The Unteachables Podcast

#119: Are calm corners worth having in secondary classrooms?

• Claire English • Season 6 • Episode 119

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Calm corners look great online – but in reality? Students can ignore them, misuse them, or turn them into a hangout spot. You’re left wondering if they’re even worth it in a busy secondary classroom where time, space, and structure are limited. You want to support emotional regulation, but not at the expense of learning.

I’ll take you through how I create calm spaces that actually support self-regulation – without turning your classroom into a free-for-all – and how I embed emotional literacy and co-regulation into my behaviour approach.

IN THIS EPISODE, I DISCUSS:

  • Why calm corners often fail in secondary classrooms
  • What needs to happen before you set one up
  • My “pocket calm corner” and the tools students actually use
  • How to embed regulation without disrupting the flow of your lesson

So, are calm corners worth the rage in secondary? Yes – but only if they’re adapted to work in our world. That means ditching the distractions and zeroing in on strategies that are teachable, transferable, and actually usable for our students.

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Speaker 1:

Oh, hi there, teachers. Welcome to the Unteachables podcast. I'm your host, claire English, and I am just a fellow teacher, a toddler mama and a big old behavior nerd on a mission to demystify and simplify that little thing called classroom management. The way we've all been taught to manage behavior and classroom manage has left us playing crowd control, which is not something I subscribe to, because we're not dancers, we're teachers. So listen in as I walk you through the game, changing strategies and I mean the things that we can actually do and action in our classrooms that will allow you to lean into your beautiful values as a compassionate educator and feel empowered to run your room with a little more calm and, dare I say it, a lot less chaos. I will see you in the episode. Hello, lovely teachers, claire English here, your host of the Unteachables podcast, and it is so wonderful to have you back here to join me.

Speaker 1:

Today I'm going to be talking about calm corners and, more specifically, calm corners like are they worth the rage, are they worth actually putting together? And this is specifically for secondary teachers, because primary, yes, I get it right. Like you're with your students all day, every day, you are there with your students, you establish a culture that you can reinforce in every moment of the day. When it comes to secondary, it's a little bit different. It's a little bit harder when it comes to things like calm corners. Number one because of the physical space like it's pretty hard when our classrooms are the size of a shoebox I'm not talking for every single teacher, but every single secondary classroom that I've taught in at least. There's barely enough room for the tables and the students to go in. So calm corners are a little bit more of a pipe dream when it comes to secondary classrooms. But mainly I'm talking about the fact that we have multiple classes. Oh my gosh, can you hear the lawn mowing outside? I know the world can't stop because of my podcast, but it's very annoying and I hope it's not going to disrupt whatever I'm saying in your ears. I hope it's not too annoying and you don't want to turn it off. What was I saying? Yes, calm corners. We have like hundreds of students that we teach. We have multiple classes every single day. So establishing a culture around calm corners is incredibly difficult when we have such a limited time with them. So in the settings that I've taught, I know that it's going to be different globally. But in the secondary settings I've taught in I'm an English teacher I might have every single class, I might have seven classes and I might have my classes three times a week for 75 minutes. Establishing a culture around regulation and calm is a lot harder.

Speaker 1:

I'm going to have to continue this after that, uh, whippersnippering or mowing stop, so I'll be back. Okay, I'm back and I'm actually sitting in a closet. I decided to come into, uh, my clothes closet, so I've punched myself up in here. I looked at the window it's actually a leaf blower and that poor person just trying to do their job and I'm like shooting them daggers up from my apartment window, anyway. So I wanted to start this episode by just telling you about the most beautiful calm corner I've seen in a secondary setting.

Speaker 1:

It was beautiful this teacher that I went in to observe. I walked in and it was just amazing. She clearly cared so much about her students and her classroom was luckily a bit bigger than most in the school, because the rooms were very tiny, and I'm talking when I say a little bit bigger, I mean they had like a corner, one space where a table wasn't, so maybe not even like a meter squared, anyway. So I was leading on teaching and learning and one of the amazing things that I got to do was do regular observations and, don't worry, I made sure they were very supportive and worthwhile process. I never had any complaints about the observations that I did. I think when you're a teacher you get it. So I loved doing observations and my teachers actually were welcoming them as well, so it was a very good process. I just wanted to make that clear because I know people hear the word observation and go oh, observations Anyway. So she managed to make this space just look perfect. You know cushions, like. There were really awesome posters about emotions, lots of that emotional literacy happening, a few books. It was just really cute and cozy.

