Rewriting the rhetoric
Conceptual framework to help Crane ESS students better understand, self-regulate emotions
To support and empower students enrolled in special education programs, Crane School District’s Exceptional Student Services (ESS) department is implementing “The Zones of Regulation,” an evidence-based framework developed to help individuals recognize their emotions and gain skills to successfully self-regulate them.
“We have come to understand that for a lot of these little ones, their emotions are very big emotions and they have a difficult time regulating themselves in the classroom setting,” said Crane ESS counselor Alba Tudor. “Sometimes we don’t know exactly what we’re feeling, or we don’t know exactly what words to put to what’s happening inside our body. Our body gives us clues – sometimes we tense up in our jaw, or our shoulders are by our ears, and that’s not natural. It’s about learning to read the clues our body gives us naturally; once that is enlightened, we provide them with tools to identify that they’re feeling anxious or jittery or uncomfortable, but ‘this is what I can do to continue.’”
According to the framework, there are four “zones” of emotion – red, yellow, blue and green. In the red zone, a child may be mad or angry, terrified, elated, hitting and yelling and feeling out of control. In the yellow zone, they may be experiencing frustration, worry
or excitement, feeling silly and wiggly or a loss of some control. In the green zone, by contrast, students are happy, calm and feeling okay, focused and ready to learn. And in the blue zone, they may be feeling sad, or sick or tired or bored and moving slowly.
By categorizing emotions and levels of alertness into zones, students – as well as their teachers – will have a clearer understanding of what’s going on internally, what their needs are and how to respond to them, “so there’s no confusion,” according to Crane ESS counselor Jenny Olivas.
“If they tell you that they’re in the red zone, you know there’s something happening and it’s extreme,” Olivas said. “Whereas blue indicates ‘I’m sad,’ which is completely different from any of the other zones.”
For Crane ESS, the idea behind implementing the “Zones” framework is to rewrite the rhetoric for “negative” emotion, and in so doing, remove the labels often associated with “acting out.”
“If they’re angry or very upset, a lot of children get classified as behaving negatively,” said Olivas. “We’re saying, ‘It’s not, you’re identifying your feelings; how do we move forward from there?’ The biggest thing is recognizing (the emotion) and then being able to speak to it in a positive manner, not letting the child see it as negative.”
Olivas added: “We have some kids that throw things or get upset or storm out. When kids act out in that way, sometimes it’s attention-seeking and sometimes they’re told, ‘You’re bad.’ The zones are taking the response away from that to ‘No, you own your feelings, you’re responsible for your feelings and it’s real, and here’s how to move forward.’ It’s more of a self-reflection of what you’re feeling and how to express that in a positive manner. “This is going to help them see, ‘I’m not a bad kid, I just need a tool to help me continue learning.”
According to Tudor, because emotions aren’t always black-and-white, affording students the opportunity to vocalize or point to a visual depicting the zones and which one they resonate with that day or in that moment gives a sense of power to their words.
“That’s huge – empowering an individual to recognize where they’re at (emotionally) and knowing what they can do themselves, because it belongs to them, to continue,” Tudor said. “And in so doing, hopefully, they can empathize and empower their peers.”
Parent involvement is also a large component of the framework, fostering a team mentality and increasing the consistency between school and home.
“We train the parents, so that the students don’t just get those tools at school but they also get them at home,” Tudor said. “Our hope is that we’re able to empower our teachers to learn the vocabulary, and the parents as well, so that as a team empower our students to learn these ideas and learn to recognize them within themselves.”
“The Zones of Regulation” are slated to roll out in Crane School District in the coming weeks, piloting in a few classrooms and with individual students. Depending on its success, some sites may implement the program school-wide, according to the counselors.
“This is something that, whether you come from a good family background or a challenging one, regulating your emotions and learning how, not only in the ESS department but across the board, is going to be a really neat thing to witness; I really believe that,” said Tudor.
For more information on the framework, visit www. zonesofregulation.com.