Keana Shatteen is helping girls at Gen. George S. Patton School in Riverdale channel their emotions into something positive, rather than letting the pressures of growing up get the better of them.
The way Shatteen sees it, mood swings and frustrations the middle schoolers sometimes experience are a normal part of adolescence. But Shatteen, an emotional literacy consultant, speaker and author, believes her mentoring at the school can help them learn how to communicate their feelings constructively, rather than let them spiral into fights or depression.
It’s a way to give them the tools “to understand and relate to their emotions when stressed and being able to communicate effectively,” she said.
Shatteen, who lives in Lynwood, said she asked the 27 participating girls during their first monthly session how they react to another teen who “gets in their face.”
One response was telling. “I usually cuss them out, slap them and tell them to get out of my face,” Shatteen said was one response.
So Shatteen told them, “It’s okay to be moody, but the emotion doesn’t get to dictate the response.”
Another scenario she shared with the class was a lunchroom scene where a girl’s friends were seated together but didn’t invite her to sit down there.
She then suggested they start a conversation: “I noticed I wasn’t invited to lunch, is there a reason I got left out?” she said.
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Communication is “like a muscle,” she said. “You have to exercise it.”
The mentoring program can open those lines of communication, and help open up the students too.
“I give them the opportunity to come in with everything they feel and talk about it,” she said. “I give them a journal to put down their thoughts.”
Shatteen, who also presents her emotional literacy program at workshops and conferences, said she noticed early on that young people yearn to share their feelings.
“What I learned is that the youth want to be seen, they want to be heard,” she said. “I want to help them identify the emotional language to ask for the support they need.”
That’s a skill Shatteen wished she had learned earlier in her own life. Her marriage was ending, which she said triggered feelings of abandonment rooted in her mother’s death when Shatteen was 16, as well as her father’s alcoholism.
“It affected the way I showed up in my relationships,” she said.
In 2019 she attempted to take her own life with an overdose of pills and alcohol.
“I didn’t know how to put words to my suffering,” she said. “We just know we’re in pain and want the pain to go away.”
After being hospitalized, she joined a 12-step Emotions Anonymous program and found others who had experienced similar trauma. Eventually she found a sponsor and saw several therapists, who helped her work through her problems.
“I learned how to forgive myself for any mistakes I had made, and to forgive my father and make amends for the mistakes he made,” she said.
A major motivation for her recovery, as well as her efforts to help others, has been her son, who is 18.
“I really want to make sure he has a different world than we grew up in, where he can be honest, open and embrace his vulnerability,” she said.
She also said she also wants to spread the message that people who are experiencing a crisis can reach for help, something she didn’t realize, by calling the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline, texting HOME to 741-741, to reach a crisis volunteer, or simply going to the closest emergency department.
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Before Shatteen was hired at Patton School in Riverdale, the school lacked a mentoring program for girls, though they have had one for boys for three years.
“A lot of times, students don’t know how to regulate their emotions, they will fight or say, I’m not going to be your friend anymore,” said Paula Brown, interim principal, who has been at the school since 2001, starting as a teacher. “I think this program will teach them how to talk things out with other people.”
Amari Anderson, the school’s Family and Community Engagement specialist, said the mentoring program definitely filled a need.
“We all know how hard it was to be a preteen,” Anderson said. “We just wanted to basically empower and help them by giving them the language now to express how they’re feeling, as opposed to having them have to figure it out alone as teenagers or adults.”
Janice Neumann is a freelance reporter for the Daily Southtown.