SMART Moves: Emotional Wellness

Coping Connect SMART Moves: Emotional Wellness By Sarah Grizzle Self-Care Self-Care Coping Connect Coping Feeling Self-Care Connect Connect Coping Coping Feeling Feeling Self-Care Connect Connect 30 Sessions Grades K-8 Targeted Program Facilitator’s Guide Part of the SMART Moves suite of programs, Emotional Wellness helps young people develop foundational social-emotional skills. Progressing through 10 sequential sessions in three age groups, participants build a personal toolbox for self-management and coping. Completing Emotional Wellness prepares youth to participate in SMART Moves: Core and more. Sarah Wilkerson, executive director of the Boys & Girls Club of Loudon County in Tennessee, knows that emotions can sometimes run high in the Club. “Walk into any Club, on any given day, and you will see a wide range of big emotions in little bodies,” she says. “The kid who doesn’t have the best hand-eye coordination playing four square who screams and cries in the corner every time they’re called out. The kid who just got out of school for the day and runs around in circles aggressively tagging all their friends in the tech lab. The kid who didn’t get enough sleep the night before because their parents were fighting.” So, it’s no surprise that when Club leadership learned of the opportunity to participate in the pilot test for the new SMART Moves: Emotional Wellness program, they signed up immediately. The SMART (Skills Mastery and Resilience Training) suite of prevention programs, originally developed by BGCA CopingSMART Moves: Emotional WellnessFeeling and Clubs in the 1980s, has undergone a thoroughly modern update. Today’s SMART Moves programs use a strengths-based approach to health promotion, “One particular lesson involved a ‘rabbit trail,’ where incorporating youth voice and choice as well as some of our older boys opened up about their personal opportunities to learn and practice key social-emotional struggles,” Wilkerson explains. “They learned that skills young people need to make healthy choices about everyone is dealing with these kinds of feelings, and risky behaviors. they don’t have to put up walls. They can find someone The first piece of the redesigned program is Emotional they trust to talk it over with.” Wellness, which focuses on positive coping strategies While the Club participated in the pilot before the that build the three cognitive-behavior skills most linked COVID-19 pandemic began, skills the kids built are being to helping youth avoid negative thought patterns and put to use now as they cope with all the changes. “We behaviors: self-regulation, impulse control and stress know we are all in it together,” says Wilkerson. “I talked management. with a member who was having a rough day. I said ‘You “For us, the program was really good in so many know what? You’re right, these new rules aren’t fun. ways,” says Wilkerson. “It was great for helping kids What would you do if we could change them?’ understand how to cope with their emotions in the same “We talked and laughed about a huge party we would way they learn the scientific method. First, identify the throw where everyone could come wearing their emotions you are feeling; then, try a coping strategy. Did masks and then we would throw them into the air like it work? If not, let’s try something else.” graduation caps. It’s about making sure youth feel Program staff incorporated activities and methods from heard and understood.” SMART Moves: Emotional Wellness throughout the Club, SMART Moves: Emotional Wellness is available for giving youth multiple chances to practice positive coping download now on BGCA.net, with other resources in the strategies each day. Even a group of tween boys who suite, including SMART Moves: Core and SMART Moves initially scoffed at the idea of sharing their emotions Modules, available soon. came around.