Options for Emotional Capacity
Emotional capacity refers to understanding and navigating emotions, actions, and connections with others. Emotions and rational thinking are integral to the human experience, and inclusive learning environments support individuals in exploring their emotional experiences and finding ways to move forward that work for them. While some people naturally explore these areas through personal experiences or observation, others benefit from intentional support. Learning environments that centre emotional growth and embrace the principles of Universal Design for Learning (UDL) – by modelling and offering options that honour diverse ways of being – are the most inclusive. It is essential to create environments where individuals can develop strategies to engage with challenges without encountering inequitable barriers.
Facing Anxiety (Runtime: 7:23 min).
Below are four “considerations” or strategies for the guideline of options for emotional capacity guideline. If you click on each of these considerations, you will find examples of how these strategies can be implemented into practice.
Recognize expectations, beliefs, and motivations
- Emotional capacity grows when learners understand their motivations (intrinsic or extrinsic) and set realistic, achievable goals.
- To sustain engagement, learners need support in managing frustration and anxiety, finding inspiration, and building confidence.
- Tools like prompts, rubrics, and checklists can help learners:
- Set goals (e.g., managing anxiety).
- Stay focused despite distractions.
- Reflect frequently on progress.
- Mentors and coaches can model goal-setting and highlight both strengths and areas for growth.
- Reflective activities can foster appreciation of personal strengths while addressing biases or low expectations in learning environments.
Develop awareness of self and others
- Simply modelling regulatory skills isn’t enough; learners need opportunities to reflect on their emotions, strengths, and challenges.
- Scaffolds like checklists, reminders, and differentiated feedback help learners:
- Cope with frustration and anxiety.
- Build social awareness by understanding others' perspectives and honouring diversity.
- Real-life examples or simulations can demonstrate strategies for managing challenges.
- Activities can highlight personal, cultural, and linguistic strengths to foster self-esteem and social appreciation.
Promote individual and collective reflection
- Reflection is essential for emotional capacity, as it helps learners recognize progress, learn from mistakes, and stay motivated.
- Some learners need explicit instruction in self-assessment techniques, while others naturally excel in reflection.
- Tools like charts, templates, and feedback aids help learners track progress and adjust goals.
- Protocols for both individual and group reflection encourage learners to monitor and celebrate achievements collectively.
Cultivate empathy and restorative practices
- Empathy enhances equitable learning communities by fostering understanding of diverse perspectives and lived experiences.
- Activities that encourage listening, communication, and perspective-taking strengthen bonds and create safe spaces for collaborative learning.
- When trust is broken, restorative practices provide a constructive way to repair harm. Learners reflect on their actions, understand the impact versus intent, and rebuild community trust.
- Strategies include:
- Circle practices: Learners share emotions and experiences collectively.
- Community agreements: Co-created protocols ensure safety and mutual accountability.
- Restorative protocols: Collaborative methods for resolving broken agreements, fostering understanding, and restoring trust.
In what ways can I support learners in setting goals to help themselves stay motivated? How am I providing strategies for learners to develop the skills necessary to deal with adversity? Am I facilitating a learning environment where learners can critically reflect on what and how they learn? If not, what opportunities can I create to support this?
In this video, college counsellor Zeba Luxmore shares tips and strategies for educators on how to support students managing stress or mental health concerns.
Strategies for Supporting Students With Mental Health Issues - Zeba Luxmore
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>> Hi I'm Zeba Luxmore and I work as a college counsellor.
As we all know, many of our students can experience mental health challenges that are brought on by their academics or life in general. When I see a student in a counselling session who shares with me that they're feeling stressed or anxious or low, I always do my best to listen to their story, validate their feelings and let them know that they’re not alone. Because the reality is, they’re not alone. We all have mental health and many of us will experience challenges related to our mental health at least some point in our lives. Just like other aspects of our health can change over our lives, our mental health can too.
Mental health is not a fixed thing. It's a process. It's fluid and it changes. One helpful way of looking at our mental health is using this dual axis model that was created by Dr. Corey Keyes in 2002. Often when we hear the term mental health, we tend to focus on the negative, where we think of it as good or bad. This model breaks it down a little and we get a better sense of how nuanced our mental health can be. The horizontal axis refers to having or not having symptoms that weren’t a diagnosis of a mental illness, like depression or an eating disorder, for example. And the vertical axis refers more to our mental wellbeing, so our ability to take part in daily life, work tasks, school tasks, keeping up relationships, the coping strategies we use and how we feel about our life in general.
