WORCESTER, Mass-- A new school year can come with a range of different emotions. Experts said some students welcome the new faces and places, while others may feel nervous or anxious. Worcester Public Schools psychologist Ashley Cournoyer-Smith helps students work through these kinds of emotions.

“If a student is having a really hard time, having a lot of emotions or a really big crisis in the building, I would address those types of things,” Cournoyer-Smith said. 

Now entering her ninth school year, Cournoyer-Smith said she could never find the right book to pair with her teaching, so she wrote one herself. Her book "My Body Knows, Do I Know?" helps the youngest of minds understand what they’re feeling and why they’re feeling it.

“One skill I like to teach, for example, is before I get mad, my hands might make a fist. So, my book is really focused on paying attention to those body signals before your feeling gets really big and unmanageable and unsafe,” she said.

Perhaps even more important, the book teaches kids what to do when they have these feelings.

“They’re really easy to use. Like take a breath, count to ten. You don’t need materials for those things you can do them anywhere.”

She started her career in education as a teacher and said social and emotional learning is needed since kids lost several of these skills during the COVID-19 pandemic when they weren’t in a classroom.

“Following directions, waiting our turn, just having stamina of staying on task and doing work. Those types of things,” she said. 

Cournoyer-Smith said the biggest lesson in her book can apply to everyone, regardless of age. It’s understanding, emotions come and go and what we feel is normal.

“Kids and adults get mad and do something we might regret. So, just helping them understand let’s just work on it for next time. Let’s put these things into place so we don’t have something so big or unsafe and really just building that resiliency,” she said. 

Cournoyer-Smith primarily works out of Elm Park Community School and said the book’s artwork was done by a former student. The book is set to be released on Amazon on Sept. 18.