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THE CURRICULUM
Control the Moment® is a daily K-12 coping-skills curriculum. Students practice the same five-step routine for ten minutes each school day, kindergarten through twelfth grade.
Built for the child in class today.
Repetition is how a skill becomes instinct. When a child cannot think through the moment, instinct is what runs.
THE IDEA BEHIND THE DESIGN
Students in class today grew up in short, changing segments. Their attention works differently than it did twenty years ago. A lesson that ignores that reality loses the room in two minutes.
The federal government did not declare this a crisis until 2021.¹ The CDC's most alarming data was not published until 2023.² Every SEL curriculum in schools today was designed before that recognition existed. Control the Moment® is the first K-12 curriculum built after the data, for the students the data is about.
SOURCES
1. U.S. Surgeon General's Advisory, Protecting Youth Mental Health, December 7, 2021.
2. CDC Youth Risk Behavior Survey, 2021 data released February 13, 2023.
WHY THE DESIGN LOOKS LIKE THIS
Built for how
students learn now.
Short segments
Nothing in the lesson lasts longer than three minutes. Kids today can't sit through more than that, and the design doesn't ask them to. Every part of the ten minutes fits inside what their attention can actually hold.
Changing direction
Every couple of minutes, the task changes. First, they're slowing their breath, then naming a feeling, then thinking about where it came from, then choosing how to respond. The lesson keeps moving and they stay with it.
Active not passive
Students are doing the work, not watching someone talk about it. They breathe, they identify what they're feeling, they look at where it came from, and they choose how to respond. The teacher guides them through it, and they practice it every day until it becomes their own.
FROM KINDERGARTEN TO GRADUATION
The same five steps.
Different at every age.
A kindergarten student can't practice the same lesson a high school senior can. So the five steps stay the same, but what happens inside each step changes as the student grows. A kindergarten student learns what a slow breath feels like in their own chest. A senior learns how to walk out of a conversation that's pushing them into something they don't want. The routine is the same one they've been running since kindergarten, which is why it holds up when a real moment hits.
GRADES K-2
GRADES 3-5
GRADES 6-8
GRADES 9-12
FOUNDATION
Helping them find the words for what they're feeling.
K through 2 students feel things before they can explain them. Their heart races or their stomach hurts and they don't know why. Lessons at this grade band give them a small set of feeling words and pair each one with what it feels like in the body. Once they have the words, they can start to tell you what's going on.
VOICE
Teaching them it's okay to speak up.
3rd through 5th grade students know what they're feeling but haven't practiced saying it out loud yet. Lessons at this grade band give them the words for standing up for themselves and time to say those words in class, so the first time they use them isn't in a hard moment they weren't ready for.
PRESSURE
Standing by them through the years that hit hardest.
Middle school is when more students start to struggle than at any other stage. Lessons at this grade band give them a routine they can run in their head when they don't know what to do next, and the words they can use to bring it to a parent, a teacher, or another trusted adult. The goal is that no student walks through these years without a tool they can actually use.
INDEPENDENCE
Sending them into the world ready for it.
9th through 12th grade students are running into the situations they'll face as adults. Lessons at this grade band work through relationships that aren't healthy, choices that carry real consequences, and moments they need to own and repair. Because they've been running the same five steps since kindergarten, it's already the routine they reach for when a hard moment finds them.
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