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Championing mental health: Hillcrest Elementary addresses students' mental health daily

The Chippewa Herald - 12/24/2021

Dec. 23—Growing up invites waves of emotion, and navigating those waters is an overwhelming task many children don't know how to face.

Hillcrest Elementary School in Chippewa Falls is employing an approach to social emotional learning within their classrooms that benefits the mental health of their students and their families.

Every day, students gauge their mental health and place it within one of four zones to indicate how they're feeling. The blue zone describes a low state of alertness, such as when one feels sad, tired, sick or bored. The green zone is used to describe a regulated state of alertness where the student is calm, happy, focused or content. The yellow zone is used to describe a heightened state of alertness where the student may be experiencing stress, frustration, anxiety, excitement, silliness, nervousness, confusion and other elevated emotion. Finally, the red zone is used to describe extremely heightened state of alertness or very intense feeling including anger, rage, explosive behavior, panic, terror or elation.

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"It's important that kids know that there is nothing wrong with being in any particular zone," guidance counselor Kristi Kjelstad said. "We all feel all of the feelings on the chart and that is completely natural. It's just important that we identify those feelings so they don't fester and get worse."

The indication of these zones help teach the students emotional regulation, help build their social skills by sharing with their classmates and get a snapshot into their life outside of school.

Kindergarten through second-grade classrooms use a physical board to move their photo to a specific zone, while grades 2-5 use an online Google Form, as having their emotions out in the open can make older student feel vulnerable or uncomfortable.

To continue developing new ways to support their students' mental health, Hillcrest Elementary was awarded a $5,000Mayo Health System grant to aid the school's program. This money will be used to design and create an "Activity Path" to promote physical activity on the playground. It will also help design and create a "Peace Path" to promote restorative practices on the playground and clean up their "Quiet Garden" space to provide a place for teachers to bring students for mindfulness activities.

"Our goal is to better help our students comprehend their emotions," Principal Lori Hebert said. "Being able to regulate their emotions, and also show empathy for others, is going to make our classroom and the community as a whole a better place."

Hillcrest Elementary introduced these social emotional learning tools a number of years ago and plans to continue to develop them. These methods are not currently in place at the middle or high school levels, but the idea has been presented to school leaders so they too might better address their students' mental health on a daily basis.

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