It’s clear that districts
across the country are facing real challenges—how to reengage their students,
address learning loss, and place students on a path for learning growth. Couple
these concerns with the social-emotional needs of students and educators, and
administrators undoubtedly are feeling more pressure than ever before. But
there is hope. Understanding how to support the health and well-being of
students through social-emotional learning (SEL) can lay the groundwork for
success in all of these areas.
Students’ emotions and
their ability to cope with challenges are directly tied to their ability to
learn. According to Tim Shriver, the co-founder of the Collaborative for
Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning (CASEL), there is a groundswell of
recognition that the academic, social, and emotional development of children is
intertwined with their ability to learn.
https://www.edsurge.com/news/2019-05-29-not-enough-time-to-teach-social-emotional-learning-try-these-4-easy-steps
Why Is SEL Important?
Social-emotional learning
is the process through which children develop skills that help them understand
and manage emotions, set and achieve positive goals, feel and show empathy for
others, establish and maintain positive relationships, and make responsible
decisions. In other words, SEL helps students strengthen resiliency, improve
their communication skills, and it positively impacts their overall health and
well-being.
Equipping students with
social-emotional skills like self-awareness, self-management, social awareness,
responsible decision making, and relationship skills provides them with the
ability to cope with and manage their feelings and their responses.
More than two decades of
research confirms that when we nurture the social-emotional needs of students,
there is also a positive impact on learning. SEL improves student academic
achievement and equips students with life skills. As students learn these
skills and strategies, they are better prepared to manage the situations they
encounter at school, at home, and in their community.
Given the uncertainties we
experienced throughout most of 2020, including school closures, COVID-19, and
civil unrest, many students are experiencing increased anxiety. According to
the National Alliance on Mental Illness, children are reporting a significant
increase in stress, anxiety, isolation, loneliness, and grief right now. These
challenges are likely to increase the social-emotional needs within your
district and throughout your community.
According to Marc
Brackett, a professor at Yale University and the director of its Center for
Emotional Intelligence, “Social and emotional learning is critical to managing anxiety.
If you don’t know how to deal with the lack of control of your future, or the
feelings of uncertainty that you’re having, your brain is going to stay in a
constant fight-or-flight mode. And if our brain is in fight-or-flight mode,
then it’s not in learning mode.”
Students Are Not Alone
Students and educators
alike have dealt with massive upheaval in education and in their daily lives.
Recognizing that educators and school staff are also experiencing similar
stressors, it’s important to consider how we support their social-emotional
needs as well. CASEL and Yale University conducted a survey in April of 2020 to
unpack how teachers were feeling during the COVID-19 crisis. In just three
days, they amassed over 5,000 responses. Teachers were asked to describe the
three most frequent emotions they felt each day. The most commonly reported
emotions among teachers were: anxiety, fear, worry, feeling overwhelmed, and
sadness.
SEL is clearly a major
challenge facing not just students, but also staff, educators, and their
families. It is important to determine how to best support these needs.
How Districts Can Support
Social-Emotional Needs
Whether learning takes
place in person or online, it is possible to support the transition with
practical strategies that consider the value of SEL with three main
considerations:
1. Start with relationships first. We know that a teacher’s
relationship with a student is indicative of whether or not they show up for
remote learning classes. If educators have opportunities to build better
relationships with students and their families, students have the potential to
achieve better outcomes. This also means we should provide opportunities for
students to build relationships with one another and also for educators to
share best practices in positive and productive ways.
2. Establish effective communication. We must be intentional
about our communication with students, educators, and families. Make sure
resources to help students and families are collected in one location. Having
access to communication in one place can reduce confusion and make it easier
for educators and students to stay connected as they adjust to a new learning
program.
3. Build communities of learners. Remember to provide
opportunities for students to engage with one another and in activities that
support mutual learning goals. Finding ways for students to work
collaboratively is possible, no matter where learning takes place. By applying
these strategies, we have the potential to create supportive, engaging learning
environments. How we build that community of learners does matter and will be
an indicator of success for the future.
