3 minute read
Why Teach Self-Regulation?
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.
WHAT TEACHERS SAY
—Donna, behavior specialist
Consider a time when you’ve tried to eat healthier, exercise more, manage stress, or save money. Consider when you were more successful versus less successful. What made the difference? Likely, when you experienced success, you addressed the four components of self-regulation. 1. Make a plan for what you want to accomplish. 2. Immediately monitor progress and interference regarding your goal. 3. Adjust by implementing specific strategies when things are not going as planned. 4. Reflect on what worked and what you can do better next time.
Now consider each component related to a past unrealized goal. Did you have a plan to eat healthier, but your plan lacked specificity? Did you forget to consistently monitor your plan? Did something get you off track, like an illness or an unexpected financial burden? If you weren’t successful, it’s likely that you didn’t address all four components of self-regulation.
With instruction and practice, students can learn and apply the selfdirected process of self-regulation to attain both academic and personal goals, learn new skills, manage complex emotions, and accomplish challenging tasks. Research has shown us that self-regulation skills do not simply arise on their own; rather, they must be purposefully learned (Usher & Schunk, 2018).
Self-regulation doesn’t just help low-achieving students, those who struggle with certain subjects, or those who display undesirable behaviors. Practicing self-regulation is important for all of us. At some point, we all encounter obstacles or difficulties in achieving a goal or completing a task. By applying the self-regulation process, we are empowered to overcome obstacles and improve at anything we aspire to achieve.
WHAT TEACHERS SAY
“Self-regulation is an integral part of student success as it teaches them how to have autonomy, inside and outside of the classroom. It empowers them to take responsibility for their decisions and goals, which teaches them to manage time, develop self-efficacy, and plan ahead. These are all qualities that will translate into learning experiences that continue throughout their lives.”
—Rachel, social worker
