emotion, serving to to develop their emotional consciousness in a multi-sensory method. This function is out there in English, Spanish, and Japanese, and we plan so as to add help for extra languages sooner or later.
Reflect is a software that may assist your college students construct a vocabulary to speak about feelings and specific themselves extra successfully. This, in flip, can enhance their communication and social abilities, and assist them construct constructive relationships with others. By prioritizing your college students’ emotional well-being with instruments like Reflect, you’ll be able to create a constructive and supportive college tradition that promotes self-awareness and prioritizes social-emotional studying.
Learn extra about Reflect with these sources.
As educators, you’ll be able to prioritize psychological well being consciousness and create a secure and supportive studying atmosphere for all college students. Using instruments just like the Reflect app and Minecraft Education material kits helps reinforce the abilities your college students want to achieve and out of the classroom.
By serving to your college students perceive self-regulation and self-awareness and offering them with the vocabulary to speak about feelings, you’ll be able to positively influence their tutorial efficiency, social relationships, and total well-being.
Let’s have fun Mental Health Awareness Month by taking motion to help the psychological well being and well-being of our Ok-12 college students.
Learn extra about supporting college students psychological and emotional well being with these sources.
Check out earlier weblog posts on well-being and Reflect.