Speaker 1:

But then the lesson itself started and this is the kind of thing that I observed when students came into the room and they were dysregulated, they weren't using that space. It wasn't referenced, it wasn't being used at all. It was just a nothing to the students who actually could have really benefited from this space. A big group of students came in and they sat in the corner, in the calm corner, and they just were there and it was really hard for the teacher to get them away from that space. She took ages to encourage them to get out of that space. And then later in the lesson a student came up, she grabbed a pillow and started whacking her friend with it across the head. So it's safe to say that that calm corner actually caused way more problems than solved them.

Speaker 1:

You know, like, what was the purpose here? It was causing far more issues than it was helping anybody. It definitely wasn't helping the teacher. So, uh, like, what's the point of it, right? So I got curious when I spoke to this teacher and I'm like you know what was the purpose of it? What's it being used for? How is it being embedded? And the teacher couldn't really tell me. She had these beautiful intentions for this beautiful, perfect space and that is so hard to achieve in secondary and had so much potential. Yet the actual foundations of the space were missing. And I want to just say, like all of the props to her, because if you can create a calm space in secondary, that's amazing. And if you have the courage to do it in secondary, with all of those kind of factors that play against us, like the fact that we've got a bunch of different you know classes and it's hard to embed. You know it's something that takes a lot of courage and a lot of consideration to do. So I was so impressed by the space that she'd created, but the foundations were missing.

Speaker 1:

So let's talk about the purpose of a calm space. If you want a calm space in your secondary classroom, it really is to empower students to learn the skills of self-regulation, to develop emotional literacy, to strengthen their social emotional skills. So when they have wobbles like we all do, I definitely have plenty of wobbles rather than telling you to F off when they're angry, they can tune in, recognize their own needs and go and make a different choice to regulate. That doesn't automatically happen because of a few regulation strategies that you've put on a wall or, you know, on a desk. Just like putting a times table poster on the wall is not going to help your students learn their times tables without explicitly teaching and engaging and modeling those skills. So, yes, we are building skills, we're building these beautiful life skills, but it's not going to happen just by being in proxy of a calm corner.

Speaker 1:

Now let's think about the function of a calm corner. They need to work in your context. They need to support students without being a distraction or detracting from the learning. They need to be done in a way that will allow you to continue to teach as much as possible while that self-regulation is going on. That's why you need to have spaces that are boundary and used very explicitly and embedded into your classroom management approach. So let's talk about the purpose of them. The students weren't being taught how to use these skills. The space itself wasn't taught in terms of like the function, so it was a distraction and it was detracting from the learning. A cushion might not have been the best choice for this teacher. You know, having a space with things that would detracting from the learning. A cushion might not have been the best choice for this teacher. You know, having a space with things that would detract or distract, without boundaries around, that probably wasn't the best way to get the engagement with the space or do the space in a way that's going to be effective. So how I do this? How do I create a space that's boundaried and used explicitly and embedded into my classroom management approach? Read and used explicitly and embedded into my classroom management approach.

Speaker 1:

First off, I explicitly teach one skill at a time to a class. I might do this just by modeling that I've had a tough day. So I'm going to take a sip of water or I'm going to take a breath, or I might do this in a more in-depth way through teaching one of my SEL lessons, like the one on when we flip our lids. So I'm going to be explicitly teaching some skills around self regulation, but I'm also going to teach students why self-regulation is important and the times we can use these strategies that we've got in this calm corner. That can take some time, or it can also just be a two minute chat at the start of the lesson. Oh my gosh, the photocopier was down. I am very stressed right now. Yay, so I'm just going to take a sip of my water and then we're going to start the lesson. So it doesn't have to be anything.

