The Calm Room for Students at QCSS

My name is David Cunningham: I am a Professional School Counselor at Queen City STEM School in Charlotte, North Carolina. After researching and speaking to students and colleagues, I believe a Calm Room can benefit our student body.

“Calm Rooms teach students calming techniques to decrease agitation, aggressiveness, irritation, sadness, etc. This allows them to calm themselves before processing the cause of their actions/misbehavior.” School Calm Rooms help students slow the flow.

Calm Rooms are meaningful social-emotional learning (SEL) environments where students can cool down and learn how to self-regulate their bodies and emotions. That’s a big help for a nation of exhausted teachers, too, who need more positive tools for struggling kids and teens.

Psychological research supports the benefits of “Be Calm” rooms. For young students, hormonal changes (and much more) can increase aggression, and social-emotional skills are still developing. That can affect higher-order thinking, like problem-solving and self-control.

A change in environment, such as going to a Calm Room, can decrease anxiety and allow students to calm down without feeling isolated from their class. The pandemic has undoubtedly accelerated the need.

Miguel Cardona, the current U.S. Secretary of Education, recently said on NPR, “We cannot go back to the way things were before the pandemic. We must seize this moment to make things better for all students.”

THANKS IN ADVANCE FOR YOUR KINDNESS & GENEROUS DONATION!!!