Thank you for joining us for this special showcase of I Feel.

I Feel is an original education series from WKAR designed to help young children ages four through eight understand and express their emotions in healthy ways.

This compilation video features all 13 I Feel interstitials with young children expressing a wide range of big feelings from happy and excited to angry, sad and frustrated.

Created and partnership with child development professionals, I Feel empowers young children with social emotional vocabulary and self regulation strategies.

In just a few short moments, we're going to view all 13 shorts, which will take about six minutes.

But first, I'd like to formally introduce a few of the experts who appear in the shorts.

We will have the opportunity to hear from them this evening.

Dr. Precios Armstrong is the director of Special Education for East Lansing Public Schools, and a university professor with over 20 years of experience in education.

with over 20 years of experience in education.

Her work centers on culturally responsive practices, family engagement and inclusive instruction to improve student outcomes through strong home school partnerships.

Dr. Jason Moser has been studying how anxiety and other emotions affect our ability to stay focused and respond to setbacks in children and adults for over two decades.

He is also a clinical psychologist who works one on one with children and adults to overcome their anxiety and live healthier, happier and more productive lives.

Melissa Threadgould has worked for Community Mental Health Authority of Clinton, Eaton and Ingham Counties for 26 years and serves as the supervisor of early intervention services, including the Infant Mental Health Program.

Melissa is endorsed by the Michigan Association for Infant Mental Health.

Is rostered in child parent psychotherapy, is certified in PMTO and as a trauma and loss consultant.

Charles Weber has a background in special education with a certification in Applied Behavior Analysis.

He currently runs Eaton RESAs Stepping Up Together Program, providing case management to teen parents.

And Nicole Zaremba is a three time Emmy winning producer and director at WKAR Public Media, where she develops and leads original series and documentaries, including content designed to educate and engage young audience.

As a mom, she knows firsthand how powerful and necessary thoughtful, emotional storytelling is for kids.

Now, the moment we've been waiting for.

Let's view the shorts.

All right, let's get started.

Thank you again for joining us.

Thank you for being a part of this amazing series for all of our children throughout our Mid-Michigan region.

And throughout the state.

So this first question is for everyone.

And I sort of have an inside track about this being somewhat of a first viewing for some of you.

Now that you've had an opportunity to view the finished I Feel spots, what are your reflections?

And we'll just start with Charles and work our way down.

Yeah, so they turned out phenomenal.

I was super excited to see them.

I think everybody who was in them, especially the kids all did a phenomenal job.

I think it really does a great job of illustrating the emotions and giving that language for kids to use to express those emotions.

Melissa?

I thought that everyone did a great job, especially the kids.

I do think that building vocabulary for emotional, for emotions and feelings is really important and this is a good step.

Again, the children.

That was absolutely outstanding, to just see their excitement, and truly see them living those emotions as they were sharing.

And so having the opportunity to see them model that for others, this is just an outstanding opportunity to be a part of this with them.

Thank you Dr. Armstrong.

Yeah, I agree.

I think it was a great production overall.

Seeing the kiddos and all the imagery and the different, you know, noises and images that we saw along with those feelings to really bring them to life, to have the kids express them and use colors and objects and various things integrated with what we all had to say as well, I think was just a great way to bring it all together and bring these emotions, you know, paint a full picture of what they look like.

Yes.

Thank you.

Thank you.

And Nicole, I know youve lived with this for several months.

What are your thoughts?

Watching it with the audience and with everyone who participated?

Well, it's really nice to watch with like, in, as an audience member, because some of them, like when the children were speaking, especially like loneliness or scared, some of those labeled difficult feelings, I was watching that I almost was like, my gosh, that's so sad, you know?

But it's just part of being human.

And I want to compliment all of the experts.

So happy that each of you guys agreed to be a part of it, because really, you really nailed it, too.

Yes.

I really wanted to say that watching it with an audience does have a different take and feel than when you're going through post-production, or youre going through the production process and you're putting that together.

And even at the beginning of envisioning what this whole project could look like and would look like, it has a total different feel when you watch with an audience because it's almost like you kind of get behind the eyes of your audience.

And typically as a creative, you can be really critical.

But I still, every time I view it and now with the audience, is still so very powerful to me.

I just think of how many children will be able to gain understanding about their emotions and relate to the emotions that are expressed.

And then PBS is really powerful with that co-viewing, adult, caregiver, parent viewing with the child.

And each time I think how powerful these will be within the home to have conversations around emotions and you know how to express feelings So, still feel great about them.

Even though I got to view it from behind the eyes of our audience.

All right, Melissa, this question is for you.

