Seamless SEL Toolkit: Integrating Social-Emotional Learning into Busy School Days with Marie Goulet
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In this episode, we tackle a common challenge from teachers: how to incorporate social-emotional learning into an already packed curriculum. Marie Goulet, LCSW, shares her "Yes, and" approach - acknowledging that while dedicated SEL sessions are valuable, teachers are already implementing these skills throughout their day.
Marie offers practical, no-cost strategies that take just 1-2 minutes, including the "five, four, three, two, one" sensory grounding technique, proper breathing methods, somatic movement exercises, and bilateral movements that engage the brain differently. She explains the hand model of the brain to understand emotional regulation and the concept of "flipping your lid" in child-friendly terms.
Marie emphasizes the power of visual supports as permanent reminders that work for all age groups and discusses how to help kids identify which regulation strategies work best for them. The episode concludes with Marie's powerful mantras for building resilience, including "it's okay to be uncomfortable" and focusing on the "size of the problem."
About Marie Goulet:
Marie is an LCSW who works as the lead social worker for New Lenox School District #122, as well as the building social worker for Oakview Intermediate School. She's been a school social worker in both community mental health and school settings for over 20 years. Throughout her professional tenure, Marie has served many roles, including Assistant Director of Special Education and principal of an alternative high school. Her true passion is providing direct service to students and families. Marie has an extensive background working with mental health, specifically targeting trauma, anxiety, and intensive student behaviors.
Thank you for listening to the Raising Resilient Kids Podcast! We are a brother-sister team who are passionate about providing parents, teachers and coaches with ideas and strategies to help kids and teens build their resilience and achieve their potential in a healthy, fulfilling way.
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Episode Transcript
Jeannie: [00:00:00] Whether you're a teacher with a packed schedule, a parent trying to help your child manage big emotions, or a coach working with anxious athletes, school social worker, Marie Goulet, shares practical zero cost bite-sized interventions you can use immediately.
I'm Jeannie.
Tom: And I'm Tom. We are siblings on a mission to help kids become their strongest selves. Each episode, we share proven strategies with parents, teachers, and coaches to build resilient, confident kids who can tackle life's challenges and thrive. Welcome to the Raising Resilient Kids podcast.
Tom: So our question of the month actually comes from a teacher, Jeannie. Let me read it for you, with curriculum requirements constantly expanding, I'm struggling to find time for social-emotional learning. How can I weave these crucial skills into an already packed day?
I've heard this question a lot because teachers have got a lot that they need to get through with different requirements and everything like that. So for our guest today to answer [00:01:00] that question, we have Marie Goulet, who I actually met. She was in some training that we did maybe a couple years ago and then, was at a social worker conference.
A school social worker conference last fall. And I was speaking at it and I noticed that she was speaking at it too. But unfortunately, our sessions were at the exact same time. That was the one presentation that I really, really wanted to go see when I looked at the agenda, and unfortunately, I couldn't see it.
But the good thing was she actually had all of her PowerPoints and everything, so I took a look at the PowerPoints, phenomenal information. Tons of information, a lot of stuff that, you know, I hadn't seen before. So that's why I asked Marie to be here to help us with that. Marie is an LCSW, who works as the lead social worker for New Lenox School District 122, as well as the building social worker for Oakview Intermediate School. She's been a social worker in both the community mental health setting and the school setting for over 20 years. Throughout her professional tenure, Marie [00:02:00] has served in many roles, including serving as the Assistant Director of Special Education for that new Lennox School district, and principal of an alternative high school. Her true passion is providing direct service to students and families, and loves being a school social worker - that came out in all of the interactions I've had with her. Marie has an extensive background working with mental health, specifically targeting trauma, anxiety, and intensive student behaviors.
Marie, thank you so much for being here.
Marie: Thank you for having me. It's always humbling hearing those kinds of introductions. I feel like that's just what we do every day.
Tom: You've done a lot in 20 years! A lot, a lot of great stuff. What's, what's your thoughts on that? How can teachers weave this stuff in?
Marie: Yeah, I mean, I think that's a phenomenal question. I think it's really relevant. I think it's, it's something that we talk about daily in the education setting. And so, I always approach it from two different angles. The first one, I think when we're doing a curriculum like Resilient Youth [00:03:00] or something that's so beautifully packaged and easy to do in sessions, you know, we kind of have to figure out the time for that and what we can replace with using that time or, you know, how to make it more accessible.
