New mentoring program teaches young students about emotional awareness

Dec. 18—ATHENS — The Athens Limestone County Family Resource Center aims to help students express emotions safely and develop self-control, a mission that has benefited this year from Project Smile.

Director Emmett Brown and Workforce Development Coordinator Anna Carr started the Project Smile mentoring program in October and currently serve Athens Intermediate School, Spark Academy at Cowart Elementary, and Creekside Primary School at no cost to the school districts.

Brown, who became director in April, said the center received a grant last year to form a mentoring program.

"I know we had some talks with principals last year about doing a mentorship program, but nothing got off the ground," Brown said. "Since I got here in April, this is the first one I know we have done."

Carr said when they began the program, they reached out to teachers and counselors at the schools to identify children who were having issues with being in a classroom setting all day.

Mentor Andrea Cook visits a total of 18 students at the three schools once a week for 30 minutes at a time.

"The goal is to help students not have outbursts and be able to recognize their feelings and emotions more regularly," Carr said. "For (Cook) to mentor a student, their parents have to agree to it and give us permission to talk to their kids."

Carr based the program's curriculum off a 2020 book by Diane Alber called "A Little SPOT of Feelings: Emotion Detective," which focuses on identifying emotions and feelings.

"We only do 30 minutes because we don't want them to miss valuable classroom instruction time," Cook said.

Cook was at Creekside Primary School recently preparing a lesson for a small group session.

In a small room near the front office, Cook has several "Little SPOT" characters from Alber's book that resemble eight different emotions: anger, peace, confidence, sadness, love, anxiety, happiness and confusion. The spots, or emotions, are different colors and each share the expression of the emotion they represent.

"Every time the students walk in the door, I ask them to pick out a spot that represents how they are feeling that day," Cook said. "Then, we talk about ways we can regulate that emotion."

Cook brought Play-Doh to the schools last month to show students the consequence of bottling their emotions rather than working them out.

"I took different balls of play dough and told the students they were different emotions," Cook said. "I mashed all the balls of play dough together and told students if you don't sort your feelings out and handle them better, you will wind up with one big ball of emotion that's hard to control."

Madison Rouse, a second grade teacher at Creekside Primary, said she is thankful for mentoring programs like these to reach students and discuss their mental health, something she said is more widely discussed today.

"Not only are we more aware of mental health now, but I feel students spend a lot of time with technology, so they just need a little more help dealing with the real world," Rouse said.

Cook, who has a background in youth social services, said she has heard of more disruptive behaviors in schools during the last few years.

"I think we see a lot of behavioral problems in schools these days and we don't know why," Cook said. "But if they are feeling those emotions that cause them to act that way, we can learn to get them back into a good spot. It just seems there's a lot of need for this for students that are always being sent to in-school suspension or are getting red marks on their calendar."

Though the program is in its first year, Rouse hopes she will see progress in some of her students that Cook mentors.

"Just seeing more positive attitudes in students, not only in themselves but forming friendships and just being able to control themselves in a better way," Rouse said.

— wes.tomlinson@decaturdaily.com or 256-340-2442.