A school near the city has some up with a way to encourage its students recognise, understand, and express their feelings and emotions.
The students are being asked to write about what makes them feel happy, sad, angry, grateful or fearful on chits of paper and paste it on a wall.
Students of Classes III to IX of Swarnim International School have been talking about their emotions through these paper chits, helping teachers understand their mental state.
For example, a Class VI student wrote he gets angry when someone “beats” him at studies.
A Class IX student wrote that he is grateful that his parents send him to “a good school”.
The school feels that when students write about their feelings it helps them learn to recognise, manage, and express various emotions and feelings. It sometimes helps them overcome such emotions.
The school located at Kodalia near Narendrapur started this initiative in October.
“It helps them to take cognisance of their feelings. We also allow students anonymity that helps teachers to address issues or emotions that they are grappling with,” said Swati Sarawagi, director of the school.
She said that it provides children with a “non-judgemental space” where they can express themselves without the fear of being rebuked.
There could be children who are lonely or might be sad because of problems between parents, she said.
The writings also give teachers critical insight into a child’s or young adult’s mind.
“A child might be writing something not knowing that he is actually helping teachers understand his trigger point. Depending on the severity of the issue we take the matter to the counsellor,” said Sarawagi.
Children can also read what others have written.
“Writing out unburdens the kids because not everyone has somebody who would listen to them patiently,” said Rumjhumi Biswas, principal of the school.
Each class gets a life skill and value education period every week after which students gets to write about their feelings on the wall.
Teachers in class read out the messages without mentioning the names of students.
“There is a discussion about the chits and sometimes peers speak out about how they dealt with the emotion,” said Biswas.
However, it is not anger, fear or sad thoughts that the school is harping on but also on happiness and gratitude.
“We often overlook the reason of a child’s happiness. But here the idea is to reinforce the feeling of happiness too. It could be simple things that make a child happy. If we concentrate on that we will be able to get many more happy kids,” said Biswas.