Self-Management
Are you helping your Students and Teachers gain the ability to manage themselves?
HeartBridge Collective believes that schools should be teaching young people how to manage their thoughts, emotions, and behaviors, which will help them gain agency and responsibility as they grow into young adults.
Why is Self-Management Important?
Firstly, let's define a few terms:
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Self-Management: the taking of responsibility for one's own behavior and well-being. This involves being able to manage your thoughts, emotions, and behaviors, leading to maturity and ability to determine one's future.
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Self-Determination: is the power or ability to make a decision for oneself without influence from outside.
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Agency: is the capacity of individuals to act independently and to make their own free choices.
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You will notice a common theme to these terms: control over one's life. One of the goals of well-being is a fully realized identity. If an individual has brought focus to their health, well-being, and purpose, they will be determining where their future takes them. That is why HeartBridge sees self-management as an important part of the process--it is one of the building blocks to the Whole Child becoming "whole."
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We also believe that a school has a responsibility to make sure that their staff is self-managed. When a person is being managed by an external force, they are less likely to take risks or chances for fear of punishment from that force. Teachers need to feel free to try new things and make mistakes, the same principle that we are trying to teach our students.
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How Can Your School Foster Self-Management?
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Build Emotional and Social Health and Well-Being
Build social-emotional intelligence and well-being through direct and indirect instruction. The more a student becomes self-aware, the more likely they are to have confidence in managing themselves. The more open-minded and empathetic they are, the more likely that they will learn new ways of thinking and experiencing life.
2
Develop a Growth Mindset
Develop growth mindsets that will help students learn to rely on effort and practice, as well as redefining what failure means. You will hear the HeartBridge team really harp on the importance of the growth mindset. Developing a growth mindset makes a person more likely to build confidence in their abilities (efficacy). The more experience a person has, the more likely they will have faith in their ability to manage themselves.
3
Teach Emotional Regulation
Teach emotional regulation strategies using mindfulness and impulse control. One of the most basic facets of self-management is the ability to control your emotions and impulses. Mindfulness helps us to put a buffer between an event and our reaction to that event. That allows us to evaluate the situation and make a decision that is healthy and rational. Once we have mindfulness as a skill, it will become easier and more natural to stop, breathe, think, and respond.
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Discover and Develop Strengths
Help individuals in our care discover their strengths and how to apply them. Many of the young people, and even some adults, will have grown up without anyone helping them find the parts of who they are that make them strong. If we want to have a lasting impact, we need to shine a light on our students', and our school staff's, strengths. When a person has awareness of their strengths, they can use them to counteract negative thoughts, adverse events, and even mental health struggles.
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Evaluate Decision-Making
Teach individuals how to reflect on and evaluate their decision-making. To help students become self-sufficient, we must begin teaching them self-reflection and self-evaluation. Begin by asking them questions about their behavior, why they made the decisions they made, and what consequences occurred because of their actions. Make this a common practice. It will lead to more critical thinking and self-correcting behaviors. Questions can also be asked of students’ purpose, strengths, passions, etc.
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Build Confidence in Abilities
Challenge them to go beyond what they think they can do. Asking students to stretch their comfort zone--stretch, not bend--is a helpful strategy for getting them to push themselves beyond what they think they can be. We mentioned efficacy earlier, and it should be noted that an individual's confidence in their abilities is a major factor in resilience. The more resilient a person is, the more likely that they will take responsibility for what happens to them. This has an added benefit of decreasing mindsets such as victimization and entitlement.