Park Rapids child care provider reflects on impact of social-emotional learning experiences
With nearly a dozen toddlers and preschoolers gathered around her, Roxanne Stinar held a plush pink circle in one hand and a copy of A Little Spot of Love in the other. The pink plush had large, expressive eyes, a happy smile, and spindly arms and legs.
“How do we fill our love spot?” Roxanne asked the little ones sitting at her feet.
It was the Thursday before Father’s Day and the children, one at a time, listed how they like to show their love to their dads.
- “We go fishing together.”
- “Going to the beach and spending time with him.”
- “My dad loves cuddles and swimming and climbing trees.”
- “He tickles me.”
- “We walk to the playground and play together.”
Care-a-Lot Child Care in Park Rapids hosts circle time every mid-morning. The children sit cross-legged on colored triangles, surrounded by posters of colored dots of cartoon faces, each depicting a human emotion: yellow includes feelings such as joy, hopeful, and silly; green might be peaceful or calm; red, frustrated or mad; blue, disappointed or defeated; brown, anxious or overwhelmed; pink, loved or appreciated. There’s even a scribble of colors, depicting a face with so many mixed up emotions they are confused.
“It’s really important that we experience all our feelings,” Roxanne said. “Sometimes we feel happy. Sometimes we can feel sad. Sometimes you can feel mad and sad at the same time.”
She read the love spot book aloud, prompting conversation and discussion every few pages. One youngster was feeling a bit more withdrawn that morning. Together, the group tried filling her love spot in different ways: Compliments didn’t do much but after a hug, the child visibly brightened – and then a chorus of other voices shared that they, too, needed hugs to fill their own love spots as well.
A JOURNEY INTO SOCIAL-EMOTIONAL LEARNING
A journey into social-emotional learning
Roxanne first became interested in trauma-informed care in the wake of a family tragedy. She had initially responded to an advertisement to care for her now-husband’s three young children, but the youngest died in a car accident not long after they all first met.
“The more that I learned about trauma and brain development, it just really spurred me to want to keep learning about the trauma response,” she said.
Part of that learning was recognizing that, as she’d now established a child care, those children needed their own space outside her own home. A newly renovated garage became the separate site for her child care, providing two play areas, a kitchen, and dedicated outside recreation space.
“They’re with me 10 hours a day. This is their building, their own space,” she said.
Roxanne got involved in Parent Aware, a designation system through the Minnesota Department of Human Services which provides tools and resources to child care providers while also providing a system through which families can locate quality child care programs in their area.
Through Parent Aware, Roxanne learned about the Step Up social-emotional learning workshops offered through Northwest Minnesota Foundation. Step Up aims to equip the region’s child care professionals with social-emotional learning skills. The workshops, delivered by Peacemaker Resources, teach providers how they can help children develop self-awareness, emotional regulation, and social skills.
“It wasn’t until I went through the Step Up program that I really started to dive in deeper to the social-emotional learning aspect of it and how important that is,” Roxanne said. “You cannot learn cognitively … until you center emotionally. That first workshop, it rocked my world.”
Step Up Foundation, the first in the workshop series, includes not only the curriculum but offers follow-up coaching sessions as well. Roxanne said those coaching sessions were invaluable.
“That’s where I learned many of the tools I use here today,” she said. “It made such a difference, giving (the children) words when they don’t have the language to speak to how they feel.”
Roxanne has since taken all of the Step Up workshops and is now enrolled in college to continue her education. She said that what she has learned about social-emotional learning has completely changed the way she cares for children and, to some extent, her interactions with their parents as well. At one time, 98 percent of all her child care children were Native American, and learning about epigenetics – research that shows how environmental influences and early life experiences can affect DNA and have lifelong impact – was particularly powerful.
“Yes, we knew about ACES before (adverse health effects), but Step Up goes so much deeper,” she said. “There was one (facilitator) who spoke about epigenetics and that was huge, because it was a conversation about respecting their culture to be able to communicate with the parents and come alongside them as a team. It was about being a community, embracing each other, recognizing that the parents have trauma themselves.”
The workshops can be a time commitment – some workshops are a full day in person – but Roxanne said that dedicated focus time allows participants to dig in deep.
“If providers had the education to understand the parents’ trauma and how that’s passed on, you view every tantrum differently,” she said. “If you can give them the words to speak, it’s huge. It’s life changing.”
STEP UP WORKSHOPS ARE RETURNING SOON!
Step Up is expected to return for another round of workshops in Fall 2024/Spring 2025! Watch for announcements at https://nwmf.org/where-we-help/child-care/step-up/