Speaker 1:

I really am a firm believer that SEL is not something that necessarily happens in a lesson. It's something that happens just in the day-to-day modeling and discussions that we have. Of course, I do also teach lessons, but it's really important for us to be modeling that in the day-to-day as well. Lessons, but it's really important for us to be modeling that in the day-to-day as well. The second thing is I will work the strategies into explicit discussions about behavior and make a plan. So just say that Sally had a wobbly moment in the lesson and she ripped her work up. I might chat to Sally after. I will use the resources in that space to get her to unpack her feelings. I'll get her to unpack her feelings, I'll get her to identify strategies that might work for her the next time she's feeling that way and then I'm going to make an explicit plan on how to use these strategies. So it's not a free-for-all. So maybe it is in secondary that that calm corner, that calm space, is only to be gone towards, like only to be to be gone to by the students if they have an explicit strategy in place that we have made together as just really strategic and explicit plan.

Speaker 1:

Then the third thing, the third thing that I make sure I do when it comes to my calm corner, my calm space. By the way, most of the time my calm space and I'm putting like little inverted commas here with my hands my calm space usually is just a pack of cards in my bag, because I move from class to class. I don't have a set classroom a lot of the time, so most of the time I actually just have like a pocket. I call it my pocket calm corner and it's just a bunch of cards that I can use for students to um, to kind of come and have a regular, you know a regulating moment. But because I use these cards, I can also just print out the ones that they've chosen as their strategies and then they can keep it on their person. So, like, the way that we approach calm corners in secondary has to work for us.

Speaker 1:

So the third thing is I will only use strategies and the things I am comfortable having in action in my classroom. If I don't want a bunch of cushions, if I know certain things are going to cause chaos, if I don't want the option of leaving the classroom as a regulation strategy, I just won't work that into the space. I won't have the cushion, I won't have certain fidgets available just for anybody to pick up and use. I will only use the things that work for me and work for that space. Of course, if a student needs a fidget toy, if they need like something, then I will make sure they have access to that. But it's not necessarily going to be something that's in a box there for anybody to grab, because you know my year nines will just go there, grab it out and chuck it at their friends, like it's not something that I'm going to have just regularly available.

Speaker 1:

The next thing is I will set up the space in a way that I know that I personally can manage and control. So, as I said before, having calm cards in a drawer at my desk or having a routine around that where students come up and I hand them a strategy that's, you know, pre-planned or maybe students have one in their pocket or at their desks already, or maybe I go around when I see a student having a moment of dysregulation and I choose a strategy or give them two cards as choices. So I'm really setting up regulation and self-regulation in my classroom in a way that I know that I can manage. I'm a stronger like. I feel like I'm very strong at classroom management now. So I feel like, with my presence and with my boundaries and with the expectations that I set, I'm quite confident in having a space in my room that maybe another teacher might not be comfortable with. I feel like I can manage that in most situations now, whereas another teacher might not feel comfortable with that. So really do what works for you and your space. So my calm corner if I'm going all out. Uh, in my secondary classroom with a calm corner, this is what it looks like. This is how I set up my calm corner, like.

Speaker 1:

So I'm just thinking back to my last like full-time gig where I had a full-time classroom. My English classroom was my go-to, that was my space, that was my sanctuary. This is what I do in my space have visuals up on the wall. I am always embedding that emotional literacy and making it intentional so students will know where to look when needed, and I will always use this in the discussion. So if my class is having a tough time, if I'm having a behavior chat, I'll always refer back to those visuals on the wall, always be referring back to. What are you feeling right now? What was the feeling beneath this? How are we feeling when that happened? And really trying to embed that emotional literacy in the day-to-day rather than having it, as it's not just a poster up on the wall. It's a tool that we can use to discuss. So then when students are sitting there and they're struggling, they can look up at the wall and they'll know how to use that, they'll know how to identify things, they'll know how to then do something that's going to help them in that moment, you know, deescalate.

Speaker 1:

And the next thing that is a must have in my classroom when it comes to calm corner and I said this before it's just my cards, my pocket calm corner cards. I love these because it's just easy. You know they're just 25 different strategies students can use when they're feeling dysregulated. So some examples of these I might have. I have 25 cards and they all have a different strategy on them in different categories. So like, move it, feel it, think it. I can't remember the last one now, but here are a few examples of those strategies.

