Wellness Center

Happy Holidays to everyone as we dive into the heart of winter! Thankfully, the light is slowly returning and, today at least, we're getting a rain break and some warmth.

The Wellness Center was busy before break working with students as they transitioned away from school and into the holidays. We were also reengaging with emotional regulation as a topic during Social Emotional Learning Classes. Specifically, we focused on "belly breathing" and working on naming our feelings. This week, we expanded into "positive self-talk".

We encourage you to reach out if you feel your child could use our support. We welcome your feedback, if you have comments, questions or suggestions please visit the "Comment Box" link below.

If this is an urgent matter regarding student safety, please contact SafeOregon by call or text at 844-472-3367

Links to some of the K-6 SEL curriculums we use:

Kelso’s choice docs: Parent Page

Second step: Information for Families

Email: jon.talebreza-may@ridgeline.org
Phone: 541-681-9662

Belly breathing and positive self-talk focus on supporting students to regulate their feelings throughout the day. This can be as simple as learning how to focus on academics after coming back from recess or as challenging as calming down after becoming angry when a friend isn't kind. Students came up with many other ways they regulate their feelings throughout the day as well. The key to all all of these techniques is practice, practice, practice. When we make a habit of self-regulation, it is easier the next time. A example of this with adults is road rage: making a habit of voicing our frustration with other drivers makes it easier to continue this in the future, while taking a deep breath and remembering the other driver needs our forgiveness and compassion makes it more likely we will return to that approach the next time we are frustrated while on the road. Below are some specifics about the techniques we have learned recently.

Belly breathing is simply taking a deep breath in through the nose and exhaling it through the mouth, while your hands rest on your stomach. Being able to feel the breath deeply in your body likes this helps the nervous system to relax, while grounding us in the present moment. So much of anxiety and stress comes about when our minds are focused on something other than what is happening in the moment. Research shows that even one breath can bring our nervous system out of "fight or flight" and into "rest and relax". Here's a nice Sesame Street video focusing on belly breathing: https://youtu.be/Xq3DwzX6MUw

Positive self-talk this week was focused on using encouraging thinking in order to pep ourselves up when working on something that is a challenge. This was contrasted with "negative self-talk", which for most of us happens automatically. Examples of the two are "I can't do this, this always happens, it's never going to be right, I might as well give up" compared to "I can do this, even if I don't get it right the first time, I can try again later, everything takes practice". We really focused on how learning is about practicing skills over and over again, therefore setting realistic expectations that it will take time to master a challenging activity. Here's a nice video on self-talk: https://youtu.be/AJ2YQp3judg

We've included attachments below to help your student follow-up on the skills we've been trying out in school. As noted, these skills, like all others, take practice in order to really support us in our lives, so trying them out at home will help!

As always, if you have questions about how your student is doing, please don't hesitate to reach out. Until then, take care and be well.