Before any real learning can happen, students must feel emotionally safe. They need to know they are seen, valued, and part of something bigger than themselves. That is why the foundation of classroom culture is not content, curriculum, or pacing guides. It is connection.

Too often, we rush into instruction without first making space for students to belong. In today’s classrooms, where students bring a wide range of experiences, stressors, and identities, a supportive environment is not a luxury. It is a requirement for learning.

Building a positive classroom culture is not about fluff or feel-good extras. It is about giving students a solid foundation so they can take risks, explore ideas, and truly engage.

The School House Model: A Legacy of Connection

One of the most powerful frameworks I use to support classroom culture comes from my late mentor of over 30 years, Fritz Bell. Fritz was a brilliant educator who deeply understood the human side of teaching. He created what he called the School House Model, and it remains one of the most impactful tools I share with educators today.

The model is built on three foundational pillars: Community, Connection, and Cooperation. These are not just buzzwords. They are the building blocks of classrooms where every student feels safe, valued, and ready to learn.

When we lead with these principles, we create a classroom culture that supports all learners, especially those who may have felt excluded or unseen in the past.

Community: Everyone Belongs Here

Building community starts with routines and rituals that say, “You belong.” Use morning meetings, daily check-ins, or end-of-day reflections. These quick, intentional moments help create a shared identity in the classroom.

For students who identify as Caregivers—one of the five motivational identities I teach in my trainings—this sense of emotional connection is especially important. Caregivers thrive when classrooms foster kindness, support, and inclusion.

Simple actions like greeting students by name, celebrating milestones, or using shared language for values can make a big difference.

Connection: Relationships Fuel Learning

Students will not engage deeply if they feel disconnected. Build relationships intentionally through:

• Informal conversations

• Student interest surveys

• Personal feedback on assignments

• Partner activities with rotating groups

Even small moments of connection can build trust. When students believe their teacher knows them and cares, they show up differently. Their effort increases. Their behavior improves. Their risk-taking grows.

Cooperation: Create Structures for Peer Support

Classroom culture is not just about the teacher-to-student relationship. It also includes how students relate to each other. Cooperative learning, when structured thoughtfully, helps students develop empathy, communication, and problem-solving skills.

Try:

• Peer tutoring

• Buddy systems for new routines

• Group tasks that assign clear roles

• Shared goal tracking

These practices teach students to support one another, which increases confidence and reduces isolation—especially for struggling learners.

Discipline as Reflection, Not Punishment

When a student struggles with behavior, we often react quickly with consequences. But true growth comes from reflection, not shame. Rethink discipline by integrating:

• Cool-down corners

• Think sheets

• Restorative conversations

• Reentry plans after time away

These strategies send the message, “You are still part of this community,” even when mistakes happen. That is how we teach accountability while preserving dignity.

Trust Is the Real Classroom Management Plan

You can have the best lesson plan in the world, but if students do not feel safe and connected, it will not matter. Classroom culture sets the stage for everything else. When students feel trust, they take academic risks. When they feel seen, they participate. When they feel supported, they persist.

This is the invisible work that leads to visible learning.

Let’s Build Safe, Connected Classrooms Together

Want to create stronger connections in your school or district? Let’s work together to build classroom culture from the inside out.

Call to Action

🎓 Schedule a keynote or team session with Susan Fitzell
🧰 Or explore the tools in Special Needs in the General Classroom for practical, relationship-based strategies

The best instruction begins with connection.

CLICK HERE to discover a wealth of teaching strategies and resources for maximizing student success!. Bring Susan to your campus! Featured seminar – Differentiation Strategies to Reach ALL Learners in the Inclusive Classroom

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1. Give youth a vocabulary for their emotions – Use our Moodz poster to help kids identify their emotions and name their feelings. Students may not have the words for what they are feeling, but they may recognize the emotion in the expression on a child’s face. Ask children to point to the face on the poster that best expresses their own feelings and then teaches them the label for that feeling.

2. Use picture books as a tool for exploring emotions – Choose books that illustrate the facial expressions of the characters in the story. For older students, choose picture books with themes appropriate to young, as well as adult, readers. Read the book to students, noting facial expressions, emotions, conflicts, actions, and reactions to the characters and outcomes. Then, teach students the vocabulary for the characters’ emotions.

