A former school psychologist, Chafouleas is a renowned expert in such areas as social-emotional learning, trauma-informed schools, and behavioral assessment and intervention. Her research and writing have touched on everything from promoting well-being to improving youth sports culture.<\/p>\n
In short, she knows what the research says about how we can most effectively handle stress, cope with uncertainty, and direct our emotions \u2014\u00a0the sorts of skills many of us likely wish we had mastered much earlier on in life.<\/p>\n
Thanks to a pioneering interdisciplinary collaboration she is co-leading at UConn called Feel Your Best Self, elementary-aged children will soon have a chance to acquire those very skills in classrooms and childcare settings across the country \u2014 for free.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is important to be able to evaluate when … negative moments are not helping you feel your best self and then ask what can you do to shift.\u201d\u00a0\u2014 Sandra Chafouleas,\u00a0Feel Your Best Self Co-Executive Producer<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
The Show Must Go On<\/strong><\/h2>\n
The Feel Your Best Self project is unique in its breadth, bringing together a far-reaching network of UConn faculty, staff, alumni, students, and donors from fields as diverse as educational psychology, puppetry, health, and finance.<\/p>\n
Through 12 simple strategies bearing such memorable names as \u2018shake out the yuck\u2019 and \u2018float your boat,\u2019 Feel Your Best Self will teach children aged 3 to 12 how to identify and manage their emotions, good and bad. Better yet, kids will learn these bite-size lessons in emotional well-being from their three newest friends \u2014\u00a0lively, endearing puppets named CJ, Mena, and Nico.<\/p>\n
It was through the Ballard Institute and Museum of Puppetry<\/a> at UConn that these lovable puppets came to life. Amid the pandemic, John Bell, director, and Emily Wicks, manager of operations and collections, had been seeking ways to carry on the Ballard Institute\u2019s traditional programming via an online format.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe were trying to adapt our workshops into a virtual environment, and we wanted to make sure to reach out to UConn\u2019s school of education, to think about best practices,\u201d says Wicks, co-executive producer for the project with Chafouleas.<\/p>\n
The Feel Your Best Self puppeteers and puppets meet project funders Jo Christine Miles (second human from left) and Sally Reis (second human from right). (Photo courtesy of Feel Your Best Self)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n When she and her team learned about Chafouleas\u2019 work, including her research on simple wellness strategies, Wicks says \u201cthat\u2019s when we put our heads together and thought that puppetry would be a really good method of engaging kids in these strategies.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve known these strategies work. They\u2019re things that we already use in school psychology,\u201d Chafouleas says. \u201cWe\u2019re packaging them into a really fun and engaging way.\u201d<\/p>\n
Each Feel Your Best Self strategy episode, plus the introductory video, stars the three puppets. Captured this spring, the episodes are slated to release beginning in June in select school districts and expand nationwide over the coming months.<\/p>\n
Beyond the episodes themselves \u2014\u00a0which promise to be comical, fun, and engaging \u2014\u00a0the Feel Your Best Self project includes a comprehensive educational toolkit featuring numerous hands-on resources.<\/p>\n
Facilitator guides offer educators and caregivers guidance on how to help children talk about their feelings and reflect on how the strategies work. Simply illustrated cards, available in English as well as Spanish, give kids a quick overview of each Feel Your Best Self strategy. Facilitator materials also detail how to incorporate puppet-making and journaling into activities.<\/p>\n
Included as part of the Feel Your Best Self toolkits, simply illustrated cards, available in English as well as Spanish, give kids a quick overview of each wellness strategy. (Courtesy of Feel Your Best Self)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n The variety of tools, which to date have been piloted to more than 200 preschool and elementary-aged students over the past year, allows educators to use whichever resources work best in their space.<\/p>\n
\u201cTeaching and practicing social-emotional learning doesn’t have to be a set curriculum,\u201d Chafouleas says. \u201cEducators already have the skills that they need to build positive relationships and strengthen emotional well-being in their students. Using this toolkit is not scripted \u2013 it\u2019s about how it fits for you. We\u2019ve given lots of options to pick and choose from, doing whatever works in your setting.\u201d<\/p>\n
At the same time, Feel Your Best Self lets kids explore what strategies they like the most.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s not that everybody has to master all 12 of the strategies we include in the toolkit,\u201d Chafouleas says. \u201cWe want kids in classroom and families to try it out and find the ones that really fit best. The hope is that every person will find a couple of strategies that they really resonate with and can have ready in their back pocket to use in different situations.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2018The Perfect Combination\u2019<\/strong><\/h2>\n
To create the Feel Your Best Self lessons, Chafouleas and her team, led by alumna and current postdoctoral research associate Emily Iovino \u201915 CLAS, \u201916 MA, \u201920 Ph.D., reviewed the research literature, distilling strategies for managing emotions into three overarching categories: calm yourself down, connect with others, and catch your feelings.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe took all the things that we know or that we\u2019ve used and figured out which are the top 12 that can work for elementary students \u2013 and that could be taught easily by anybody \u2013 a classroom teacher, a family member, a bus driver,\u201d Chafouleas says.<\/p>\n