Why is the four to eight age range a critical period for developing emotional intelligence and self-regulation in children?

The human brain is such an amazing organ.

before, I mean, I think by one, it's double the size of when the child was born.

By three, It's like 80% of an adult's size.

By five, it's 90%.

And so during that period, like the four to eight period between six and seven years old, your frontal lobe comes online.

You start getting some thinking, some reasoning, some logic, and it's a great time for kids too, their brains are malleable, so it's a great time to expose them to social emotional learning.

The social emotional strategies.

If you talk to like teachers, especially, especially kindergarten and early elementary teachers, they'll tell you if kids have social emotional strategies that they're more than half the way there, that they're not, they have really good prognosis for academic success.

And I think that's really important during four to eight.

Yes, absolutely.

Thank you.

And Dr. Armstrong, how does social emotional learning at an early age influence that long term behavior, school readiness and academic success that Melissa started us off with?

Its huge because one, one of the things we have to bear in mind is, am I ready to learn?

And in being ready to learn, I have to know who I am, what my needs are and how to communicate them.

And so if I have opportunities to see things that are modeled for me so that I can then identify, then I'm able to communicate more effectively with the people who are on this educational journey with.

And so in long term, we see these babies just thrive when they're able to truly know who they are and how they exist in these spaces.

Yes, that's really powerful.

And Jason, in what ways do adult caregivers benefit emotionally, or even practically from resources that support children's emotional well-being and social emotional learning?

Yeah, I think this is a really important point because many of us who are caregivers now didn't get a lot of this education as kids.

This wasn't built into the curriculum that many of us got that are now getting into school curricula to this day.

And I think we have lots to learn, and I'm really glad we're talking about emotions.

Those emotions, a lot of times emotions are those words that we don't talk about and we try to push away and we try to avoid them and maybe only talk about the positive emotions.

But bringing to life a full spectrum of emotions is really important so that for many caregivers, they can actually get the education that they never got, either from their caregivers or from their school systems or their communities.

And I think the more and more we put this into the public sphere and continue to get this information out, the more that caregivers can learn, they can model those things for our, for our kiddos, they can model those things for other caregivers around and really lift everybody up in this really important topic.

Absolutely.

I love a lot of the strategies that we actually really commiserated over and debated that are part of each of the interstitials because we wanted to make sure our caregivers had some choice in how to support their young learner in managing those emotions.

So from, maybe you would draw a picture with one or two of the emotions, but maybe just getting out into nature and being able to move around to let those emotions flow through your body was another strategy.

And then we saw even being able to celebrate in something that might seem a little embarrassing, just believing in yourself.

So the wide variety of strategies that we offer the adults and caregivers is really powerful as well.

When we talk about co-viewing and adults being able to watch these and learn as much from the child, from the spots with the child.

Absolutely.

All right, Charles.

Oh no, let's start with Nicole.

Lets ask, what role can media productions play in modeling healthy emotional expression for both children and adults and how they regulate their emotions?

Well, I think you just covered it.

I mean, I as a producer, I just want to say I learned so much from all of the experts as well, and from Robin.

Like that is one of the coolest parts about this whole production experience for myself was just, you know, the fact that WKAR and PBS taps into going to the experts, not, you know, I don't know if you've all been on camera before or if you're, you know, hosts, but really I think your expertise speaks to the content that we're trying to produce.

So thank you again.

Absolutely.

Absolutely.

And Nicole I'm going to give you one more, put you on the spot with one more.

So you've made several different productions in a wide variety of ranges.

And do you ever produce them or direct with a hopeful outcome?

And if so, what would be your hopeful outcome for this production?

Well, I definitely try to have a clear message.

So a clear story arc from like the beginning to the middle to the end.

Really what I enjoy is that I'm going on a journey with, you know, a lot of these kids.

A lot of the times like some of the questions we asked, they just came up with the answers themselves.

So I feel like I'm learning about them and myself.

So I love that part.

So, yes, absolutely.

All right, Charles, how can caregivers reinforce emotional wellness and social emotional learning lessons from educational programming and everyday interactions at home?

So to me, I think one of the most important things to remember is that interactions with children between caregivers shouldnt be a test, that sometimes kids don't have that knowledge or that vocabulary to express what they're feeling.

So we as caregivers and adults need to provide that.

So if you see a child, you know, getting angry, getting frustrated, it's okay to say, you know, how are you feeling?

But even that is kind of a micro quiz, you're expecting an answer.

So to add on to that, how are you feeling?

It looks like you might be frustrated or maybe you're feeling angry and providing that answer for them to be able to reflect back and know, put that into words what they're feeling.

That's a really powerful strategy.

And this last question is for everyone.

