Lesson 1 - Introduction to Coping Power & Emotions

Welcome, teachers, to our first Coping Power Classroom: Power Up Video. We’re so grateful that your school is partnering with us to bring Coping Power to your students, and we hope you’ll soon see the positive impacts on your students’ behaviors, interactions, and overall wellbeing.

Coping Power focuses on four key areas: managing strong emotions, building communication skills, problem-solving in difficult situations, and navigating peer relationships. In the first week of this program, students receive an overview of the Coping Power curriculum, its contents, and its relevance to their lives. We then start diving into recognizing and managing strong emotions. Students are learning that strong emotions can be important, and can even be helpful, but sometimes these strong emotions can make it difficult to work through challenging situations or conflicts with friends.

Students are practicing with emotion identification, or recognizing the emotion they are currently experiencing. To take this one step further, they're also identifying the intensity of those emotions. Rather than just labeling their feelings as happy, sad, or mad, students will learn to recognize how they might be content or ecstatic, disappointed or devastated, frustrated or livid.

The vocabulary surrounding emotions can be really tricky, so students are practicing using a thermometer image to identify their “emotion temperature.” They are exploring how their experiences, their thoughts, and their actions can lead to changes in the intensity of their emotions, reflected on that emotion thermometer. By recognizing the impact of all of these things on their emotions, they’ll be better able to identify strategies to manage emotions and navigate difficult situations.

Again, we cannot overstate how much we appreciate your support as your students begin to learn these critical skills. As teachers, you spend more time with these children than most other adults in their lives do. This makes you an incredibly important and influential role model in your students’ lives.

To support you in helping your students to generalize the Coping Power skills and strategies, we’ll provide a few “power practice” ideas and questions to use with your students throughout the week. We encourage you to make a plan for specific times when you might check in with your students about their Coping Power lessons.

This week’s Power Practice encourages you to talk to your students about the strengths they already have, specifically related to behaviors or skills that might support their Coping Power learning. For example, they can consider if they're a good listener, if they're caring about others, or if they have the ability to stay calm under pressure. You might even have students write down the strength they come up with on a sticky note, and that can remain on their desk as a positive affirmation throughout the week. Alternatively, you could write a sticky note to each child in your class, complimenting them on a strength that you see in them everyday!

You might also have a conversation with your students about the four core skills of Coping Power. Remember, those are: managing strong emotions, building social communication skills, problem-solving in difficult situations, and navigating peer relationships. What skill is your class most interested in learning about, and why?

We hope you enjoy these Power Practice suggestions and have some great conversations with your students. Thanks for watching, and we’ll see you next week!