My, my favorite theme is, "yes, and" so
Jeannie: Mm.
Marie: we need to do, those packaged sessions and focus specifically on the SEL. And if you really think about SEL, and what social emotional learning is, what all the components are teachers are doing it all day, every day, embedded into what they do.
So, I really kind of like to say like, let's pump the brakes for a second. It's not anything we're adding, it's something that you're already doing. So if we really think about what SEL is, right? We're focusing on social awareness, we're focusing on self-control, interpersonal skills, the self-management emotional regulation, those are things that teachers intrinsically do in their day all day [00:04:00] long.
I always like to tell them like, I can make anything, social work, you can make anything social, emotional learning, you know, so playing a game of Uno, you're working on all of those skills. Having students come up to do an equation on the board or do a read aloud, or play a cooperative learning game, or Kahoot, they're working on all those things.
So I like to think about it as not something separate, but something that's already embedded and I think it takes a little bit of that pressure off.
Tom: Yes. Yeah. I usually say this the same thing. Just giving them more tools though, so you, you know, you might have one thing that you use a lot. Well, here's some more tools that you can use that, that can help you. Speaking of those tools, do you have any that, you know, that maybe, maybe teachers can use, maybe it takes a couple minutes, or even parents.
Marie: Absolutely a lot of my go-to. So we kind of think of like, you can do social emotional learning and you can use coping strategies anywhere from 15 seconds up to two minutes. And I think if we really think about how long two minutes is, that's a long time, so usually we're kind of in that one minute [00:05:00] sweet spot.
I like to focus on things that are cheap, free, easy, that we can do anywhere. So, any kind of grounding techniques that utilize our five senses are always my big go-to.
The favorite technique I will teach everyone, and I will use myself multiple times a day, whether it's to help me focus or regulate or kind of come back to my body. We call it five, four, three, two, one. So, you can do it in any order with any senses. Typically, I will start with our sight. So, I will say, I want you to look around the room and I want you to find five objects of a certain color.
So, if I were to say, look around the room and find five objects that are the color green, then automatically we're engaging our cognitive distractions. We're looking for colors instead of thinking about whatever maybe was dysregulating us.
And then we will move on to, okay, so then I want everybody to like, take a really nice deep breath and I want everyone to focus on four things that [00:06:00] you hear
And then where you're sitting, I want you to feel three different textures.
You know, so that we're really using that touch, that tactile. Then I want everyone to focus on two things that you smell and then taste is usually the hardest one. So, I kind of do that with a, if we could imagine that we would take the most delicious bite of something right now, what would that be and how would that taste?
Nobody knows you're doing it, but it really grounds you, puts you back in touch with your body and really kind of helps, especially for a lot of our overthinkers or our anxiety kiddos, we need to give them something to do with their brain other than ruminate on whatever's going on.
Um, breathing again is kind of my bread and butter. You know, we talk about all the different ways to breathe and there's no limit on creativity for different ways to breathe. But I do always like to say, I really wanna teach you how to breathe first.
We wanna really breathe from that diaphragm first and [00:07:00] know the difference of that versus that shallow breathing that we just kind of do naturally.
I think, visuals really help. I kind of use my like, gimme five, so we're gonna start, we're gonna do an inhale. Hold, exhale, inhale, hold, exhale, and just kind of have, again, something to really focus on to keep us grounded in that intentional breathing. I'm also a really big fan of somatic movement, so literally just like standing up and kind of shaking. Um, we store a lot of anxiety and trauma in our bodies.
It's just in our muscles so sometimes we just need to like stand up and kind of shake it, you know, shake it all out.
So doing those movement breaks, those brain breaks, just getting up and moving. And then lastly, I really love the idea of like any bilateral movement. So in the therapeutic world, we talk a lot about tapping, particularly butterfly tapping. So anytime you're kind of crossing that midline of your [00:08:00] body, it's engaging your brain in a different way.
You really have to kind of like stop and think about touching an opposite part of my side. And it really does kind of just engage our brains in a different way. And then, you know, I can nerd out and talk science, you know, in our Vagus Nerve and all that stuff, but it really is amazing how that's just all so connected through the movement.
Jeannie: And it's everything that you mentioned there. You don't need anything more than you.
