Managing Emotions in Times of Uncertainty & Stress (Coursera)

What You Will Learn

- Educate school staff in the science and impact of stress

- Provide school staff with the opportunity to build and apply social and emotional skills and strategies

- Offer strategies for helping students to identify and manage their emotions

- Provide resources and ideas that are relevant during this time of heightened stress and uncertainty

Syllabus

WEEK 1

Introduction to SEL and Why Emotions Matter

Social and emotional skills are more important now than ever. As educators, we can find ways to better identify and manage our own emotions, which in turn, can help our students identify and manage theirs. In this introductory week, we’ll unpack how emotions can help and hinder attention, decision making, relationships, health, and performance.

WEEK 2

Identifying Our Emotions

In this section, you'll focus on how to identify your own emotions, which is an essential first step to building emotional intelligence skills. You'll explore how to recognize, understand, and accurately label emotions using the Mood Meter. This section builds a foundation for the rest of the course, where you'll learn how to manage your emotions and help students to manage theirs.

WEEK 3

Managing Our Own Emotions with Action Strategies

In this section, you'll apply what you've learned about identifying your emotions to the practice of managing your emotions. You'll explore and reflect on a series of "action strategies" to help you manage your emotions in healthy, productive ways.

WEEK 4

Managing Emotions by Shifting How We Think

While the previous section focused on "action strategies" to support healthy emotion management, this section focuses on "thought strategies." You'll consider research-based ways to shift the way you think to shift the way you feel, and consider how you can incorporate these strategies into your daily life.

WEEK 5

Becoming a Culturally Responsive Emotion Scientist

This section focuses on applying strategies for approaching your own and others' emotions in scientific and culturally responsive ways. You'll have the opportunity to describe the biases involved in identifying and managing emotions, as well as to reflect on the potential impact of your own biases on your interactions with others.

WEEK 6

Identifying Others' Emotions

While the first half of the course focused on identifying your own emotions, this section focuses on strategies for improving your awareness of others' emotions (especially the emotions of your students). You'll explore the barriers to understanding others' emotions and ways to improve this skill as an emotion scientist.

WEEK 7

Helping Others Manage Emotions

This section takes your skills in identifying others' emotions a step further, providing research-based steps to help others manage their emotions. You will be introduced to the concept of emotion co-regulation, as well as a five-step process to support students in moments of high stress.

WEEK 8

Making a Commitment to Lasting Change

This final section brings together everything so far in the course. You'll look at your action plans from each section of the course and make a commitment to lasting change.