What challenges do caregivers face in teaching self-regulation and how can programming help bridge gaps in social emotional learning?

Mental health wellness In our children?

What resources are out there that you look to for our parents to be able to gain more understanding when it comes to emotional wellness?

And we'll start with Charles and move through.

So one of the things that I think is a challenge for a lot of caregivers is to remember that we are all, but human, that as care givers, yes, you need to teach these lessons, but it's also important for you to have that emotional regulation and to be able to show that and teach by example.

So when you have a child that is getting frustrated, is having some of these greater emotions that might cause some frustration in you and you need to be able to expertly kind of deal with that and show by example how to regulate those emotions.

Yeah, very good.

Melissa?

I think just the course of life these days with it being so busy and everybody having their schedules like running here and there, it makes it really hard to parent and to do an intentional job.

So I think the rupture and repair of parenting the, the fixing things that you didn't do great the first time going back and saying to the child, boy, I really should have handled this differently.

I was in a hurry.

That was my bad.

Let me try this again, or next time I plan to do it this way.

I think showing that to your child that you're humble enough to apologize and to make things better shows them how to deal with friends and people in their lives.

Truly piggybacking off of what you were just sharing, that being vulnerable, right.

We are none of us is the oracle of all.

And you cannot plan for every instance of everything that would happen.

And so with that, just being willing to admit I don't know it all, and seek out help like one of the critical things you've got to be willing to do is go ask for help, seek out other resources, talk to your schools, talk to those trusted people within your circle, and share when you need help.

And I think when we're able to ask for help and be humble in the fact that we can't be the oracle of all, that opens up the doorway to be able to truly be more effective in how we care for the little ones in our care.

Absolutely.

So I'm feeling a lot of emotions now because everybody gave such great answers and I'm the last one.

And so I have to regulate little bit and see, okay, what am I going to say now after all that amazing, amazing information?

Yeah.

I mean, I think one other challenge that I that I think about is trying to develop your own toolbox.

And, you know, a lot of what other people have already said it, just in terms of like being able to have those skills, use them in the moment, being humble, being able to to draw on them, and also know when you do need help yourself.

And I think one thing that I know is hard to do, but to face that sort of challenge is to be an informed consumer as best you can and try to sort through, you know, the signal to get the signal through the noise, because there is a lot of content out there actually about, you know, emotional learning and emotional health and mental health.

And so the more and more folks can really be an informed consumer trying to find reliable sources to get over the hump of like developing that toolbox for themselves, I think that is a challenge and just trying it out and learning and being flexible, I think is is just developing that knowledge yourself, I think is the biggest challenge.

And a lot of what others have already said, I think is is a huge key to getting there.

Absolutely.

And Nicole.

Well, from the content perspective, and you hit on this like I have a teenager, so TikTok and you know, everything else that comes up on her feed isn't about emotional regulation.

So I am so grateful to work on something that like gives children and adults the tools to, you know, express themselves in a healthy way.

So I am so grateful for that, Robin, so thank you.

This is really Robin's inception, so I also want to give her a big, thank you so much.

I taught eighth grade and I tell people all the time is, is a hotbed for emotions.

They are in between several different stages of development and just being able to have a resource like this out there so that as our young people move through to those different levels of development and growth, that they have something to pull from that maybe they saw their beloved WKAR PBS station, and that it could be implanted in them as a reminder of support, some ways to regulate.

We also developed a I Feel workbook, activity workbook for children to be able to sort of process some of what they learn here, but also practice some of the strategies, learn new strategies.

I love that you said Dr. Armstrong, look to the helpers.

That's definitely one of our PBS kids mantras, and so they get to practice those skills in the workbook.

And we also have available a educator toolkit so that if any caregiver or educator or child development professional wanted to use these resources, these videos that are on our site, they could, with some supportive information on how to unpack them within a larger setting of young learners.

So that's really powerful.

Do we have any questions from our audience?

Theres one.

Okay, we have, alright, Miriam, what's, what made you want to do this?

that's a good question, even for our whole team.

So let's start there.

You've kind of heard it a little bit from me, but let's start with Nicole.

What made you want to do this?

Well, Robin approached me.

I'm pretty convincing.

But other than that, I mean, obviously, it's a story with mission, purpose, you know, giving back to the community.

So, and having a child myself, I know all of the I don't want to say the word toxic culture, but the toxic culture that a lot of kids are growing up in now.

And so this is like something that we can give to educators, like you said, Robin, thank you.

Yes.

Jason.

