School Counselor

The school counselor is here to support every single student in the building! The counselor does the following:

• Teaches classroom lessons to all students about a variety of social-emotional topics
• Runs group counseling activities to support student growth
• Performs individual student planning to help students with goal setting, understanding their interests and skills, and achieving their potential
• Provides brief, solution-focused individual counseling to support the academic, social-emotional success
• Provides support during crises
• Collaborates with school staff, families, and community agencies to support students
• Provides referrals for appropriate community resources

• Take disciplinary action with students
• Only provide career guidance
• Tell parents or teachers what to do
• Provide long-term therapy

The Zones of Regulation is a complete social-emotional learning curriculum that teaches children self-regulation and emotional control.

The students are learning how to recognize their feelings and what zone they are operating in, as well as practice and decide on individualized strategies to help them return to a place of calm and focus where learning is optimal.

 

The Zones of Regulation is a complete social-emotional learning curriculum, created to teach children self-regulation and emotional control.

Learning Objectives

1. What are the four zones, and which emotions belong to each zone?

2. How to identify which zone you are in

3. What triggers cause you to move out of the green zone?

4. How to recognize what zone others are in

5. Strategies to move back to the green zone from yellow, blue, or red

6. Expected behavior vs unexpected behavior

7. Size of the problem

8. How your actions affect what zone other people are in (comfortable and uncomfortable thoughts)

Skills Taught

• Identifying your emotions by categorizing feelings into four zones

• Self-regulation: Achieving the preferred state of alertness (zone) for a situation. This includes regulating your body and emotions.

• Identifying triggers: Learning what makes you “tick” and why

• Coping strategies: Techniques that help regulate emotions and manage intense feelings

• Size of the problem: Understanding that your reaction should match the size of the problem, how to assess problem size, and strategies to solve it

• Expected vs unexpected behavior: Perspective-taking and understanding how your behavior affects others’ thoughts and feelings

Zone Colors and Their Meaning

The Zones of Regulation uses four colors to help children identify and categorize their feelings.

It teaches children to understand emotions, sensory needs, and thinking patterns. Children learn to cope and manage emotions based on their current color zone, recognize triggers, read facial expressions, problem-solve, and understand how their actions affect others.
(Kuypers, L.M., 2011)

The Green Zone

The Green Zone means feeling calm, alert, or “okay.”
It includes feeling calm, focused, happy, relaxed, or ready to learn. This is the ideal state, especially in classroom learning environments.

The Yellow Zone

The Yellow Zone is a heightened state of alertness.
You still have control, but may feel:

• Frustrated

• Anxious

• Nervous

• Excited

• Silly

• Hyper

These can be appropriate in certain situations.

The Red Zone

The Red Zone is an extremely heightened emotional state.
You’re no longer in control of emotions or actions.
This includes:

• Anger

• Rage

• Terror

• Devastation

Often associated with meltdowns.

The Blue Zone

The Blue Zone is a low state of alertness or arousal.
You may feel:

• Sad

• Sick

• Tired

• Bored

You’re still in control, but energy is low.

Zones in the Home

• Create a Zones Check-In for Home

Learning Your Child’s Triggers

Triggers” are events and thoughts that move us from the Green Zone to the Yellow or Red Zone. For your child to effectively self-regulate, they must begin to predict triggers and plan how to handle them. Their self-awareness of their triggers is key, as is your awareness as the caregiver. Talk to your child about what sets them off – a bothersome sibling, technology issues, being hungry, etc., and then plan for how they can work through inevitable triggers by using their coping skills.

With a caregiver’s consent, the following topics may be covered when there is an identified need with multiple students:

• New student support
• Friendship skills
• Social skills
• Managing anger
• Managing worry
• Managing stress
• Changing families
• Self-control
• Mindfulness
• Building self-esteem
• Grief recovery
• Study skills
• Conflict resolution

 

• Growth mindset
• Study skills
• Problem-solving skills
• Self-advocacy (asking for help)
• Responsibility
• Friendship
• Respecting differences
• Social skills
• Respect
• Empathy
• Emotions
• Mindfulness
• Self-regulation
• Coping skills
• Managing frustration/anger
• Stress management
• Conflict resolution
• Self-esteem & confidence
• Kindness
• Resiliency
• Communication
• Self-care
• And so much more!