Speaker 1:

So five, four, three, two, one, a grounding exercise where they go through their um, like five things I can see, four things I can hear Like, so they go through their senses and it's just a grounding exercise to get them in the moment I have an option for standing and working. If they need to get some movements, I've got an option for going and splashing some water on their face and taking a drink. I've got options for stretching, tensing and releasing, which I feel is a really good one for getting energy moving and to get that kind of energy out. So they tense up their body and they hold it for five seconds and they release and they continue to do that for however long you need to do that, for I've got breathing exercises, like just little cards, and they've got, like you know, different exercises they can follow, just really intentional um. I've got one for standing outside the classroom and doing some wall push-ups again if they feel like punching a wall, but you know it's probably not best for them to do that, so I get them to do something physical that's going to exert some of that energy.

Speaker 1:

I've got options for journaling and brain dumping and remember, if those don't fit, we just don't have to have them as an option. If you don't want an option for them to run out of the classroom and go get a drink by themselves, if that's not safe for your setting, if that's not going to work for you, if you don't have another staff member to support you with that, you just take it out of the deck. You don't have to have a strategy that's not going to work for you. I just have the options that work for me, and the thing I love about the strategies that I have in my calm corner is that they're transferable into the real world Our young people are going to be driving, they're going to be getting jobs, they're going to be in relationships where they have to, you know, like engage in intimate ways, you know the discussions they're going to be having, like they've got a lot of responsibility for the people they're going to be with and if they can have regulation strategies that will be able to help them in social situations, in work situations, when they're driving to work, when all of those things, I think it's going to be like so much better than us having a couple of you know just things in a corner. That's not necessarily going to mirror the real world for our older students. So, yeah, that's why I love it.

Speaker 1:

There are things that you can do right now sitting here, sitting anywhere. They can be in their bed at home. They might be hearing their parents have a fight and they can do one of these strategies to help them cope with the with the real life things that they're going through in their world. So that's why I love the strategies that I have in that deck of cards. I've given them to students to take home. Multiple times I've said you know you're struggling with something. Yeah, like that is the strategy that's working for you. I want you to keep these three cards in your bag at all times and when you're struggling, pull those cards out and and use them Like that's what they're there for.

Speaker 1:

So another thing that I have in my calm corner are some reflection templates and some scaffolds and just other printables that they can take, take to their desk and use without disruption so they can regulate, have a mindful moment, and then I can continue to teach the class and I'll just talk to them after. So the kind of things that I have in my template kind of pack. I'll just have them in one of those, um, you know, the, whatever they're called, the paper holder, thingamajiggies. So I just have them there on my table or another table in the corner or wherever they are, um, and they can just take one. So the kind of things that I have in there. I have a template that has, uh, what I can control and what I can't control, it kind of scaffolds. They're thinking around that.

Speaker 1:

So in the circles they can write down what they can control in the situation they're facing and in the situation that's really they're struggling with, and then they can write down what they can't control and that just helps them to ground and to, you know, to find more resolutions in what they're going through. I have principles that have them able to identify their feelings. I have principles that help them to ground in their 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, their sensory stuff. So you know five things, I can see four things, I can hear three things, I can feel. You know all of those things and then I've got an SOS reflection. So in the SOS reflection they have to stop, they have to observe what's happening in their bodies, how they're feeling, what's going on for them, and then the third S is to steer. So it's stop, observe and then steer. And I've just got like a little reflection template, like a little scaffold for them to kind of write down those things.

Speaker 1:

I use other things like soothing scribbles and other drawing activities just to help them to get mindful and get in the moment and help them to focus their energy on something else. So I've just got a bunch of different scaffolds and templates so you can use anything for this. You can use some journal prompts, just things that they can pick up and take back to their desk with them, because what we're doing here is we're crafting a calm space for students to develop their skills in self-regulation. Going back to the purpose of it, we're doing all of the things that the space intends. We're doing it in a way that works for us and our setting.