Yeah, I mean, I've been studying and working with emotions for 20 some years, and this is one of the unique opportunities that I get to come out of my lab from, you know, being a professor at Michigan State and engage with the community on something that is extraordinarily important to me as a researcher, as a human, as a dad of two kiddos, and being a part of a group like this to share this sort of information more publicly in the way that WKAR can, I think is just really, really important.

And I jumped at the opportunity right away.

Dr. Armstrong?

I was just excited to be able to be a part of providing other resources to the community because so much of what we do oftentimes ends up being siloed.

And so when we get an opportunity to spread resources, I'm all in.

Yes, very good, Melissa?

I was also drafted by Robin.

But seriously, though, I think that having social emotional resources that that also cover not only when children are disregulated, but when they are excited as well, that, that is important.

Yes, very good.

And Charles?

I think anybody who works with children ages four to eight will agree that there are many times you wish that children had these skills.

So it is something that I know I want to be out there to be able to teach, to be more accessible so that more kids will have those skills.

Yes, very good.

This is a really important question.

What suggestions would you give to caregivers or parents who are concerned about their child's emotional well-being?

What resources would you suggest specifically to those caregivers?

Let's start with Jason.

Yeah, I mean, there's so many levels of of resources to to start with.

And so I often, you know, are asking folks to to seek out people in their community, in their immediate, you know, to the extent that they feel comfortable talking to folks, whether that's in their schools or community centers, some folks go to spiritual or religious leaders.

That's also a place that a lot of people go to first.

And then from there, it's kind of a matter of like where, you know, what level of of support is somebody looking for and whether that then ends up being, you know what, I've been online, I've looked at a lot of things.

I've talked to people I'm comfortable talking to in my community.

Now maybe it's time to seek out a professional and come see somebody like myself, whether it's a psychologist or a social worker.

And so I think it's kind of working through that process as best you can to kind of evaluate over over number of conversations like what level of support somebody needs and going through those, those different, support groups.

Yes.

Dr. Armstrong, do you have any?

By default is always going to be what can I find thats free?

What can I find thats free to refer families out to?

And so, in so doing, looking at how can we support them in school, you know, are these things that we can, maybe it's that the parent just needs to have an opportunity to come and talk and share what's going on because they're like, I don't really know what else to do.

And so giving them that voice so we can problem solve together.

And in looking at things for our students, looking at what we have available, we have counselors, we have social workers, we have teachers who this is this is just a thing that they're good at of providing that problem solving space and safe space for our students.

And so it's really finding out what's going on and helping them to identify what the resources are and hopefully they're free.

Yes.

Yes.

And Melissa?

I work for Community Mental Health and we have services for pregnant individuals all the way through people that are as old as they can be before they move on.

So my people are, the early intervention people are zero to seven and they go into people's houses and they also go to the schools, they go to day care centers, they go wherever the child is having trouble.

And so we're really versatile.

We can go just about anywhere within the three counties.

But at a basic level, I think teaching parents who already have an innate knowledge of their child to begin with, to name it, to tame it.

So if the child is upset, you want to name that they're upset, but then find out, oh I think you're upset about this.

It doesn't mean that you're going to give them whatever they're upset about, but then you can kind of move them from there, but you need to name it to tame it.

And that's probably one of the the easiest things I can say as we move towards the spectrum of like starting to just handle it on your own versus seeing somebody in the community.

But there's lots of free resources and I do encourage people to use them.

Absolutely.

And Charles, we know this, that you work with some of our very early parents, our very young parents.

So what are some resources that maybe would touch their generation a little more effectively based on the fact that they are a younger generation managing parenting their children?

Yeah, absolutely.

So first, I'd like to echo kind of what Melissa said in that there are a lot of different resources out there, whether theyre through organizations like Community Mental Health, whether they're through the school or if they're through a nonprofit.

But there is home visiting programs, starting all the way through, from pregnancy, like Melissa said, through retirement.

And when you're looking at special populations, like teenagers or things like that, you do really want to tailor it to them individually, try to find things that connect.

Oftentimes we'll even think of things like Facebook and social media as being a great way to connect.

But then when you really dig into it turns out a lot of teenagers aren't using Facebook.

So that's something that's for an older generation now.

So even just kind of keeping your finger on the pulse of things like that, that we might have a concept of being like, this'll really land, and then finding out in practice that it doesn't.

Very much so.

All right, Nicole, this one is for you.

Can you speak, and then others, I'm, I do want everyone to respond to this.

Can you speak to the importance of this being done by public media?

Yes.

I mean, the number one in my mind, I, I recently took a trip.

I don't know if I can say the place in Florida.

So to make sure that copyright infringement or whatever.

But, you know, PBS and WKAR were not like trying to sell children anything.

We're not profiting, you know.

