Danielle Johnson, daughter of Stacey and Robert Johnson of Elon, and a member of Girl Scout Troop 80019 in Alamance County, has earned the Girl Scout Gold Award for a community leadership and service project that addresses behavioral management in local elementary school students by teaching them to calm down on their own. Danielle will graduate this year from Alamance Burlington Early College.
Aiming to make learning easier for kindergarten through fifth-grade students and teachers, Johnson partnered with Elon Elementary School for her Gold Award project, “Calm Down Kits,” to help students learn how to self-regulate their emotions through mindfulness strategies, to relieve tensions within the classroom, and to limit distractions from other students.
“Studies have shown an increase in misbehavior in students post-pandemic, and there has been a dramatic increase in behavioral referrals to the office at Elon since remote learning concluded,” said Johnson, a Girl Scout of 10 years. “My goal was to create a more productive, less distractive learning environment for students and teachers at Elon Elementary.”
Danielle designed a “Calm Down Kit” for all classrooms at the elementary school in English and Spanish that teach kids behavioral management strategies and help them better understand their emotions like anger, frustration and overstimulation in the classroom setting. She also hosted workshops to train teachers about the kits and encouraged them to use Social Emotional Learning (SEL) like reaching outside of classroom instruction to create a positive environment for growth.
This Gold Award is sustained past Danielle’s involvement as self-regulation is now a focus of the curriculum at Elon Elementary School. The Girl Scout said, “100% of the teachers who responded to my survey stated that students are showing signs of self-awareness and are now able to identify what they are feeling. They have been taught breathing techniques, stretches and other methods to release their tension in place of acting out and disrupting learning time.”