Marie: Yep.
I think we tend to over complicate things. And even kind of going back to that first question of like, there's so much on my plate. How do I do this? It's just this easy, right? We start every lesson with like, everyone stand up and we're gonna do a nice, like sun salutation, everybody let out your big lion breath.
Okay, everybody shake it out. Now we're gonna start. Like, that's it. That is social emotional learning and it's not anything too [00:09:00] complicated if we don't make it that complicated.
Tom: Yep.
Jeannie: Totally. Such a good reminder.
Tom: And I'm the same way. I love to nerd out about the science behind it. Do you, is, is there a certain like age group?
How young do you go to actually dive into the science?
Marie: I think that's the best thing about all of this is it's so adaptable to any age group. When I started, you know, in my professional journey, I really thought I was gonna be more of a of a researcher. 'cause I am very interested in the brain scan.
I was very interested in adoption and foster care and the impact that that has on young developing brains. So, like, even looking at brain scans from three to six months, from like two to five years, you really see that difference and you kind of just watch all those connections being created or not being created, and you really can see just the mass is so intensely impacted by trauma.
But the beautiful thing about our brains, and especially working with kids, is they're not fully [00:10:00] developed until we're 25. So even if you start off with some significant trauma and some deficits, there's so much time to continue to do that restorative and reparative work, and build those connections.
Tom: Speaking of the brain, in one of the slides that you had was the hand model of the brain, which I thought was pretty interesting. Can you go through that and explain it?
Marie: Yeah, so you'll see it done many, many different ways. Just an idea of something tangible we have with us. We don't have to have a model, if we look at our hand, we can kind of understand the parts of the brain and how I use it a lot with my kiddos is, I talk about like flipping your lid or I talk about like being online or offline. So, if we think about kind of like the base of our brain, as this part of our hand, we think like this is kind of our survival brain. This is the fight, flight, freeze. This is kind of our, our automatic functions here. Then I think of our palm, palm of the hand as like, this is more of our emotional [00:11:00] brain.
So, this is what regulates our feelings, our memories, our relationships. And then I think of our thumb, you know, we kind of tuck it in this little jelly bean. This is like our amygdala. So, this is like the warning, this is like danger, danger. So, this is what triggers that fight, flight, freeze or fawn response.
And then I think of like here, like our, our beautiful like Prefrontal Cortex. This is our thinking brain. This is our problem solver. This is our planning, our creativity. This is what helps us like control our impulses. But when our amygdala is like sounding the alarm, you know, it kind of like tells, uh oh, danger.
So, we're no longer thinking, we're offline, we've flipped our lid, however you wanna say it, and now this hind brain is in charge. That's like, okay, am I fighting the bear? Am I running from the bear? And so, it's just a really easy way and, and I think to kind of, especially working with kids, kind of saying like, hey, I, I am, I am starting to see you here.
Like ourselves [00:12:00] here before, you know, it's like the, the signals flickering, let's like jiggle the cord and get back online, every once in a while I see them. I'm like, where are you? You know, are you
Jeannie: Yeah.
Marie: here? Are you here?
Are you here?
Like where's our brain right now? Because when we're here, we're not even able to perceive someone's coming to us with help. And that's how it is I think when our students are so overwhelmed, we tend to use language. And when we don't get a response, we use more language and then more language. And they're not even processing it at that moment.
So, I think again, just kind of having some of those tools of like, where, where are we with our processing? And then it helps them understand a little bit better too.
Tom: I love that idea. Another, another thing you mentioned a moment ago is, you know, the, the visual supports. Can you give us maybe, maybe some examples of how you do that and maybe at different age groups, like do you change it based on the, the age of the child?
Marie: [00:13:00] Absolutely. So I am, I'm a visual in everything I do. I'm a hand talker. I am, I walk around it, actually, I'm sitting at my desk, so I have, this is like very, this is very chaotic. This is like still calm in me, but I have like a visual for everything. Because again, visuals are permanent. Language does not always get into our brain.
It needs to be processed, but visual is so much easier to process. You can really differentiate any visual for any age group. Many years ago, earlier in my career, I had two very different populations I worked with in the same alternative building. So I had a group of first through third graders, and then I had a group of, self-contained high school, very, very, heavily juvenile justice involved boys.
