EMOTIONAL AWARENESS PLAN

For teachers

When my student reacts in frustration, I often feel...

SHORT JUST AS
CALM + IRRITATED + MAD + TEMPERED + FRUSTRATED + HOPELESS + OVERWHELMED =

If your student’s frustration impacts your own emotions in a way that isn’t serving you or your student, it’s
time to modify your habits and behaviors and get a new plan.

1 What’s Your Trigger in this Situation? When your student is frustrated, begin to mindfully
recognize what emotions are being triggered in you. Different circumstances
will likely trigger different emotional responses.

2 How Would You Like to Feel? Spend a few moments thinking about how you would like to
feel in this circumstance, not how you would fix it. Mindfully connect with that feeling and
name it!

3 How Are You Going to Make it Happen? What tools, skills, words and actions do
you need to take to move from current emotions to goal emotions? Write down
your plan for how you are going to choose to respond to your child’s frustrating
behavior. Base your plan on ending with the feeling you visualized.

4 Follow the Plan! It seems silly but this is the part that seems to get dropped first in
a moment of emotional response. Keep your plan somewhere easily accessible when
emotions are high. When our brain gets emotionally overloaded, it will choose the response
we most often take. We have to practice our new, desired response until it becomes our
new normal.

5 Consider Sharing Your New Approach to the Frustration

This can be a good model of skills in adopting beneficial
responses, keeping everyone on the same page with
accountability and expectations. It also helps promote
social and emotional connection.

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