Teaching Kids to Pause, Cope, and Connect: Lessons for Social Emotional Learning and Mindfulness

Thirty hands-on lessons provide students opportunities to learn and practice self-regulation strategies.

Students today face many challenges that did not exist a generation or two ago, and rates of emotional disorders (including anxiety and depression) have increased steadily over the years. Students must also manage an overwhelming amount of information. With today’s reliance on technology and social media, they have fewer opportunities to develop effective self-regulation strategies and interpersonal and stress management skills.
 
Helping students understand their emotions and behavior when they’re young will set them on a path to being successful learners and empathetic people throughout their lives. With thirty easy-to-implement, skill-based lessons and activities, Teaching Kids to Pause, Cope, and Connect provides educators with strategies to help students:

• manage and reduce their anxiety with healthy coping skills
• understand and regulate physical responses to stress
• separate emotions from actions
• respond mindfully (rather than impulsively) to difficult situations
• improve social skills, social awareness, and self-regulation
• develop empathy and compassion

Digital content includes reproducible student handouts that accompany each lesson, plus six bonus lessons.

Mark Purcell, Psy.D., (drmarkpurcell.com) is a clinical psychologist who specializes in treating children and families with emotional regulation challenges.

He has been working in various aspects of the mental health field for over twenty years. Mark’s professional experience has ranged from providing psychotherapy to children to developing specialized treatment programs and teaching professionals and graduate students. In addition to teaching and training, he provides therapy in his private practice. Mark has particular interests in mindfulness-based therapeutic approaches, such as DBT and MBSR. He also has research interests in the effects of trauma and effective treatment modalities.

He co-authored Mindfulness for Teen Anger, which integrates these interests into a self-help workbook for adolescents. 

He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Kellen Glinder, M.D., is a pediatrician and site lead for the Silicon Valley office of Private Medical. He is also the emeritus chair of pediatrics at the Palo Alto Division of the Palo Alto Medical Foundation and an adjunct clinical assistant professor at Stanford University. He is active in both the American Academy of Pediatrics and the American Academy of Allergy, Asthma, and Immunology. As a Wilderness Medical Society member, he enjoys figuring out how to get kids outside often and with smiles.

Kellen is a Screen Actors Guild member, has trained as an improvisational actor, and has taught classes in medical improv and the art of communication, including a course at the Dartmouth Geisel School of Medicine.

He lives in the heart of Silicon Valley, California.