\u201cUsing puppetry is the perfect way to engage audiences in these wellness strategies,\u201d Wicks says. For example, \u201cwith the puppets, the kids are able to see how we do belly breathing, see how we can make our puppet breathe and then have the kids come up and show each other.\u201d<\/p>\n
To Wicks, Feel Your Best Self stands out as \u201cthe perfect combination\u201d of UConn\u2019s School of Fine Arts and Neag School of Education.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis project really shows the strength of this kind of interdisciplinary work,\u201d she says. \u201cI think it\u2019s an amazing collaboration that has been a really fun way to meet a need.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cUsing puppetry is the perfect way to engage audiences in these wellness strategies.\u201d\u00a0\u2014 Emily Wicks, Feel Your Best Self Co-Executive Producer<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Building a Scaffolding<\/strong><\/h2>\n
Feel Your Best Self came to fruition despite, and because of, the pandemic, but also with the support of donors contributing more than half a million dollars in combined funding.<\/p>\n
Jo Christine Miles, director of the Principal Foundation<\/a> and Principal Community Relations, the philanthropic arm of Fortune 500 company Principal Financial Group, learned of the project through Chafouleas.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Foundation\u2019s mission is to advance financial security for all, and we endeavor to fund innovative programs that help people build the scaffolding needs to pursue financial security on their terms,\u201d Miles says. From her perspective, helping people create pathways to financial security can very well go beyond such traditional avenues as asset management, 529 plans, or annuities.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis program addresses many of the issues that are front and center today for people,\u201d Miles says. \u201cHaving emotional health, education around self-regulation [is] an important part of moving one towards financial security, however he\/she may define that.\u201d<\/p>\n
Feel Your Best Self, she adds, \u201callows us to prepare children to be a better version of themselves, to know that it\u2019s OK to not be OK, and hopefully achieve a higher form of their potential, while being able to put these resources out for free expands access.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Neag Foundation<\/a>, which funds projects in such areas as education and healthcare, \u00a0is another integral partner in bringing Feel Your Best Self to life.<\/p>\n
\u201cI love this project because it gives concrete tools to children to put a name on their feelings, to understand that feeling badly at times is normal, but there are ways that we can cope with it,\u201d says Sally Reis<\/a>, Board of Trustees Distinguished Professor of the Neag School and a co-founder of the Neag Foundation.<\/p>\n
\u201cI love this project because it gives concrete tools to children to put a name on their feelings, to understand that feeling badly at times is normal, but there are ways that we can cope with it.\u201d\u00a0\u2014\u00a0Sally Reis, Board of Trustees Distinguished Professor<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
An internationally recognized scholar in the realm of educational psychology, Reis is also the niece of the late Ray Neag \u201956 CLAS and his wife, Carole<\/a>, after whom the Neag School of Education is named. She and Carole Neag established the Foundation following Ray\u2019s passing in 2018.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Foundation feels there\u2019s nothing that we can invest in that is more important than childhood well-being,\u201d Reis says. \u201cRay would\u2019ve been delighted, and we are very excited to see where this will go in the near and far future.\u201d<\/p>\n
Also involved is UConn\u2019s Institute for Collaboration on Health, Intervention, and Policy (InCHIP)<\/a>, which supports similarly interdisciplinary collaborations and is handling Feel Your Best Self\u2019s fiscal management.<\/p>\n
Behind the Scenes<\/strong><\/h2>\n
Graduate assistant Yanniv Frank is one of the many UConn team members taking part in the Feel Your Best Self production. (Photo courtesy of Feel Your Best Self)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n Meanwhile, even UConn alumni and students are lending a helping hand with Feel Your Best Self. Among them are\u00a0graduate assistant Yanniv Frank, who worked to create the original stories and characters, as well as\u00a0puppetry alumni Heather Asch \u201990 SFA, Sarah Nolen \u201916 SFA, and John Cody \u201917 SFA, the project\u2019s supervising producer, director, and puppet builder, respectively. A large team of UConn undergraduate and graduate students from a variety of disciplines also have joined the project, getting firsthand experience.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe tried to bring in the best people we could find,\u201d says Asch, executive director and producer at nonprofit No Strings USA<\/a>, a production company that makes educational puppet films for at risk children worldwide, as well as an Emmy Award-winning puppeteer whose r\u00e9sum\u00e9 includes work with Jim Henson and Sesame Street.<\/p>\n
\u201cUConn has all the research, all the subject matter needed to be able to create work like this and really set a standard in the field of making educational content for kids in a really unique way \u2014\u00a0that also sets the grads up, when they leave the program, with life skills,\u201d Asch adds. \u201cA project like this is really a game-changer.\u201d<\/p>\n
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