{"id":222601,"date":"2024-12-12T07:30:55","date_gmt":"2024-12-12T12:30:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/?p=222601"},"modified":"2024-12-11T14:16:30","modified_gmt":"2024-12-11T19:16:30","slug":"feel-your-best-self-goes-to-high-school","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/2024\/12\/feel-your-best-self-goes-to-high-school\/","title":{"rendered":"Feel Your Best Self Goes to High School"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last month, Sandra Chafouleas and Emily Wicks, co-founders of Feel Your Best Self<\/a> (FYBS), presented their insights on the award-winning toolkit that teaches emotion-coping strategies to a group of school counselors at UConn\u2019s School Counselor Day hosted by the Office of Undergraduate Admissions. Elizabeth Smith, the publicity and marketing administrator for the Division of Student Life and Enrollment, articulates the rationale behind selecting FYBS for this year\u2019s programming, stating that the project was a fun way to showcase the interdisciplinary research and collaboration that takes place at the University on a daily basis.<\/p>\n

\"A
School counselors participate in puppet-making at UConn’s School Counselor Day. (Molly Ferreira\/CSCH photo)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cThe modern secondary school counselor does it all,\u201d Smith says. \u201cThis includes supporting the emotional wellbeing of their students, which made Feel Your Best Self a natural complement to this year\u2019s programming.\u201d<\/p>\n

The event attracted over 200 secondary school counselors from Connecticut, Massachusetts, New York, New Jersey, and Rhode Island. Chafouleas and Wicks delivered a presentation explaining the toolkit, and how it can be easily adapted and integrated into the secondary setting.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe key to adapting FYBS into secondary settings is to allow for choice, creativity, and flexibility,\u201d Chafouleas said. \u201cFeel Your Best Self is designed to support these needs, making it accessible for students of all ages.\u201d<\/p>\n

Additionally, attendees engaged in puppet-making activities, allowing them to experience the benefits of this fun and creative process. The response to puppet-making was overwhelmingly positive as attendees showed off their unique creations.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u00a0honestly loved doing the puppet-making activity,\u201d said Crystal Davis, a school counselor from Bristol Eastern High School. \u201cI always feel like it\u2019s great to have adults and even young adults get in touch with their inner child. I think that in the secondary setting you could do this and have students really relate to their younger selves.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n

The key is to allow for choice, flexibility, and creativity for children in the secondary setting. Feel Your Best Self is designed to support these needs, making it accessible to children of all ages. — Sandra Chafouleas<\/cite><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Others shared ideas about how the FYBS toolkit components could be applied in their secondary settings. For example, one high school counselor proposed implementing a walking group as a variation of \u201cShake Out the Yuck,\u201d which is a FYBS physiological strategy to get rid of negative feelings by moving your body. Another attendee shared excitement about using the FYBS strategies to address test-taking anxiety. Additionally, a high school counselor loved the idea of peer mentorship, suggesting that her students could create a puppet, not for themselves, but for a younger child and help assist in learning the strategies.<\/p>\n

\"Four
School counselors practicing Belly Breathing, a Feel Your Best Self technique, with their puppets at UConn’s School Counselor Day. (Molly Ferreira\/CSCH photo)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

To complement the presentation, Chafouleas also shared the newest brief, \u201cIdeas for Adaptation! Integrating FYBS into a Secondary Setting,\u201d<\/a> published by the FYBS team last month. In this brief, recommendations are provided for modifying toolkit resources specifically for secondary students. For example, students can create their own \u201ctoolbox\u201d of strategy cards on index cards for the 2-3 strategies that they liked best. Additionally , the team shares ideas on how to extend the use of FYBS beyond the toolkit by incorporating opportunities like peer mentorships and exploring the science of emotion-coping.<\/p>\n

Feel Your Best Self is versatile enough to be adapted for all ages and settings. By utilizing these simple, flexible, and accessible emotion-coping strategies, each person can identify 2-3 strategies that will resonate with them as they navigate through life.<\/p>\n

Learn more about Feel Your Best Self at feelyourbestself.org<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

School counselors explore opportunities to integrate Feel Your Best Self into secondary settings at UConn\u2019s School Counselor Day<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":141,"featured_media":222605,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_crdt_document":"","wds_primary_category":0,"wds_primary_series":0,"wds_primary_attribution":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1715,2428,2231,2269,2424,1855,2076,1914],"tags":[],"magazine-issues":[],"coauthors":[2217],"class_list":["post-222601","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-community-impact","category-educational-psychology","category-health-well-being","category-inchip","category-neag-community-engagement","category-neag","category-research","category-sfa"],"pp_statuses_selecting_workflow":false,"pp_workflow_action":"current","pp_status_selection":"publish","acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-28 11:49:40","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/222601","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/users\/141"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=222601"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/222601\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":222618,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/222601\/revisions\/222618"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media\/222605"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=222601"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=222601"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=222601"},{"taxonomy":"magazine-issue","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/magazine-issues?post=222601"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=222601"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}