And so, I would come from one group to the other and I'd have my little sticker charts and, you know, my little token boards. And at one point the boys were like, uh, Ms. Goulet, why don't we have sticker charts or token [00:14:00] boards? I'm like, looking at these giant
Jeannie: Yeah,
Marie: eighteen. And I'm like, that's a great question. I didn't think you would like it, but they ended up loving it more than my littles did.
So, I think about that with visuals, you know, it, they work for, for every age. I have a 14-year-old son at home and we have visuals and a checklist. And so, it doesn't have to be anything complicated.
So, if we're kind of talking about that executive functioning or that organization piece, a lot of things that I like to do is, at home you say, Hey, I want you to go clean your room. What, what does that mean? What does a clean room look like? You know? So maybe the first time we do it together, we take out our phones 'cause we all have 'em and we take a picture of, you know, like this is when I say I want you to clean your room.
This is what it looks like. So now we have a visual, now we have a picture to remind ourselves. So, I do that here at school as well with a lot of our students that struggle with that organization. So, when I [00:15:00] say like, Hey, this is what your backpack should look like. This is the, these are the materials you need to bring with you to this class or that class.
This is what your desk should look like.
And then even something so simple like this, like. I need a break, right? Sometimes we have a really hard time communicating I need a break. So, I like to give a lot of my kids these cards that they can just put on their desk or even give them to the teachers, kind of as that cue of like, you see a kiddo, you're walking around their dysregulated, like you could just put this right on their desk.
And then it's just a little visual. For some of the younger kids, we'll actually do a break menu and just have little pictures of like what their break options are. So, they can just point. Same thing with some of the calming strategies, you know, so we can just have little options that they can point to.
Do I want a drink of water? Do I wanna put my head down for five minutes? Just trying to eliminate a lot of that language from things, particularly in moments of crisis [00:16:00] or escalation or overwhelm. We can minimize a lot if we're able to use those visuals. And then with everything else, I always say we need to really teach explicitly what we want when we're regulated and calm. So, the first time we're using a visual should not be in a moment of dysregulation.
Tom: Awesome. So many great ideas. I'm gonna, as soon as we're done here, I'm gonna do the picture and take a picture of what I consider clean, because my oldest daughter and I are really, really clean. So, when I tell my other two kids, I'm like, I want the room cleaned to what Elizabeth and I consider clean, not what you consider clean.
Marie: That's why I always say, I'm like, did you clean it like mom would?
Tom: This is up to my expectations.
Jeannie: Smart.
Marie: I love it.
Jeannie: So, so smart.
Tom: Another question. So, you know, you've got a kid that flips their lid in the hand model of the brain. Some kids have trouble kind of calming themselves back down. I've seen sometimes, you know, kids will, it'll, it might be breathing, but it also might be where they're using their [00:17:00] sense of, of taste or touch or smell or sight. Any suggestions on how teachers or parents can kind of, show a bunch of those to their, to their students or their children, but then help them to figure out which one works for them?
Marie: Yes, and I, and I love that. S,o I say we, we always want that toolbox. You know, I, and anytime I give a student an option for something, I try to make sure I have three or four just ready to go because I can always estimate that that first one or two isn't gonna work just by virtue of like, nope, I don't wanna, nope, that's not gonna work for me.
Which, which is valid, right? Because when we are overwhelmed or stressed or frustrated, there's a few key words. I think people have good intentions to help, but those sometimes can be additional triggers, you know? So, if you see someone and you're like, Hey, just calm down. Ooh, like. Yes.
Jeannie: Yeah.
Marie: That's not the result we're gonna get.
Or even sometimes like, hey, take a deep breath, which we know that's what's gonna help them, but just, [00:18:00] making that request is gonna ensure that they're not going to do that. So again, I always go back to we wanna explicitly teach when we're calm, when we're regulated, we wanna practice all of those skills and just make them so fun and routine that really our body kind of automatically starts to do those things
Then when we're dysregulated, when we see that visual. I think that key is to just practice, practice, practice when we are regulated.
Tom: So, so important. Yes. This has been fantastic. So many great ideas. Um, just to wrap up. Anything else, any other ideas, strategies, anything you think that, hey, every teacher, every parent should know this.