So for instance, it's possible for a person to have a diagnosis of anxiety which would put them closer to the left side of the model. But maybe they also have a supportive group of friends, a therapist that they see regularly and a daily routine that includes exercise, good sleep and writing in a journal. In this case we could see that their mental health would be flourishing. Alternatively, another person might not have a diagnosis and they might be going through a difficult time. Like exam week. They might be living on their own and have very little supports or strategies in place. In this case, during this part of their life, they might be closer to the bottom right quadrant.
So we can see that mental health and mental illness are related but distinct dimensions that can be viewed independently. So it's possible for a person to flourish and have a positive sense of mental health with a diagnosed mental illness and the opposite is true too. Mental health and mental illness are not fixed and so individuals might find themselves at different points on this model throughout their lives. When we think about the different factors affecting the mental health of our students, [indiscernible], finances, living situation, social and family impacts, and the world at large, it's clear that we can all move around on this model. You may want to notice where you're on this model today. So just like we all have physical health, we all have mental health.
Understanding how fluid our mental health can be is really important because stigma still exists around this topic, especially for those living with mental health challenges, regardless of where they might find themselves on this model. Some harmful stereotypes include assuming individuals experiencing symptoms related to their mental health are lazy, incompetent or weak. And while we know this is untrue, for the person it can feel very hurtful and invalidating. You know, considering the context of your students is always really helpful too. Mental health is intersectional. So when you think about your students, keep in mind that their mental health is impacted by their identity of gender, race, disability, age, sexual orientation and other social constructs.
So for instance, an international student from India who identifies as female, queer, and lives on her own with no family supports in Canada, will likely face different barriers than a student who was born and raised in Canada, lives with family and identifies as female, white and heterosexual.
Educators hold an important role with students; one that carries trust and respect and by virtue of this power, I’ve had students in counselling sessions share with me that they feel apprehensive to ask teachers for help because they worry that they'll be judged or that their needs won’t be deemed worthy enough. For some students, just reaching out and asking for help can feel very daunting and scary. There are many things that we can all do to support the mental health of our students. In the classroom, here are a few ideas. Scheduling regular class check-ins; collecting and encouraging feedback; assuring students that experiencing stress related to academic tasks is normal and explain what that may look or feel like to them. Providing options for completing academic tasks; letting students know about the different supports and services available to them. As a counsellor, I've made many class visits and sometimes just having a face to a name can encourage students to reach out and use the service.
Other service professionals around your institutions such as librarians, tutoring supports, accessibility consultants, learning strategists, adaptive technologists. They’re often very willing to meet with your students in class. Just reach out and demystify who they are and how to access their help. We know that there's no one means of engagement that's going to work for all, all our learners. And educators can help by being open, accessible and responsive. When learners express concerns around their mental health. Sometimes this is listening to their concerns and being flexible in your expectations. Other times it's helping learners connect to the right supports available. What we might think of as an accommodation for a few students may very well be helpful for most students.
And this speaks to the multiple means of engagement that UDL is all about. Many of our students do register with and utilize Accessible Learning Services as a way to, you know, support them and meet-- in meeting the demands of their program. However, we also have many students in post-secondary who may have symptoms but that don't warrant a diagnosis or for another reason may not register with the accessibility department. Educators can also be really proactive when considering course design. So having a structured course with clear guidelines around expectations with flexible and alternative ways to submit can provide an open- an open and welcoming space for students to grow and learn.
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Supporting Students with Mental Health Issues - Runtime 6:51 min
https://youtu.be/SUjvKms9QLY
Here are great resources for promoting emotional capacity skills such as stress management, self-care, and resilience.
Some people think of emotional capacity as mind vs emotion. However, cognition and emotions are in constant interaction with each other. Various stimuli in our environment result in automatic reactions in our brain. A sense of equilibrium and the ability to exert voluntary control is the result of our thinking and feeling responses working together. Increased options for finding one's way back to equilibrium increases the ability to do it more often in the future.
There are several reasons why it is so difficult to manage stress. One is that we don’t recognize the signs of “stress-behavior” and confuse it with "weakness.”