Considerations When
Choosing an SEL Curriculum Provider
Research points to a set
of criteria for districts to consider as they choose an SEL curriculum. It is
important to find a solution that supports the needs of the whole child with
research and evidence-backed learning materials aligned to the CASEL standards
and designed to meet grade-level learning objectives.
Most districts indicate
they prefer a solution that:
• Offers flexibility to use the curriculum in different ways
depending on the school’s or students’ needs. Offering SEL via stand-alone
topics, as a for-credit course, or woven throughout core academic courses
offers flexibility that meets a variety of needs.
• Provides assessments, often in the form of student surveys,
that can offer indicators regarding student needs and insights into school
climate and culture.
• Equips teachers and school staff with the language and strategies
for SEL through professional development.
• Addresses equity and offers a culturally responsive
curriculum that reflects the diversity of their student populations.
In addition, SEL solutions
should be evidence-based—providing developmentally appropriate content for
students across the grades. And today, more than ever, the SEL curriculum must
be delivered in a format that is accessible to students no matter where
learning takes place.
The social-emotional needs
of students play a huge role in classroom culture, and they have never been
more artfully illustrated than in the viral “I wish my teacher knew…” social
media exercise by third-grade teacher Kyle Schwarz. This exercise offered
students the space to reveal struggles with homelessness, battles with
self-esteem, and doubts about their future. Understanding students’
circumstances through this context helps educators personalize instruction, but
perhaps the more significant by-product of the exercise is that it clearly
communicates that emotional needs as a student matter.
Maslow’s hierarchy of
needs, the theory stipulating that humans pursue their needs in a hierarchical
order, backs this idea up. According to Dr. Richard Cash, as students dedicate
more energy to emotional regulation and response, they are less able to attend
to academics (link). It makes sense students would have corresponding
difficulty attending to their studies if students struggle with:
• having their physiological needs met,
• finding a sense of safety,
• finding love and belonging, or
• issues of self-esteem.
Classroom Exercises That
Support Student Emotional Needs
Like those clearly visible
and immediate student needs, we should have the same sense of urgency when it
comes to self-esteem, rejection, and a student’s sense of safety.
Modeling My Own Apology to
Support the Social and Emotional Needs of My Students
As a young teacher thrust
into a room of surly fifth-grade students, I struggled to simultaneously teach
my students, manage the classroom, and fully respect and respond appropriately
to the journey each of my students was on. An incident occurred and a student
wished to argue instead of following directions. I stood my ground, attempting
to convey a message to the class, and by doing so, I inadvertently silenced
this student. The effect was to dampen his spirits and to eradicate any
motivation he and many of the boys had for the subjects I taught. I even
believe the incident impacted the way students related to one another, which
then actively contributed to negative classroom culture. My solution was to
teach my students the four-step apology and to start by modeling an apology to
my class.
“First, I need to say I’m
sorry for the way I spoke to a few of you the other day.” I addressed my
students by name and named the incident. “I didn’t give you much of a chance to
be heard and that is not very kind or respectful. In the future, I want to be
more patient. Will you forgive me?” The boys were embarrassed by the attention
but nodded anyway. Then, another student raised her hand, asked if she could also
apologize, and made amends with a classmate she had argued with earlier in the
week.
The exercise changed our
classroom culture in small ways I hadn’t expected. I started hearing students
apologizing using the four-step method independently. One girl demanded an
appropriate apology when one of the boys pushed her out of line. Building
Foundational Supports for Students Emotional Needs
Begin with resources for
your entire class. Resources, like EVERFI’s Honor Code: Bullying Prevention and
Character Playbook, address emotional awareness and allow students to go at
their own pace in a low-risk online environment. Depending on your students’
proficiency and interests, this can be a great jumping-off point for classroom
conversations. By beginning the conversation, we can initiate a primary support
reaching all students and allowing us to tailor secondary and tertiary support
of students’ emotional needs.
Attending to the emotional
needs of students means eliminating serious roadblocks to educational engagement.