Marie: I have a few mantras I really live by. So, we talked already about the “Yes, and,” I just think that is such a valuable phrase. I'm a theater kid, you know, my, my roots are. So, it's like, you know, kind of that improv. “Yes, and,” but it really opens up a lot of [00:19:00] possibilities and, and I've really found it to be very helpful in the mental health field.
I also find myself multiple times a day like, hey, it's okay to be uncomfortable. I think we live in a culture and a society that really puts a false expectation on us that we should be happy all the time and we should be regulated all the time, but we're humans and we would not have this range of emotions if, if we were not supposed to feel them.
So, I say like the way out is through and it's okay to be uncomfortable. It's okay to be upset. It's okay to cry. Those things don't mean you have to leave class. You can go through them in class. You can use your skills, you can get yourself out of it. You can build that resiliency. And I think our language as adults is so important, right?
I find myself all the time like, hey, everything is not crisis. Everything is not trauma. Everything is not bullying. Sometimes people are just jerks. So, I think really being so mindful of our [00:20:00] language our goal here is to increase resiliency.
And, we can't do that if we're kind of always trying to put out those fires. We have to feel the uncomfortability and know that we can get through that. And then I think my, my final, my final thought on that is really focusing on the size of the problem. Uh, that's the bulk of the work that I do with my students is like, Hey, what is really the size of this problem?
And what is the appropriate reaction to the size of the problem? Everything is not immediate. Sometimes again, we can kind of sit with it and maybe by tomorrow are you even going to remember? You know, I wanna, I wanna honor it and I wanna, you know, know that it's important to them in the moment.
And sometimes people just, just as adults do, we just need to be heard. But like, ultimately it's okay. It's not, it's really not the end of the world. We're gonna, we're gonna get through this.
Jeannie: Marie, your passion for kids and what you do is so evident in hearing you talk. Thank you [00:21:00] so much for taking the time to talk to us.
Marie: Wow. Well, I am so grateful to be asked, and it really is, it's the joy of my life. I am very, very grateful to get to do what I do and to have opportunities like this. I'm just, I'm very thankful, so thank you both for inviting me.
Jeannie: Tom, another great guest that you found for us. I learned so much from Marie. She's awesome. And I feel like with a lot of our guests, I want her to be my friend. When she said she was a theater kid, I'm like, me too. But you know, that's not what this is about. Theater kids, but so what, what stood out to you?
Tom: Um, I agree, agree with everything you said. I think one of the most important things is what she said about that, when you're anxious and stressed, whether it's you or your kids or the kids that you're working with. Your brain actually can't process things. It can't learn.
It's, it's like she said, it's offline. So, we really need to teach these skills before they need 'em, you know, and, and make it a daily practice. So just like if it's a sport or if it's [00:22:00] playing a musical instrument, you know, you're practicing every single day.
Jeannie: Yeah.
Tom: To be able so that when it's game time and you need to go, those skills are ready to go.
And it's the same thing with these things. You gotta practice 'em each and every day when you're not in that anxious, when you're not in that stressed out state. So, then it just becomes a natural, you know, reaction when, when it does happen, you're ready to go and, practice them and use them when that stressful event happens.
Jeannie: So true.
Tom: How about you?
Jeannie: I love how she was talking about some of the coping strategies and she says that she likes to focus on things that are quote, cheap, free, easy, and that you can do anywhere. And I think for, anybody like that, that's what we need to remember is that.
It doesn't need to be complicated for it to be effective. And when she talked about that 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 game where you maybe focus on five things, you can hear four things, you can see it, it's something that you, you don't need anything outside of yourself to be able to focus and get [00:23:00] back into the present moment.
And I, I think about friends that are teachers and how they have so much to do in their day, and I love how she said that.
She tells her teachers, you're already doing these things. Don't think that it's something extra. Don't think that it's something more, you're doing them every single day. I feel like as a teacher or a parent, it would be such a confidence booster to me of like, okay, I can do this. I can make these simple moments effective.
Tom: Agreed. Agreed. Agreed. Another great episode and that's a wrap on season two, sister. Thanks for doing this with me for another season.
Jeannie: Thank you for doing it with me. I feel like with every guest that we've had, I learn more and more, and I hope that you, as our listeners, feel the same way. I loved season two doing this with you, brother. This was so much fun. Thank you to everybody who's listening, and we will see you in September for season three of the Raising Resilient Kids Podcast.
Have a good summer.