The Counseling Connect
March Newsletter
Does Your Student Have Grit?
Perseverance, mental toughness, and resiliency all equate to Grit! Ms. Giden spent some time in math classrooms on Feb. 19th and 20th to discuss with students about their own struggles and obstacles that they have faced and what they did to overcome them. Students spent time defining what grit means and what does grit look like. For example, if they were to see a student showing girt, what would they be doing? Ms. Giden also gave an example of a time when she had to call upon her own grit to get through a tough situation. Students finished up the discussion to give examples of what grit is not! Some examples included, cheating, not doing homework or quitting.
In the book, "The Grit Guide for Teens" author Caren Baruch-Feldman gives her top ten suggestions for parents in cultivating grit in your teen. They are:
1- Establish and maintain a positive relationship- focus on your student's strengths and their more positive traits. Also, engage in positive activities with them.
2-Help your teen find their passion- teens today feel they should excel in everything. It's important for you to help your teen find their strengths and grow their passion in an area that is important to them. It is when we feel passionate about a goal that grit can grow.
3-Make it about growth- send the message to your teen that their abilities are changeable and can grow with effort, that with challenge comes growth, and that failure breeds learning. Neurons in their brain actually grow stronger when they engage in challenging tasks!
4- Balance your high expectations with support- Let your teen know that you have high expectations for them even as you demonstrate your willingness to help them along the way.
5- Lead by example- model gritty behavior by taking on challenges, being persistent and bouncing back from failure. For example, be explicit about your own everyday struggles. Tell your teen about a problem you faced at work, or the time you and a friend hit a bump in your relationship that you needed grit to work through.
6- Understand the teenage brain- You know how it feels to be bombarded by information and stimuli: the ding of a text message, the lure of social media, an abundance of entertainment options. For our teens, these distractions are even more intense because of how the teenage brain develops. By understanding the teenage brain, you will be in a better position to support your teen.
7- Establish goals and habits- Help your teen establish goals that are specific and measurable. It is best to make gritty behavior a habit as opposed to using self-control or willpower.
8- Cultivate gratitude- being grateful helps develop a positive and optimistic mind-set, which makes it easier to be gritty when you encounter the less than positive.
9- Be a buffer for stress, but let your teen skin her knees- It is natural for us to want to protect our children so that they never have to face the sting of failure or disappointment. However, never experiencing or dealing with the consequences of failure can make it more challenging when it does occur.
10- Find purpose and community- Help your teen find purpose for their gritty behavior by showing how it can benefit others. See if they can find a way to use their strengths, passion, and personal skills to address problems in the world.
Get To Kow Us and National Social Work Month!
Every month we will be highlighting a different staff member to further help parents get to know us a little bit better! Since March is National Social Work Month, it only makes sense that we honor our School Social Worker, Debbie Gegg! Read below to hear more from Mrs. Gegg:
"I have been with the district for 20 years. I am married with four amazing adult children. I was born and raised in central Illinois and moved to St. Louis in the 90's for grad school at Washington University. I worked for about three years in St. Louis Public Schools, which I also truly enjoyed, before coming to Rockwood School District. I consider it an honor and a privilege that students and their families trust me with their joys and challenges and try to treat every child as I would want someone to treat my own. I was completely honored this school year with the Missouri School Social Worker of the Year Award which has been amazing! I consider my self extremely lucky for having a career that is my passion and where we can help children find their passion too"
Equity Team
Our Equity Team has been working diligently in preparing projects to help foster equity and inclusion at LaSalle! Humans of LaSalle, #ThatsNotFunny, and Immigration are topics that our equity students chose to explore. More details to come!
On February 12th our Equity Leadership Team visited Boeing for the Give Respect Get Respect program on Race. April 2nd will be the final visit and will include topics regarding LGBTQIA.
Attention Parents! See Below!
Anti- Bullying Ambassadors
Our ambassadors have been hard at work training future leaders at Geggie Elementary on February 1st, Blevins Elementary on February 22nd and Eureka Elementary on February 25th!
When facilitating these trainings, our ambassadors focus on the RSD acronym.
R= Recognize- is to first identify and define what bullying actually is. Bullying is defined as, unwanted, inappropriate behavior done on purpose that is repeated and hurtful. Bullying also involves one or people acting more powerful than another.
S=Stop- involves details on how to actually stop bullying when you see it occur. Students should ask simple questions to find out why the person said or did that and how you can best deal with the problem. For example, students can try asking: "Why did you say that?" What do you mean?" or "Why do you feel that way?"
D=Describe- Next step is to describe the event to a trusted adult and tell them these things: What did you see, who was there, where did this take place, what did you do, and how did you feel about it
Challenging Your Inner Critic
Anxiety seems to be the #1 struggle that we see students having problems with. The thoughts that students have surrounding these feelings are usually the culprit. Many students have irrational beliefs concerning themselves or others which results in distorted thinking. To help them through this, try talking through each of the points below with your child.
Step 1- What specifically is the worst that can happen? Whatever your child seems to be worried or anxious about, ask them- What particular stupid thing do you expect you will do? Who, precisely, do you expect is going to judge you? Have them name names! The more details the better. Usually students can come to terms even at this step how on irrational their thoughts are.
Step 2- How bad would that really be? If the thing they are worried about the most actually happened, would any of those things truly be a disaster of epic proportions? Would anyone die? Would you be irreversibly broken? Yes, it probably would feel awful, but would they be disasters? Would they be worth getting really worked up over?
Step 3- What are the odds? If the student really does think that a disaster could happen, ask them to think about the odds that something like that could truly happen. For example, what are the odds that every single person will conclude you're an anxious freak because you're sweaty? We sometimes foresee big consequences in small things.
Step 4- How Could You Cope? Yes, that thing that we are worried about will feel awful, but how will you cope with it? We get anxious when we think we can't deal. It makes sense: anxiety makes us doubt our own abilities. Our fear feels like fact. We feel incapable, so we must be. We feel overwhelmed, so we must be in over our heads. Spell it out: How would you take action?