Research & Discovery

June 13, 2024 | Molly Ferreira

Feel Your Best Self Wins Telly Award for the Second Straight Year

The educational online toolkit that helps children cope with big emotions won a silver award in the Education and Training – Online category

Feel Your Best Self puppets Nico, CJ, and Mena

With the help of Feel Your Best Self puppets Nico, CJ, and Mena, kids learn a variety of wellness strategies. (Courtesy of Feel Your Best Self)

For the second year in a row, UConn’s collaborative project Feel Your Best Self has been honored for its excellence in video at the 45th Annual Telly Awards.

Feel Your Best Self (FYBS) offers a joyful, freely accessible online toolkit for kids and caregivers at school and home to explore important life skills in emotion-focused coping. This award-winning toolkit centers around 12 strategies, learned through engaging videos featuring puppet friends Nico, CJ, and Mena, as they navigate everyday situations. In addition to the videos, the online toolkit offers facilitator guides for educators and caregivers, a Feelings Forecast, strategy step cards, discussion tip sheets, reflection sheets, and puppet-making options.

45th Annual Silver Winner The Telly AwardsThe Telly Awards honor excellence in video and television across all screens. Last year, the FYBS project was recognized in four Telly Awards categories winning a gold, and three silver awards. This year, they submitted in a new category, and won a silver for Education and Training – Online.

“Our team has worked hard over the past year to continue to improve and expand the FYBS toolkit and to connect with as many caregivers and schools as possible to bring awareness to the project,” co-creator Emily Wicks says. “Winning another Telly Award is a huge honor and helps highlight these amazing resources on a national scale.”

The Telly Awards are judged by over 200 industry leaders who work for major companies and television networks such as Adobe, MSG Sphere Studios, Netflix, Meta Creative Shop, among many others. This year, there were over 13,000 entries with the winners representing the most innovative stories across all screens. Past winners include Adobe, BET, CNN, The Walt Disney Company, NASA, and ESPN.

Feel Your Best Self staff and adults taking their class pose in a group at the American Nicaraguan School in Managua.
Feel Your Best Self staff spent a week at the American Nicaraguan School in Managua earlier this year, leading trainings, class workshops, and caregiver information sessions. (Submitted photo)

Over the past year, FYBS has participated in various conferences, collaborations, workshops, and events both nationally and internationally. FYBS traveled to several places including Atlanta, New Orleans, and Bologna, Italy, to share this innovative project and how it can be integrated into various settings.

Earlier this year, FYBS co-creators Sandra Chafouleas, a Board of Trustees Distinguished Professor in the Neag School of Education, and Wicks, manager of operations and collections at UConn’s Ballard Institute and Museum of Puppetry, spent a week at the American Nicaraguan School in Managua to lead trainings, class workshops, and caregiver information sessions.

Feel Your Best Self staff and a second grade class at North Windham Elementary School.
Feel Your Best Self staff recently teamed up with North Windham Elementary School to teach a puppet-making workshop to a group of bilingual second graders. (Submitted photo)

Most recently, Wicks and Implementation Coordinator Molly Ferreira teamed up with North Windham Elementary School to teach a puppet-making workshop to a group of bilingual second graders. The classroom teacher Erin Trudeau said, “My favorite thing about Feel Your Best Self is that all of the strategies are super easy to implement – you can do them in just a couple of minutes and then you’re ready to move on!”

The FYBS team has also published several briefs and crosswalks that help enhance the use of FYBS as well as give supporting evidence as to how the FYBS strategies align with other popular social-emotional learning (SEL) programs. All these resources can be found freely accessible on the FYBS website.

Feel Your Best Self is made possible through the generous support of the Principal Foundation. Additional support is from the Neag Foundation and others. To learn more about Feel Your Best Self, visit feelyourbestself.org or contact feelurbestself@gmail.com.