INTRODUCTION
“Many students don’t turn in homework on time, especially larger projects. While I know they have worked on it, they can’t seem to get it to me by the due date.” “Students don’t take responsibility for themselves. They blame everything and everyone else around them.” “My students refuse to plan. They expect it all to be done for them and still can’t get through the steps.” “Some of my students just give up and don’t even try when they have a challenging assignment.”
These are some common concerns we hear from middle and high school educators across the United States. If you have similar concerns about your students, you are not alone. While self-regulation is integral to in-school and post-secondary success, many of our students struggle to demonstrate self-regulation consistently. The purpose of this book is to support secondary educators in teaching self-regulation through explicit instruction and authentic practice. This timely book provides seventy-five instructional activities to teach self-regulation in any secondary classroom. Throughout the book, we’ve included quotes and vignettes from real people to illustrate how educators and students engage with the instructional activities.
Why Teach Self-Regulation? Self-regulation refers to a proactive, self-directed process for attaining goals, learning skills, managing emotional reactions, and accomplishing tasks. For adults and youth, self-regulation can be applied to mastering a skill, focusing on a specific task while avoiding distractions, completing quality work on time, sustaining focus on a goal across years, and implementing self-care and self-calming behaviors.
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