Why Schools Should Focus More on Emotional Education: A 4th Grade Teacher’s Perspective
Tuesday last week, I was passing back fractions unit tests, and the room still smelled like the grape crayon someone had broken on the carpet after morning snack. Crumbs of Goldfish crackers were stuck to the leg of my desk, and half the kids were already craning their necks to see their scores before I got to their row. I set Mia’s paper face-up on her desk: 94, one point off for a miscalculation on the last word problem. She stared at it for three seconds, crumpled it into a tight ball, shoved it into the back of her desk, and dropped her head into her arms, shoulders shaking.
I waited until the rest of the class was working on their exit ticket, then pulled a chair next to her window seat. She mumbled into her sleeve that she was stupid, that she’d never get into college, that her dad said anything less than an A means you’re not trying hard enough. I sat with her for five minutes, until she calmed down enough to smooth the paper out, but I couldn’t stop thinking about it 10 minutes later, when the recess aide called me down to the playground. Javi, who’d gotten a 78 on his test and hadn’t even blinked at the score, had pushed another kid into the slide hard enough to scrape his knee. When I pulled him aside to talk, he just shrugged and stared at his shoes. “He made me mad,” was all he would say. When I asked him what mad felt like, where he felt it in his body, he just shook his head. He couldn’t name it, so he acted on it.
That same day, two very different kids, two very different problems, neither of which had anything to do with how well they could add or divide fractions. Mia can do fractions in her sleep. Javi can work through any problem if he stops rushing long enough. Their struggles weren’t academic. They were emotional. And right now, our schools aren’t set up to teach that part.
I’ve been teaching for seven years. Every year, I sit through multiple trainings on reading interventions, math test prep, how to bump our class’s state scores up a few points. The only training I’ve had on supporting kids’ emotions was a two-hour workshop three years ago, put on by a district rep who left halfway through for another meeting. Our school counselor is split between three elementary buildings, so she only sees kids when there’s a full-blown crisis. Everything else falls to us, if we have time to squeeze it in between lessons.
Last fall, I decided to make time, even if it meant cutting 10 minutes from the morning free play the kids used to get. I printed out eight index cards, drew a simple face on each, and labeled them with one basic emotion: sad, frustrated, excited, worried, angry, calm, tired, jealous. Every morning, before we start reading, each kid points to the card that matches how they’re feeling that day. They can share why if they want, or just point. If they’re carrying a really big feeling, they can sit in the calm down corner by my door for five minutes with a fidget spinner before joining the rest of the class. That’s it. No fancy curriculum, no extra training, just 10 minutes a day.
After a couple of months, I started to see small shifts. Javi didn’t get sent to the office for fighting once last quarter, which is a first for him. The other day, when a kid knocked over his block tower, Javi took a deep breath and said “I’m really angry right now, I’m gonna go sit for a minute,” instead of pushing. Mia still cares a lot about grades, but last month when she got a B on her book report, she came up to me after class and said “I’m frustrated I messed up the ending, but I’ll do better next time,” instead of shutting down and crying for 20 minutes.
You don’t need a big budget or a new district mandate to do this. For teachers, it’s as simple as changing the words you use when a kid is upset. Instead of saying “stop crying and get back to work,” try “I can see you’re really upset right now. Let’s take two deep breaths together and try again.” It’s one sentence, no extra time, and it teaches kids that their feelings are normal and nameable. For parents, it’s just as easy: swap one question at dinner. Instead of leading with “what grade did you get on your test today?” ask “what was the trickiest feeling you had today?” It doesn’t take any extra time, it just shifts what you care about enough to ask about.
It’s not perfect. Some days we’re cramming for an upcoming field trip or a state practice test, and I skip the morning check-ins entirely. Some kids still won’t talk about their feelings, no matter how many cards I put up. Mia still has nights where she cries to her mom about messing up a test, and Javi still pushes sometimes when he’s caught off guard by how mad he feels. We haven’t “fixed” anything.
But what we have done is give kids words for what they’re going through. We spend 13 years of school teaching kids how to get good grades, how to get into college, how to get a good job. But when they leave, the thing that will get them through most days isn’t remembering how to divide fractions. It’s knowing how to calm down when you’re mad. It’s knowing that one bad grade doesn’t make you a failure. It’s knowing how to tell someone you’re hurt instead of lashing out. I can’t change the whole testing system overnight. But I can change 10 minutes of my day. That’s enough, for now.
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