So for me, it just feels like this makes sense.

This makes sense about what community is.

This is what, a hole that we can fill and a place that like parents can rely on.

And kids can also find quality content.

So I, 100%, you know, am excited to work here.

Absolutely.

Anyone else want to speak to why it being on WKAR is so powerful for a series like this and for our community?

I would say accessibility.

Accessibility is key because we can't assume that everyone has access to the various resources they may need.

So having an opportunity to engage with this gives you a tool that you might not otherwise have access to.

Absolutely.

And Jason?

I was going to say exactly that, but I knew Dr. Armstrong was going to say that.

So I was like, yeah, 100% accessibility, scalability, getting out there for more and more people to be able to to receive this information is absolutely key.

Absolutely.

Melissa?

I was talking to you before this started and you were telling me about how generous WKAR is with spots like this.

And so they not only show it on WKAR, they show it on the Michigan Learning Channel.

They've got it on all their media.

So they're they're not keeping it to themselves because it's great they're trying to get it out.

So, so that every child and every parent can use it.

And I think that's fabulous.

Absolutely, Charles?

I think in today with all of YouTube and TikTok and all of the barrage of videos and resources we have, having a place like WKAR and PBS where it's a vetted, you know, it's safe, it's something you can put on and trust in, the programming that's going to have is phenomenal.

Absolutely.

Absolutely.

And for us, its just a powerful example of how we support our local community, that we invite our local community to be a part of the productions that we have for our audiences.

And then it's also, you know, just a wonderful example of how we continue to be the helpers that we want our children to look to, regarding any situation and experience they may be having.

So that's just a wonderful example of the work that we do here.

And like Nicole, I so love being a part of this organization.

All righty.

So someone asks, how will it look on WKAR?

Will it be little blurbs or a show?

And we were very strategic about the series being short interstitials that can fit in between programming.

Which also means what Nicole, when it comes to programming and how often we might see them?

Well, I mean, it means that you'll be seeing them a lot, a lot, especially during kid's programming hour.

And also the, the age group.

Robin came to me, and was like, okay, these need to be 30 seconds because that's like the attention span that we have.

So, you know, that was kind of challenging because I could go on and do a whole documentary about each emotion.

But yes, so as far as the content goes, I think that, that the shorter snippets were probably best.

And I would love to explore doing things as we get older.

Like Robin was telling me about the feeling of embarrassment and how it's, I think, Robin, I might have you jump in.

You said it's triangular?

Yes, it's triangular.

And this was some of what I learned with these conversations as we were preparing the scripts.

That its triangular, because typically, just for instance, if you trip in your bedroom by yourself, embarrassment doesn't show up.

But if you trip in front of a crowd, or in front of someone else, that's where this emotion will bubble up.

And so just being able to extend our understanding of these emotions is something Nicole and I have been discussing, which calls for longer form.

But for me, I think is just really powerful that these interstitials and spots can sit in between shows.

So one show ends, there's usually a minute or so that they have before the next show will begin.

And so programmers are able to slide these in between shows.

So we saw them as a full compilation of the 13 feelings, but they actually live as individual spots, 30 second spots, and they will fit inside.

And even as we begin to approach stations across Michigan, we're offering these on their channels.

They're all saying how thrilled that they are because that was the sweet spot that they needed additional programming for, was in between a lot of the program breaks, and we're getting a lot of really strong appreciation for these spots.

So we're excited that other stations across the state, there are six public media stations in Michigan, not including the Michigan Learning Channel that touches all across our state.

And they're all really excited about being able to show these.

They also live on our online platform.

So a caregiver or a parent can, you know, just pull them up and view them as the full compilation at any time, stream on demand at any time.

So that's really powerful, too.

Alright.

Well, this has been a wonderful discussion and that's about all the time, I want to make sure we don't have any other questions in our audience.

We really appreciate your participation.

And that's all the time we have for this evening.

A special thank you to our event supporters.

Ingham Great Start Collaborative and Family Coalition, and they are in the studio today with resources.

I want to really thank them, show a lot of appreciation for all of their support of the showcase.

And if you have any questions, they are available to answer those questions.

We also have our Universal Preschool community partners with us, and we're really thankful for them being there, they definitely touch that age group that this production meets the needs for.

And so thank you again to all of our panelists and thank you all for joining us for the preview and discussion.

The shorts are available to share at wkar.org and video.wkar.org Our community partners are still available for about 15 minutes to connect with and pick up any resources that they brought.

There are also still some delicious snacks left back at the buffet, so please enjoy them.

I took a lot of care to select some of those snacks, so events like this from WKAR are made possible with support from people like you.

And thank you and good night.