Speaker 1:

In a secondary classroom where we don't have a specific corner, where we're not with these students 24 7 to reinforce the expectations, where we're only with students three times a week or less than that, but still being able to embed the strategies that we know are going to really support us to manage big behaviors in the classroom, just adapting it to our setting. So what do I think about using calm corners in secondary? I love it. Clearly I've been talking about it for the last 20 minutes, how much I love my calm cards and the emotional literacy that we're building in and just all of those things that will help students to regulate and be empowered to manage their behaviors. And all of those things Right, but not if they're just an awkward copy and paste from primary to secondary and there's not the intention behind it and we're not really thinking about how to adapt it. By the way, if you are primary and you're listening right now, all the things that I've spoken about you can use too. That's not stopping you. I'm just talking about adapting things to a setting where we're not with these students 24 seven, where we might see them once a week.

Speaker 1:

And then we're trying to embed these strategies and we're trying to set boundaries around a space. And it's hard, it's really tough to do that. Remember, it just needs to work for you and your context. You are the most important person because you're leading that space and you need to be comfortable and confident in being able to do that in a way that's going to work with the learning and with everything you're doing in the classroom, not just tacking something on because you've been told that students need to have a calm space or you've been seeing it all over the internet, all these beautiful calm spaces. It just needs to work for you and it needs to be fit for purpose and you can definitely do a calm space that is fit for purpose in secondary.

Speaker 1:

But honestly, the most incredible thing that has come into my life are those calm corner cards. They have been the biggest game changer for being able to prioritize student regulation in a way that works for me. I can use them out on playground duty. I can use them when I go on school camps. I can use them when I go to athletics carnivals. I can use them when I'm in an assembly, every single situation that I'm in. I just have them in my bag or in my pocket and I can pull them out whenever I need to, and I know my students well enough to be able to know. Okay, I think that's going to work for you.

Speaker 1:

If you are one of my fabulous behavior clubbers, you can log in and download those cards inside of the resource hub along with all of my other Calm Corner resources included in this month's bundle. There's, you know, over a hundred printable pages of Calm Corner resources, from, like, beautiful posters, like with emotional literacy embedded into them, to all the printables that I spoke about, to an emotional check-in station, like. There's so much there that you can use to make your Calm Corner really special but also do it in a way that's going to work for you in your classroom. So you can definitely go in and download those. Those are in the resource pack. If you're not a behavior clubber, you can either join the wait list for later in the year, because we are at capacity at the moment, or you can get the calm corner bundle separately. I will pop all of those details in the show notes for you the link to the calm corner bundle and the link to the Behavior Club if you would like to join the wait list.

Speaker 1:

But remember you also don't have to start with anything fancy. All of those strategies that I spoke about that I use on my Calm Cards the 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, the stand and work, the splashing water on the face, tensing and releasing breathing exercises, just doing some wall pushups or chair pushups, brain dumping, some journaling all of those things you can just write on a piece of paper, like just fold your piece of paper into four, write it on the piece of paper, laminate it and there are your cards. You don't have to do anything fancy. I'm such an advocate for you doing it like, just doing it scrappy, just doing it in whatever way works for you. We're busy. It doesn't have to be bloody perfect all the time, you know. So, um, if you don't have the capacity to invest in my calm corner resources, that's okay. Just do it in a way that works for you.

Speaker 1:

I just want you to be able to be empowered to do this in your classroom in a way that works and not be like the teacher that I spoke about at the start, who poured money and energy and so much into the most incredible space that I've seen in secondary, only for it not to be functional and for it to work. By the way, after me talking to her about that space, she made a couple of tweaks and she it was incredible, like the change was day and night, because she was able to model things and teach them things. So it wasn't a waste of her time, but she just needed someone to guide the way. So I was so, so, so proud of her. She did such an amazing job.

Speaker 1:

Uh, okay, model regulation, keep it authentic. Keep going back to the purpose. Keep going back to that. Why not? To have the most Pinterest perfect classroom in the school, although my resources will definitely make it look like that. I'm so happy with a lot of teachers have sent me photos and it's just amazing, but it really is to simply have strategies that best support our young people and help us get back to teaching in the classroom in the best way possible. Okay, lovely teachers, that is all for this week. I will see you next time and until then, take care. Bye for now.

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