As readers know, I’m always on the look-out for new strategies to help my students get a better handle on self-control, and have often written about them. Many that I’ve tried have worked for some, but every student is an individual, so you can never have too many strategies!

I’ve written about previous studies have shown that self-control appears to be a limited reserve that needs to be replenished regularly. One way to do that is by ingesting glucose (some morning trail mix has worked wonders for one of my students).

Several new studies have just come out that there’s another way to replenish that supply of self-control — through self-affirmation.

You can read the details at the link, but, in short, study participants were able to refuel their self-control by writing about their core values — whatever was important to them (their family, friends, etc.).

I can see trying something like this with a student who is losing his/her self-control by asking him/her to put their head down for a minute, or to go outside, and think about something that is important to them.

It’s just one more tool for the toolbox….

As regular readers know, I keep an eye out for research studies that might have some relevance to my teaching, and try to apply them in the classroom.

This post might be one of the stranger ideas I’ve had but, as usual, I think it’s worth a try because I don’t think it can hurt.

Packing Your Troubles Away Actually Works, Study Finds is the title of a Science Daily article that appeared today. It talks about studies that have shown if you put something in an envelope or box that relates to a previous disappointment, then it helps people get pass those negative feelings.

This is what one of the researchers said:

“If you tell people, ‘You’ve got to move on,’ that doesn’t work. What works is when people enclose materials that are relevant to the negative memories they have. It works because people aren’t trying to explicitly control their emotions.”

How might be wondering how I’m planning to apply this to my classroom…

I have a couple of students who have been struggling mightily all year. For both, self-control challenges have been very damaging to their learning. We’ve begun the lengthy process to investigate if there are issues that require stronger intervention, but that doesn’t help them this year. Nothing that I’ve tried — and, believe me, I’ve tried a whole lot of things — has worked for longer than a short time, and I know that these challenges have faced them for longer than just this year.

I’m going to ask each of them to take a few minutes and write and/or draw about the problems they’ve been having in class — not doing homework, not focusing, disruptive behavior, etc. — and then have them put what they’ve written in an envelope as a symbolic move to “get rid of it” and get a new start. Of course, I would explain the study first, and give them the choice of whether they wanted to try it or not. I suspect they will, but I believe that both recognize that they need to change.

I’ve often asked students when they were having a good day how they felt, and then have them compare it to how they’ve felt when they were having a bad day. But I’ve never actually asked them to take some time and think and write about their bad moments.

We’ll see what happens.