It also means helping students develop the emotional skills necessary to be
successful both inside and outside of the classroom. Explicitly teaching
students how to navigate sticky social situations and to advocate for
themselves in the classroom provides a good model for future salary
negotiations and effective interpersonal communication, for example. If your
school encourages students to view and track their grades in real-time,
students are learning self-regulation and developing a sense of responsibility
for their academic performance. And though teachers can’t achieve this alone,
whatever we can do to impart critical thinking skills and a baseline
expectation of respect and tolerance will ultimately improve our collective
future communities.
Get Uncomfortable
In light of increasing
rates of community and school violence, high-profile suicides, and
self-segregation, we can no longer ignore the vital role that mental health and
emotional intelligence play in human development and in how we relate to the
world around us. It is easy for us as educators to complain that parents or
society aren’t teaching appropriate manners, basic skills, or good habits, but
students are constantly learning from implicit and explicit cues of those
around them – and that includes from their teachers. If we are communicating to
students that their emotional needs as students have no place in education, we
reinforce the idea that emotional development is not important. While taking on
something new can be scary, our students are worse off when we ignore their
emotional needs altogether due to our own fears or discomfort.
We should educate in a way
that recognizes and respects individualities and prepares successful, resilient
members of the workforce.
While social-emotional learning
may seem like yet another educational fad, the goal is the same as it has
always been. Whether it’s termed “culturally responsive pedagogy,” embedded in
the theory of multiple learning modalities, or teaching the whole child, we
should educate in a way that recognizes and respects individualities and
prepares successful, resilient members of the workforce. Teaching leadership
skills, effective communication, empathy, and mental health awareness are great
places to start.
With the rise in youth
suicide rates, increased numbers of violent incidents in schools and the
growing rate of American youth diagnosed with mental health issues such as
anxiety and depression, the social emotional instability of America’s youth
has, according to some experts, become a national crisis. Many are turning to
SEL as a means to address this growing concern and spark conversation around
sensitive or vulnerable topics.
Today, all 50 states have
free-standing standards for SEL, according to a report from the National
Conference of State Legislatures. (However, only 8 states currently have
standards that address PreK through grade 12.) Many districts and schools
throughout the nation have begun to adopt and implement well-researched
curricular programs such as Second Step in order to begin to address SEL topics
with their students.
It’s clear that districts
across the country are facing real challenges—how to reengage their students,
address learning loss, and place students on a path for learning growth. Couple
these concerns with the social-emotional needs of students and educators, and
administrators undoubtedly are feeling more pressure than ever before. But
there is hope. Understanding how to support the health and well-being of
students through social-emotional learning (SEL) can lay the groundwork for
success in all of these areas.
Students’ emotions and
their ability to cope with challenges are directly tied to their ability to
learn. According to Tim Shriver, the co-founder of the Collaborative for
Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning (CASEL), there is a groundswell of
recognition that the academic, social, and emotional development of children is
intertwined with their ability to learn.
https://www.edsurge.com/news/2019-05-29-not-enough-time-to-teach-social-emotional-learning-try-these-4-easy-steps
Why Is SEL Important?
Social-emotional learning
is the process through which children develop skills that help them understand
and manage emotions, set and achieve positive goals, feel and show empathy for
others, establish and maintain positive relationships, and make responsible
decisions. In other words, SEL helps students strengthen resiliency, improve
their communication skills, and it positively impacts their overall health and
well-being.
Equipping students with
social-emotional skills like self-awareness, self-management, social awareness,
responsible decision making, and relationship skills provides them with the
ability to cope with and manage their feelings and their responses.
More than two decades of
research confirms that when we nurture the social-emotional needs of students,
there is also a positive impact on learning. SEL improves student academic
achievement and equips students with life skills. As students learn these
skills and strategies, they are better prepared to manage the situations they
encounter at school, at home, and in their community.
Given the uncertainties we
experienced throughout most of 2020, including school closures, COVID-19, and
civil unrest, many students are experiencing increased anxiety. According to
the National Alliance on Mental Illness, children are reporting a significant
increase in stress, anxiety, isolation, loneliness, and grief right now. These
challenges are likely to increase the social-emotional needs within your
district and throughout your community.
According to Marc
Brackett, a professor at Yale University and the director of its Center for
Emotional Intelligence, “Social and emotional learning is critical to managing anxiety.
