It is a reality that children spend most of their waking time in school and their interactions and experiences in it affect them profoundly. It is in school and with their peers that they learn social skills and emotional control. Needless to say children often have difficulty controlling and managing their emotions. Teachers often try as much as they can to help students deal with their emotions but more often than not they are not equipped to do so. Children who often display emotional outbursts are referred to the school counselors, but at times this create a kind of stigma that embarrasses the student and will make them feel negatively about themselves. Even the average student can have fits of emotional breakdowns like losing control over their anger. Schools therefore should be able to address this situations but in a way that will not lead to a negative perception by their peers. Thus a school anger management program should be integrated into the schools’ system.
What Triggers Anger in Schools? How Can School Anger Management Programs Help?
There are a lot of things that can trigger anger in children at any age and most of it come from their interactions and experiences with other people, may it be their classmates, peers, teachers and even school staff. If children feel that they are treated badly, or that they have been the butt of jokes, or they feel that they were humiliated by their teachers in class, or that the cafeteria staff was ignoring them, then these can lead to feelings of frustrations and eventually to anger. But anger does not usually come into the fore immediately. It is feelings of being slighted and is often kept bottled up and eventually bursts when the student has been provoked to the brim. Not everyone handles frustrations in the same way, thus an incident can be perceived as a slight or merely a hassle to different students. The thing is, an effective school anger management program should be individualized and accessible to all students.
How Can a School Anger Management Program Help?
Being able to manage our emotions correctly is an important life skill that will help us become better individuals and more so for students who are still figuring out who they are and what they want to be in the future. A school anger management program is a well-designed program that would help students deal with their emotions, especially anger. One of the most negative emotions that we could ever have is anger, it can cloud your judgment and can make you do things that could potentially hurt others and yourself. An anger management program is created to enable students to identify what triggers their anger, and to be able to tell when they will lash out in anger and how to manage themselves when they actually become angry and to know how to go back to not being angry. Everyone can possibly become angry at some point in their lives, but when students become angry all the time and when they resort to violence, then this could be an indication of a deeper issue. The program on anger management enable students to do different activities or exercises that helps them know themselves better and they learn skills that will help them manage their anger in healthier ways.
How to Use The Anger Management Program
The program is actually an online platform that students can access at any time, they work on activities and read materials or watch videos related to identifying triggers, managing anger during and after the episodes and strategies to help avoid angry outbursts. The program also can be integrated into the curriculum and subjects, teachers can make use of lessons and activities to identify students who really have anger issues and provide the most appropriate intervention for them. Moreover, the program provides several activities that the student can work through on their own and gain realizations and skills that will help them take control over their emotions and anger. This can also be monitored by the school counselor, their adviser and parents, they will be able to track the students’ progress without the student having to feel that they are being scrutinized. If the student had not been working with the program, this can also be checked and the student can be called for a more intensive intervention. The aim of the program is to be able to effectively address problem behaviors that have been found to be prevalent in children and teens with a complete program that involves the whole community and is tailored to fit the individual. A number of schools have already made progress with the program and students are better equipped to handle their own emotions and that of others. By providing anger management in school, students know that being angry is not wrong in itself but staying angry or doing harm to others is and should not be done at all. The program insures that the student will learn how to tell when they become angry and to do measures that would keep them from having a full blown meltdown. Instead they can do breathing techniques or even meditation to help them control their emotions.
Why is Anger Management Important?
When a student is always angry, it makes them lose control over their emotions and being angry can be dangerous to other people especially in a school setting. If the cause of the anger is not addressed, it may become too much for the student to handle and they may fantasize about hurting other people. Road rage, school shootings and even murder can be an outcome when someone has uncontrolled anger. Adults who have a history of violence are asked to go into anger management classes, and this is no different with students. Early intervention is much more important and will be an effective means of behavior modification. Thus, school anger management program is more appropriate and needed in schools nowadays. Emotional issues often begin early in childhood or during adolescence, and schools who do something about it are contributing to the positive mental health of the students.