From Creator Rudolph Keeth Matheny

Like all of us, I have been absolutely overwhelmed and saddened by what is happening with Coronavirus. I know many are struggling, some in traumatic ways, and we are all dealing with heavy emotions. Educators are facing challenges of trying to move learning online, while balancing the strong concerns of how to support students as they cope with daily changes, fears, and challenges.

I am a social and emotional learning (SEL) teacher, speaker, and author (A.K.A. Emotional Intelligence or EQ)  who spends most of his time presenting to large groups, keynotes, and workshops. Obviously, I am not doing any of those currently, and wanted to find a way to be a help.

“When you can’t do what you do, do what you can.”- Bon Jovi

Determined to help students and families cope with challenges, I asked my filmmaker son to work with me to create some videos for online support. He was home from college and, graciously, he agreed, did some amazing early work, and the idea has inspired others to chip in. It is now a whole family project, with my wife and daughter contributing to videos and resources. We partnered with School-Connect, a national research and evidence based SEL curriculum for secondary schools to help make some of the additional resources. Truman, my son, and I spent over 60 hours filming our first video series last week, and a team of colleagues at School-Connect helped create handouts, activities, and other resources (we now have a few other colleagues chipping in with quizzes and other interactive components).

We decided to call our video series “EQ in your PJs.” The idea is to create calming, supportive, educational resources that students, teachers, and families can use to grow some social and emotional skills to help navigate the crisis and build some skills for the future. We plan to release a new unit of lessons every other week.

The first unit “Managing Stress Before it Manages You” is now up. It has been reviewed by many school psychologists, teachers, students, administrators and received some rave reviews.

These resources are 100% free and we all hope they are a light in dark times to many.

I hope you are all safe, healthy, and finding reasons to smile. Check out the resources here!

Creator of EQ in PJs Rudolph Keeth Matheny is a social and emotional learning teacher, speaker, and author. He is a co-author of School-Connect, a research and evidence-based social and emotional learning curriculum that is now in over 2,000 schools. Check out his site, SEL Launchpad!

Start Your Mornings At Home On a Positive Note!

Don’t forget to join Jennifer Miller of CPCK and her family for our daily morning announcements each weekday to begin in a reflective and connecting way with your family. We’ll post on Facebook Live each weekday morning at 8:15 a.m. EST and the recording can be watched throughout the day. We’ll give updates, say a global pledge of allegiance, offer inspirational words or a reading and do some deep breathing to start our day calm and ready to learn and collaborate as a family. Join us at the FB Feed for Confident Parents, Confident Kids!