Brunswick, GA: Teachers trained to address "students' social and emotional health"

Jan 23, 2018, Brunswick (GA) News: Goodyear teachers trained to address social, emotional health of students https://thebrunswicknews.com/news/local_news/goodyear-teachers-trained-to-address-social-emotional-health-of-students/article_f76c94ea-9d7e-5596-acc5-22ee9e82565c.html The “sensory walkway” is a new technique Goodyear Elementary School has implemented as part of the school’s new curriculum focusing on students’ social and emotional health. Teachers underwent training this week on how to use this as a tool to calm down students who’ve had an emotional outburst during class. “Our focus here is social-emotional health, and we’re all about always giving teachers strategies to use as a way to at least regulate our students so that they can focus on learning and not on situations, circumstances or some of the emotions that tend to disengage them from the classroom,” said Oatanisha Dawson, Goodyear’s principal, during a training session with teachers Tuesday. … We wanted just to provide you guys with another tangible tool to help regulate students,” Christianson said. When a student has an outburst, Christianson said teachers need to provide him or her with a moment to gain control of themselves and refocus. Through this approach, teachers will ask the student to step out into the hallway, where the sensory walkway will be set up. The student will take off his or her shoes and will walk up and down the walkway five times with their teacher.