My Helper

In my second grade classes, I'm beginning a unit on emotion management. As I started teaching a lesson last week, I reviewed what we had learned about problem-solving and anger management in first grade. We discussed taking belly breaths, counting backward, clicking off our stormy thoughts and onto sunny ones, and bossing ourselves around. At this point, I was ready to introduce the new lesson. Now as all primary grade educators know, young children often raise their hands way too often, frequently introducing a point that has nothing to do with the lesson in progress. Therefore, when I saw a hand fly up just as I was getting into the meat of our current lesson, I almost ignored it. Yet, this particular little curly-haired boy was one of my "frequent flyers" last year, and I felt a nudge to let him speak. What a helpful instinct! The freckle-faced child grinningly said, "Miss Mimi, I bossed myself around today!" "Great!" I said. "Tell us about it!" "Well," he continued. "I was about to drink more water from my bottle, but I said to myself, 'No! It'll make you have to go to the bathroom all day!' " And he wagged his bossing finger at himself as he said it! Hooray! Children always love hearing first-person stories from their peers, and we educators LOVE the fact that our lessons are being applied in our students' everyday lives.  What a great way to kick off the lesson!