If you don’t know how to deal with the lack of control of your future, or the
feelings of uncertainty that you’re having, your brain is going to stay in a
constant fight-or-flight mode. And if our brain is in fight-or-flight mode,
then it’s not in learning mode.”
Students Are Not Alone
Students and educators
alike have dealt with massive upheaval in education and in their daily lives.
Recognizing that educators and school staff are also experiencing similar
stressors, it’s important to consider how we support their social-emotional
needs as well. CASEL and Yale University conducted a survey in April of 2020 to
unpack how teachers were feeling during the COVID-19 crisis. In just three
days, they amassed over 5,000 responses. Teachers were asked to describe the
three most frequent emotions they felt each day. The most commonly reported
emotions among teachers were: anxiety, fear, worry, feeling overwhelmed, and
sadness.
SEL is clearly a major
challenge facing not just students, but also staff, educators, and their
families. It is important to determine how to best support these needs.
How Districts Can Support
Social-Emotional Needs
Whether learning takes
place in person or online, it is possible to support the transition with
practical strategies that consider the value of SEL with three main
considerations:
1. Start with relationships first. We know that a teacher’s
relationship with a student is indicative of whether or not they show up for
remote learning classes. If educators have opportunities to build better
relationships with students and their families, students have the potential to
achieve better outcomes. This also means we should provide opportunities for
students to build relationships with one another and also for educators to
share best practices in positive and productive ways.
2. Establish effective communication. We must be intentional
about our communication with students, educators, and families. Make sure
resources to help students and families are collected in one location. Having
access to communication in one place can reduce confusion and make it easier
for educators and students to stay connected as they adjust to a new learning
program.
3. Build communities of learners. Remember to provide
opportunities for students to engage with one another and in activities that
support mutual learning goals. Finding ways for students to work
collaboratively is possible, no matter where learning takes place. By applying
these strategies, we have the potential to create supportive, engaging learning
environments. How we build that community of learners does matter and will be
an indicator of success for the future.
Considerations When
Choosing an SEL Curriculum Provider
Research points to a set
of criteria for districts to consider as they choose an SEL curriculum. It is
important to find a solution that supports the needs of the whole child with
research and evidence-backed learning materials aligned to the CASEL standards
and designed to meet grade-level learning objectives.
Most districts indicate
they prefer a solution that:
• Offers flexibility to use the curriculum in different ways
depending on the school’s or students’ needs. Offering SEL via stand-alone
topics, as a for-credit course, or woven throughout core academic courses
offers flexibility that meets a variety of needs.
• Provides assessments, often in the form of student surveys,
that can offer indicators regarding student needs and insights into school
climate and culture.
• Equips teachers and school staff with the language and strategies
for SEL through professional development.
• Addresses equity and offers a culturally responsive
curriculum that reflects the diversity of their student populations.
In addition, SEL solutions
should be evidence-based—providing developmentally appropriate content for
students across the grades. And today, more than ever, the SEL curriculum must
be delivered in a format that is accessible to students no matter where
learning takes place.
The social-emotional needs
of students play a huge role in classroom culture, and they have never been
more artfully illustrated than in the viral “I wish my teacher knew…” social
media exercise by third-grade teacher Kyle Schwarz. This exercise offered
students the space to reveal struggles with homelessness, battles with
self-esteem, and doubts about their future. Understanding students’
circumstances through this context helps educators personalize instruction, but
perhaps the more significant by-product of the exercise is that it clearly
communicates that emotional needs as a student matter.
Maslow’s hierarchy of
needs, the theory stipulating that humans pursue their needs in a hierarchical
order, backs this idea up. According to Dr. Richard Cash, as students dedicate
more energy to emotional regulation and response, they are less able to attend
to academics (link). It makes sense students would have corresponding
difficulty attending to their studies if students struggle with:
• having their physiological needs met,
• finding a sense of safety,
• finding love and belonging, or
• issues of self-esteem.
Classroom Exercises That
Support Student Emotional Needs
Like those clearly visible
and immediate student needs, we should have the same sense of urgency when it
comes to self-esteem, rejection, and a student’s sense of safety.
