Judge Frank Szymanski believes there is a subject that is just as important as learning math or science, or even reading. He believes that students need to learn how to train their minds for emotional resiliency. Mental training improves focus and productivity. It makes us better at virtually everything we do. It makes us happier. And we need it now more than ever.
“With anxiety and suicide rates and mental health issues skyrocketing among teens, we can no longer ignore the need to give students the tools to develop emotional resiliency by learning to train their minds to handle all the twists and turns and traumas that life throws at them.”
Students need to learn to stay grounded when life gets unstable, and how to stay connected when everything feels overwhelming. How to regulate instead of erupt.
It’s not just a philosophy. It’s a conviction born from nearly twenty years behind the bench in juvenile court, watching kids slip through the cracks. He saw brilliant students drop out. He saw trauma show up as aggression, fear, and dysregulation.
When you sit as a jurist in juvenile court, one of the first things you realize is how much trauma children in our community are experiencing. Children raised in households where one parent is absent and the remaining parent is addicted to drugs, or suffering from untreated mental illness, or engaged in domestic violence with a “partner.” Many children have lost someone close to them in a shooting, which they may have personally witnessed. We’ve learned from the developing field of brain science that trauma impacts the executive functioning of the prefrontal cortex, resulting in individuals making bad, impulsive choices.
The body keeps the score, and for individuals who’ve experienced serious trauma, that score means these individuals are more likely to drop out of school, become addicted to drugs, become teen parents, or end up in prison. The cost to society of a high school dropout has been estimated to be $250,000 in social services and related expenses. We simply can’t afford not to address this issue head-on.
All of this has led Judge Frank to advocate for what he sees as the missing ingredient. What if the missing piece isn’t just better funding or smaller class sizes? What if it is something more basic, more human?
He started advocating for emotional education, not as an afterthought or elective, but as a core part of how we teach children to navigate the world.
Judge Frank has since taken that belief beyond theory. Through his workshops and training programs, he’s working to help schools build real tools for emotional resilience into their daily structure.
It starts with something simple: helping students understand how their brains and bodies work under stress. From there, students learn techniques like breathing, body scanning, and emotional labeling. They’re not just told to calm down. They’re taught how.
But Judge Frank doesn’t stop with the kids. He trains teachers, administrators, and even school resource officers. His message is clear. Adults cannot model emotional regulation if they haven’t learned it themselves.
One of his core principles is that every adult in a school building is part of the emotional climate. If students don’t feel safe emotionally, learning becomes almost impossible. This is especially true in underserved communities, where systemic challenges often layer chronic stress on top of already limited resources.
Judge Frank’s work meets this challenge head-on. He’s not bringing in one-size-fits-all solutions. He listens. He adapts. He collaborates. And he taught high school and coached high school athletes before becoming a judge. He speaks the language of both educators and students. His approach respects the reality of overworked teachers while still pushing for change. Because he knows that once students and staff connect with practices such as meditation, mindfulness, and visualization, the kind of challenges that lead to burnout become less stressful and more manageable.
And it’s working.
In a first-grade classroom that was utilizing a program that simply involved listening to a five to eight-minute guided mindfulness meditation recording, the first graders were asked whether they felt they were benefiting from these brief daily sessions, which had become part of their school day. And every single student’s hand shot up into the air enthusiastically acknowledging their appreciation. “I wish you could have seen it,” Judge Frank says, “those hands would have gone through the roof. They knew this was something that was profoundly good for them.”
Students are learning to think before they react, to breathe before they lash out. They are learning to handle their emotions.
These are the moments that keep kids in classrooms instead of courtrooms.
And that is what Judge Frank is really fighting for. He doesn’t just want to reduce school suspensions or improve test scores. He wants to see students thrive rather than survive. He wants to see students live lives of power and joy. He calls learning to control our emotions a “superpower” more valuable than being able to leap tall buildings in a single bound.
Because the ability to manage your internal world is a kind of freedom, it is the freedom to choose how you show up in the world, even when the world hasn’t made it easy.
Judge Frank often reminds educators that healing is not separate from learning. Healing serves learning. When students feel emotionally safe and empowered, they don’t just behave better. They think more clearly. They retain more. They connect more deeply.
He’s advocating for the adoption of practices that have been with us for thousands of years to help students manage their stress and meet their potential. Whether it’s a high school in Detroit or a rural middle school in Indiana, the message is the same.
“Trauma doesn’t break us,” Judge Frank says, “however, it can overwhelm us, but we need to know there is something we can do about it. And we can’t expect to erase the negative impacts of trauma and stress in a day, but we can with a daily practice. Over time, we can reinvent ourselves so we don’t become another tragic statistic.”
He is not asking schools to become therapy centers. He is asking them to remember that emotional health is not optional. It is the soil from which everything else grows.
And he is asking that we take seriously the wounds that do not bleed.
Because those are the ones that follow kids the longest.
Call to action:
Interested in bringing emotional literacy into your school, district, or youth program? You can contact Judge Frank and even request a custom workshop at judgefrank.com because every student deserves to feel safe, seen, and emotionally supported. Every student deserves a chance to thrive.