3. Play emotional charades! – Write many different emotions down on slips of paper and put them in a bag or hat. Have students take turns picking an emotion to portray and acting out that feeling, without speaking, in front of the class. The rest of the class must then guess which emotion is being portrayed.

4. Tell them what they are feeling. It is very important to acknowledge a youth’s feelings and give them a vocabulary for those feelings. This technique is just as valid for secondary students as young children. Help students connect how they are feeling, and consequently behaving, with labels for their emotions. For example, when students are angry because they are not getting their way, say, “I can see that you are feeling frustrated right now.” Avoid using derivatives of the word angry. Angry is overused. By labeling their emotions for them, teachers and parents can help youth learn to accurately label their emotions themselves.

5. Role-play with students – Using situations that occur in the classroom, have two students at a time role-play how they would act in a situation in front of the class. For example, have one student act as a bully while student acts as the victim. After each role-play scenario, have the whole class talk about how they might feel if they found themselves in a similar situation.

6. Teach students to be aware of their body language and the message it portrays. After students role-play a scenario, ask the audience to discuss what emotions and messages the actors’ body language portrayed. Most young people are completely unaware of what kind of message their body language is projecting By pointing it out and labeling the emotion that it portrays, students can become more aware and more in control of their body language and will learn more about labeling emotions in the process.

7. Help students understand that anger is a secondary emotion – Before a person feels angry, they experience another, often unnoticed, primary emotion, such as sadness, jealousy, surprise, or embarrassment. When a student says they are angry, help them to identify and label the primary emotion behind that anger to better understand and deal with their emotions.

8. Teach empathy – When students are involved in a conflict, help them to understand how the other person feels. Ask them how they would feel if they were in the other’s shoes. By helping students to identify and understand not only their own emotions but also the emotions of others, teachers and parents can help young people to more successfully label and understand emotions in general.

9. Help students connect their emotions and their body language – Ask them to recall a situation that made them feel happy, sad, angry or any other emotion. Have students draw a picture of a facial expression to match the given emotion and then share the pictures with the class. Seeing how students’ pictures differ will help to determine how each student views each emotion.

10. To help students better understand their anger, ask students to write a short story – complete with illustrations – that describes a situation that made them “angry” without using the words “anger,” “angry,” “mad,” etc. This will help students determine the emotions that cause anger. Students may use the Moodz poster as an “emotion vocabulary list.”

11. Help students understand various emotions by asking them to write an acrostic poem in which each letter of an emotion’s name would represent a reason for feeling that way. For example, G in guilt could start the phrase “Gave away my friend’s secret.”

12. To help students understand situations that cause them to experience a specific emotion, ask students to think about which emotions they most commonly feel and what makes them feel that way. If students realize that the same situation always makes them feel sad or hurt, they will likely avoid that situation or learn a new way to deal with it. This will help students develop better ways to deal with conflicts and emotions.

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The culture of blame is demotivating

We live in a culture of blame. Everything is someone else’s fault. This idea is reinforced by television, media, and what we see in the news. Frivolous lawsuits, high insurance rates; everything is someone else’s fault. One of the things that kids struggle with is taking ownership for their own behavior.

Why is this a problem? Because if I don’t believe that I am responsible for my own behavior, then I can’t change it. If I believe that you did something to me and that made me do something else: You made me mad; you made me do it – then I have given you the power and control.

Motivation means finding our personal power

If I don’t feel like I have any control, then I can’t be motivated. Why would I be motivated if I don’t have a choice? I can’t do anything because you have the control; it’s your fault. I’m powerless. We’re seeing this attitude become more and more prevalent in schools. Not every student displays this mindset, but it’s definitely an issue that I’ve seen and experienced as I work in classrooms across the country.

You can motivate your students by helping them to understand the power of owning their behavior. If motivation is about personal power, then when we blame, and give away our power, it affects our motivation level. But, when we own our behavior and say, “Okay, I own my reaction; I own what I do about it; I own how I take charge, then I own it.” We are motivated because we have the power to affect our circumstances.

Ownership and personal power equals Motivation

When I was younger, before I understood my own personal power, I would say, “You made me mad,” because, back then, that’s what I knew. But as I learned more about these concepts, luckily before my kids were born, I started changing the language in my house, then I changed it in my classroom: “No, I didn’t make you mad, I may have triggered your anger, I may have pushed your buttons, but you’re the one in control of you. I didn’t make you do anything.”