Modeling My Own Apology to
Support the Social and Emotional Needs of My Students
As a young teacher thrust
into a room of surly fifth-grade students, I struggled to simultaneously teach
my students, manage the classroom, and fully respect and respond appropriately
to the journey each of my students was on. An incident occurred and a student
wished to argue instead of following directions. I stood my ground, attempting
to convey a message to the class, and by doing so, I inadvertently silenced
this student. The effect was to dampen his spirits and to eradicate any
motivation he and many of the boys had for the subjects I taught. I even
believe the incident impacted the way students related to one another, which
then actively contributed to negative classroom culture. My solution was to
teach my students the four-step apology and to start by modeling an apology to
my class.
“First, I need to say I’m
sorry for the way I spoke to a few of you the other day.” I addressed my
students by name and named the incident. “I didn’t give you much of a chance to
be heard and that is not very kind or respectful. In the future, I want to be
more patient. Will you forgive me?” The boys were embarrassed by the attention
but nodded anyway. Then, another student raised her hand, asked if she could also
apologize, and made amends with a classmate she had argued with earlier in the
week.
The exercise changed our
classroom culture in small ways I hadn’t expected. I started hearing students
apologizing using the four-step method independently. One girl demanded an
appropriate apology when one of the boys pushed her out of line. Building
Foundational Supports for Students Emotional Needs
Begin with resources for
your entire class. Resources, like EVERFI’s Honor Code: Bullying Prevention and
Character Playbook, address emotional awareness and allow students to go at
their own pace in a low-risk online environment. Depending on your students’
proficiency and interests, this can be a great jumping-off point for classroom
conversations. By beginning the conversation, we can initiate a primary support
reaching all students and allowing us to tailor secondary and tertiary support
of students’ emotional needs.
Attending to the emotional
needs of students means eliminating serious roadblocks to educational engagement.
It also means helping students develop the emotional skills necessary to be
successful both inside and outside of the classroom. Explicitly teaching
students how to navigate sticky social situations and to advocate for
themselves in the classroom provides a good model for future salary
negotiations and effective interpersonal communication, for example. If your
school encourages students to view and track their grades in real-time,
students are learning self-regulation and developing a sense of responsibility
for their academic performance. And though teachers can’t achieve this alone,
whatever we can do to impart critical thinking skills and a baseline
expectation of respect and tolerance will ultimately improve our collective
future communities.
Get Uncomfortable
In light of increasing
rates of community and school violence, high-profile suicides, and
self-segregation, we can no longer ignore the vital role that mental health and
emotional intelligence play in human development and in how we relate to the
world around us. It is easy for us as educators to complain that parents or
society aren’t teaching appropriate manners, basic skills, or good habits, but
students are constantly learning from implicit and explicit cues of those
around them – and that includes from their teachers. If we are communicating to
students that their emotional needs as students have no place in education, we
reinforce the idea that emotional development is not important. While taking on
something new can be scary, our students are worse off when we ignore their
emotional needs altogether due to our own fears or discomfort.
We should educate in a way
that recognizes and respects individualities and prepares successful, resilient
members of the workforce.
While social-emotional learning
may seem like yet another educational fad, the goal is the same as it has
always been. Whether it’s termed “culturally responsive pedagogy,” embedded in
the theory of multiple learning modalities, or teaching the whole child, we
should educate in a way that recognizes and respects individualities and
prepares successful, resilient members of the workforce. Teaching leadership
skills, effective communication, empathy, and mental health awareness are great
places to start.
With the rise in youth
suicide rates, increased numbers of violent incidents in schools and the
growing rate of American youth diagnosed with mental health issues such as
anxiety and depression, the social emotional instability of America’s youth
has, according to some experts, become a national crisis. Many are turning to
SEL as a means to address this growing concern and spark conversation around
sensitive or vulnerable topics.
Today, all 50 states have
free-standing standards for SEL, according to a report from the National
Conference of State Legislatures. (However, only 8 states currently have
standards that address PreK through grade 12.) Many districts and schools
throughout the nation have begun to adopt and implement well-researched
curricular programs such as Second Step in order to begin to address SEL topics
with their students.
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