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  • pebble, rock, boulder
  • addressed / resolved
  • physical location of feelings
  • decision making
  • set it aside
  • make it right
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GSFS Life Skills: Our Social-Emotional Curriculum

As part of our commitment to educating the whole child, the GSFS Life Skills curriculum supports each student's social and emotional growth across grade levels. This original program cultivates skills like feelings identification, feelings articulation, self-advocacy, and conflict resolution, and follows a developmentally-appropriate scope and sequence to engage students of all ages in each layer of the Life Skills model. 

The Life Skills curriculum is primarily implemented by the classroom teacher or advisor, both through weekly lessons and through the vocabulary and concepts woven into daily classroom life. Life Skills lessons may also be taught by School Counselors and Specialists like art, music, or PE teachers. However, all faculty, staff, and administrators at Greene Street utilize Life Skills strategies and language to approach interaction with students with a common constructive stance. This strengthens our school community and ensures that all students feel seen, secure, and ready to learn.

THE GSFS Life Skills Model

At the foundation of the Life Skills model, we build the skills of feelings identification and articulation. The next layer provides understanding of how to move through our various roles, relationships and responsibilities. A layer of strong decision making and conflict resolution skills builds on top of that. Finally, at the apex of the pyramid are the more complex skills for facing trickier topics or riskier situations.

VOCABULARYDefinition
Addressed versus ResolvedWhen we say "sorry" but don't mean it, we are addressing and not resolving a problem. Real resolution means making it right with people involved and any bystanders. You can tell a conflict has been addressed and not resolved if it still feels heavy, if it pops up later, and if someone says, "so and so always does that."
Double Dip Feelings / Multiple Emotions

We all experience more than one feeling at the same time. Some emotions are near the surface and some lie deeper. We tend to react out of the one that is most familiar to us. Noticing and naming our double dip feelings is a very helpful skill.

Matching messages

When our voice, face, and body all say the same thing, we are giving matching messages. If we laugh even though we're upset, our messages don't match and others believe we're fine. Using matching messages helps people understand our real feelings. Reading matching messages helps us to empathize with others.

Pebble, Rock, Boulder

This is a tool for assessing the size of our problems or conflicts. Small ones, like pebbles, are manageable on their own but can add up.  Medium ones, like rocks, can be harder to manage and weigh us down. Big problems, like boulders, require help. People can see problems as being different sizes, and recognizing this can help with resolution.


Five Reasons We’re Excited About Life Skills at GSFS!
 

Reason 5: It’s practical. Through Life Skills lessons, teachers demystify feelings for kids, helping them locate, identify and articulate emotions in concrete ways that make sense.

 

Reason 4: It’s proactive. The spiraling Life Skills curriculum anticipates what topics will emerge at each age and provides tools ahead of time.

 

Reason 3: It’s unifying. Life Skills provides a common language to bring greater inclusiveness and continuity to the community and so that we can solve problems together

 

Reason 2: It’s effective. We see the difference. Mistakes and conflicts now feel more like expected opportunities to practice skills and less like unwelcome emergencies.

 

Reason 1: It’s a perfect fit. Nothing fits better than a program that you develop yourselves. Life skills is a living, breathing curriculum that we adjust and improve continually to meet the goals of our community.