Pup’s Club At Cedar Teaches Important Coping Skills

By Ronda Tomovcik, Principal

Cedar Pup’s Club is a Tier II Intervention that works to reduce targeted behaviors in the classroom. The main focus of Pup’s Club is to assist students in identifying their feelings when faced with an undesired emotion. We reintroduce and teach students different coping skills to use when they are faced with a big feeling. Students in the group will be given opportunities each lesson to practice everyday coping skills and apply them to the common classroom and behavior problems at school. This group will be run by the Cedar Elementary Counselors Mrs. Sedmock and Miss. Hudson.

Grade-level small groups will meet once a week for forty minutes to discuss the following topics:

• Lesson 1: Goal setting

• Lesson 2: Introduce coping skills

• Lesson 3: What happens to your body when you’re angry

• Lesson 4: Identifying triggers for anger

• Lesson 5: Practicing coping skills

• Lesson 6: Practicing coping skills (continued)

• Lesson 7: Identifying what is and is not in your control

• Lesson 8: Expressing anger using “I Statements” and making a sincere apology after making a mistake

• Lesson 9: Summary of all topics

During the small group time together, the students work with the counselors and their classroom teacher to establish an individual goal. They will work towards this goal over the grading period. Weekly, students have an opportunity to earn a treasure box reward.

Mrs. Kirsten Sedmock has been a counselor at Cedar for two years and has served the students in the Canton City School District for the past 6 years. Miss Jaecey Hudson is new to the district this year, serving the students at Cedar and Patrick Elementary.