Ownership. Because if I own it, then I have control, I have personal power. If I have personal power I’m going to be more motivated.

For more on how to motivate students, take a look at How to Motivate Students and Increase Personal Power!

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I looked around the room at my co-facilitator and then the students and posed the question, “What is one thing that you have learned about anger in the past 6 weeks?” Eyes watched me. I learned early on that I could not pose a question to this group and expect a response unless I called on them, one by one, encouraging participation. Once they start talking, however, the floodgates often open, moving the group from passive observers to active contributors.

I looked at Matt and waited. I knew I could count on him to get the ball rolling. He didn’t disappoint me. “Anger is a secondary emotion,” he answered. “What does that mean?” I returned. “It means that there are other feelings inside that come first, but those feelings turn to anger and it happens so fast!” he said. I smiled and thanked him, then looked to the young woman sitting next to him.

Sophisticated and reserved, she might be an unlikely candidate for this group. Appearances mean nothing. A fly on the wall would see little commonality between these participants. They represented a cross-section of peer groups. Students are referred to the program by an administrator, a counselor or are self-referred. There’s a waiting list.

Administration presents the group as an option to out-of-school suspension. If students choose participation in the Anger Management Group eight-week session, their OSS is suspended until completion and then waived. Theoretically, if students miss sessions, they must serve the OSS. Overall, this works and keeps attendance consistent. As with any anger management program for teens, there are exceptions.

Ellen looked at me thoughtfully. She answered that she had learned that people had choices when they felt angry. People could choose to walk away or change the way they think about a situation. Using the opening she presented, I reviewed the physiological and psychological aspects to anger and anger reaction that we talked about a few weeks earlier.

“Anger is triggered, ” I said. “The body goes into flight or fight, and then self-talk happens. If you choose positive self-talk, you will be able to choose your action and take positive steps to deal with your anger. If you choose negative self-talk, anger will escalate.” I framed what Ellen contributed in words we have used during the lessons. Framing concepts with language that helps people to feel they can choose their behavior and control their anger are key to success in any anger management program.

Ed speaks out, “Well if some jerk hits on my girlfriend, it makes me mad.” I look around the room, seeing the light go on in their eyes. They know what is coming. Mike, my co-facilitator asks, “Can someone “make” you mad?” “No,” several answered, however reluctantly. The consensus is that anger is triggered.

I ask, “Why is that so important to understand?” They take stabs at what I’m looking for, but none hit on the point I want to re-make and stress. “If someone “makes” you mad, who has control over your emotions? What does that language tell you about who is in control?” Steve, passive and quietly resistant answers, “The other person has control”. “If something triggers your anger, who has control? Who has the power?” I could see the light dawn in their eyes as I looked around the room. “We do,” they answered.

The goal of this program is to help these kids to see that they are not helpless victims of society. They have an opportunity to take control of their lives and emotions and choose healthier responses to anger. Understanding the social, cultural, and personal influences that shape their thinking, using empowering language and owning their behavior are key to the effectiveness of the group sessions.

My co-facilitator and I have seen the effect of the program on the student’s behavior in the halls, in the administrative office and in private session. They have a new frame of reference with which to view their thinking and behavior. They catch themselves in the process of making a choice and something clicks and they make a better choice. When we talk with them outside of session, we as role models and guides have language we can use with them that they understand. Here’s more strategies for how to talk to teens. 

I knew we were making a difference when one student, with a twinkle in his eyes, asked me, “How are you feeling?” Knowing what he was looking for, I answered, “Mad!” He said, “Mad is a secondary emotion. You can’t use that word. What are you really feeling?”

Anger management is learning to deal with anger constructively.

Click HERE for more information on Susan Fitzell’s Anger Management Curriculum for Teens!

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Explain to students that the brain relies on chemical messengers called neurotransmitters to send messages to other parts of the body and enables us to express our emotions.  Insufficient or out-of-balance neurotransmitters can produce mood swings, anxiety, and depression. Drugs and alcohol can play a major role in the imbalance of these important chemical messengers.

It is important for young people to understand that, when a drug is taken, it acts as an artificial neurotransmitter.  When alcohol is consumed, for example, it substitutes for endorphins, the neurotransmitters that significantly affect mood, causing the brain to produce less of its own natural endorphins.  Like alcohol, all drugs that replace neurotransmitters cause the brain to produce less of its own natural chemical messengers.  This can have lasting effects on mood and other important brain processes long after the drug is used.

Talk with students about what kind of affects commonly-used drugs can have on their brains and their ability to control their anger and other emotions:

1. Marijuana: Marijuana replaces the natural receptor for serotonin, a neurotransmitter responsible for aggressive behavior, sleep, and hunger, therefore causing an imbalance in the brain.  The brain signals that it has too much serotonin and stops producing it.  When the drug wears off, the brain does not have enough serotonin, which consequently causes withdrawal symptoms, such as insomnia, fatigue, depression, and mood swings.  All of these could affect a young person’s ability to control their anger.
2. Alcohol: Alcohol also alters serotonin levels and substitutes for endorphins, therefore causing an imbalance in the brain.  The brain signals that it has excess endorphins and slows down its natural production of them.  When alcohol wears off, the brain does not have enough endorphins to relieve normal, everyday pain.  Students are less likely to deal with their anger responsibly when in pain or feeling sick.
3. Cocaine: Cocaine releases excess dopamine, the neurotransmitter responsible for controlling moods and feelings of pleasure, into the brain.  This  blocks the gates where natural dopamine would enter a cell for up to 72 hours and causes some of the natural dopamine to be lost, thus damaging a person’s ability to feel pleasure.  When the drug wears off, users are often unable to feel pleasure, happiness, or other emotions, and become severely depressed.  This can significantly alter someone’s ability to control and express their emotions, including anger.

By teaching students about the ways that drugs and alcohol affect their ability to manage anger, we are equipping them with the knowledge they need to understand the chemical processes behind their emotions and the ways that artificial substances can affect them.  And, most importantly, we give them one more reason to stay away from harmful drugs in the first place.

Click HERE for more information on Susan Fitzell’s Anger Management Curriculum for Teens!

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Five Ways to Help Teens Manage Anger Constructively

Teach students the difference between primary and secondary emotions

A primary emotion is what we feel first, such as fear, sadness, joy, and acceptance. Explain to students that anger is a secondary emotion. It is an emotion that evolves from what we feel first. Help teens to identify the primary emotion underlying their anger, so they can more clearly express their feelings. Explain that if they say they feel pressured, left-out, or sad, as opposed to saying they feel angry, it is much clearer what their unmet emotional need is and what would help them to feel better.

Help students recognize physical manifestations of anger

When someone is in a conflict, his or her amygdala, the brain’s emotional alarm system, scans the situation for potential danger. If the situation registers as dangerous, a distress signal is sent out to the entire brain. This, in turn, triggers a cascade of physiological responses including faster heart rate, mobilized muscles, and the release of “fight or flight” hormones (adrenaline and noradrenaline). Brain studies suggest that the moment a person becomes self-aware of escalating emotions, they activate the pre-frontal lobes. This activation reduces stress hormones and allows a state of calm to return. Therefore, it is important to help teens to notice changes that happen in their body. Then they can investigate the thoughts feeding the stress and change their self-talk to be more constructive.

Teach students positive self-talk

Positive self-talk can be used by teens to help decrease their feelings of anger and choose how to react in a conflict. One anger management strategy is to have teens employ positive self-talk when they notice their body is in a “fight or flight” state. Do not, however, confuse positive inner dialogue with positive thinking, happy affirmations, or self-delusions. Using logical, accurate self-talk means recognizing one’s personal shortcomings. It also means putting them in perspective and defining a do-able plan of action. To demonstrate the appropriate use of self-talk, role-play one person (A) putting down another person (B). After being insulted, person B shares his or her best positive self-talk. For example: “She must be having a bad day,” “I can handle this,” and “It’s not worth the price to fight.”

Help students to own their emotions

It is important for teens to remember that no one can “make” them mad. They not only have the right to feel, but they are also fully responsible for those feelings and the way they handle them. Teach students that no one can put feelings inside of them. People can only trigger their anger. They choose how they feel. Reinforce the concept that, in choosing, they are empowered and, when they don’t choose and don’t own their emotions, they are giving away their power.

Teach students to keep their power:

There are three ways that teens can give away their power in a conflict:

1. By blaming others
2. Expecting other to behave a certain way
3. Believing that they can change someone else

When they blame someone else for their anger, they are saying that person is responsible for their anger, and therefore they give away their power to someone else.

Help teens to understand that their expectations are their choice. If they set expectations for another person and become angry when that person doesn’t meet their expectations, they give away their power. Teach them that if they base their happiness on whether someone will change, they give that person the power over their emotions. The other person can control their emotions simply by changing or not changing.

Teaching anger management for teens is a process. These five strategies will help you start making progress with your students. For more on anger management for teens, take a look at my anger management curriculum, Transforming Anger to Personal Power.

Click HERE for more information on Susan Fitzell’s Anger Management Curriculum for Teens!

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Talking to Angry Children and Angry Teens

When I taught high school, I often found myself in a position where I had to help angry teens come up with solutions for their problems and alternatives to their behavior. That conversation was difficult to start when a student was “angry” and could not truly express how he or she felt. Parents and teachers of all grade levels are faced with how to talk to angry youth, whether angry children or angry teens more often that one might expect.

Using a Multi-ethnic Feelings Poster to Identify Emotions

Using the Moodz poster that my daugter designed to start the conversation helped me to get a better idea of how students were feeling. Once I had some insights to their feelings, I could help them better deal with issues and problem solve for the future.

Emotional IQ Requires Language for Emotions

Children need language for their emotions. When they have language for their emotions, they can identify how they felt before they got angry. Then I was able to start a conversation with an angry youth that became a productive problem solving approach for dealing with student anger. Angry youth are increasingly posing challenges for parents and teachers. Dealing with angry youth is critical for emotional health.

The post How to Talk to Angry Children and Teens appeared first on Susan Fitzell.

I created the Moodz poster for anger management when I realized that my students had trouble articulating what was truly making them angry. They knew that they were angry — a secondary emotion — but they had trouble naming the primary emotion that was the root of their anger. This simple poster is a perfect tool to help students find the cause of their anger.

Anger is a secondary emotion; a person is never just angry. A student feels angry because she is embarrassed, depressed, frustrated, or annoyed. There’s always a root cause. The Moodz poster shows an array of multi-ethnic faces displaying a wide range of emotions, from thrilled and satisfied to distrustful and overwhelmed

One of the most effective ways to use the Moodz poster is very simple. The first face on the poster is “Angry,” but when I was working with students who’d come to me with behavioral issues, I would cover that face and ask the student to point to the way he was feeling. They could not choose angry, they had to select another emotion. Sometimes, it would be embarrassed—a student felt embarrassed because a classmate humiliated him, so he got angry. A student felt lonely, so she lashed out at a friend.  Very often, the cause of anger was that students were simply feeling overwhelmed by school and life. The exhaustion and anxiety were coming through as anger. Once we’ve identified that primary emotion, we can start to work on the real issues and find ways to solve the problem.

The Moodz poster can be effective even if a student doesn’t have the reading proficiency to read the names of the feelings: They can usually recognize the way they are feeling from the faces alone. Soon there will be a Spanish version available as well for use with ESL students who speak Spanish as a first language. The Moodz poster is a beautifully simple way to get your students to open up and start talking about their real feelings. Knowing how to talk to angry youth and encourage them to shift their thinking is key to success when implementing an anger management program.

You can get a FREE copy of the poster by clicking on any of the links above or purchase a poster-size version for your classroom in the online store. You can also find a black-and-white reproducible copy inside Transforming Anger Into Personal Power: An Anger Management Curriculum for Teens by Susan Gingras Fitzell, also available in the online store.

Click HERE for more information on Susan Fitzell’s Anger Management Curriculum for Teens!

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Five Ways to Help Students Deal With Anger Constructively

Help students to understand that their expectations are their choice, and that if they set expectations for another person and become angry when the person doesn’t meet them, they give away their power to that person.

Teach students that if they base their happiness on whether someone will change, they give that person the power over their emotions.  The other person can control their emotions simply by changing or not changing.

From Transforming Anger into Personal Power by Susan Gingras Fitzell

Click HERE for more information on Susan Fitzell’s Anger Management Curriculum for Teens!

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