Let me tell you a quick story about my journey with social emotional learning. I remember when I first started teaching {way back in 2006} and I thought I’d crush it in the behavior department. I imagined that my kids would sit, listen, raise their hands, and generally behave like angels. I’d have teachers in my room all the time asking me for advice and “How did you do that?!”. I’d crush this thing called classroom management. I was sure of it.
Cut to the first month of my first year of teaching ever, and let’s just say my vision was not manifested in my classroom. Not even by a little bit.
I’ve learned over the years to do a couple of things:
- Drop my ego {whoops!}.
- Center my classroom on the kids, not me.
- Bring social-emotional learning practices and activities into my classroom.
I tell you this story because I want you to know that my extreme passion for SEL is a result of those first years of teaching. I began to find solutions to the problems that existed in my classroom. {Spoiler alert: the problems are NEVER the kids}. SEL changed the way I teach, and it changed the dynamics in my classroom. It changed my students’ lives.
I can help you do the same thing!
WHAT IS SOCIAL EMOTIONAL LEARNING?
Social-emotional learning (SEL) is thinking about how identities, emotions, and actions fit into a variety of settings. CASEL is one of the most well-respected organizations that studies SEL. Social-Emotional Learning is easier to understand when you look at the CASEL Framework. They have sorted the SEL skills into five main categories, called Competencies.
- Self-Awareness
- Self-Management
- Social Awareness
- Relationship Skills
- Responsible Decision Making
SELF AWARENESS
When we work with students on self-awareness, we’re helping them explore how awesome they are!
Skills in this area include understanding identity. We want our kids to understand what makes them awesome and unique. Our goal is to help them feel awesome about themselves. Feedback from others is always helpful! Improving self-esteem is the ultimate goal here. I often ask kids what makes them special. If I notice that a kid isn’t feeling great about themselves, I will create positive mantras to repeat to themselves.
We also want to help kids work through their emotions. The first thing teachers can support their students with is identifying and validating their emotions. Questions I ask my students all the time are “What emotions are you feeling right now?” and “How does that emotion make you feel physically?”.
It’s also important to help kids develop skills to ask for help. This is called agency. There’s a variety of reasons kids won’t ask for help. If they learn why asking for help is a good thing, they’re more likely to do it. Practice asking for help for small things like, “I don’t understand this math problem”. Then practice asking for help with situations like, “My friends are fighting at recess.”
SELF MANAGEMENT
Now that our students understand their identity and agency, we need to help them figure out how they behave when different emotions pop up.
You may have heard of self-regulation, which is the ability to calm oneself down. You might also need to self-regulate to bring yourself back up from inattention or losing focus. This is a process that takes a lot of repetition and access to many tools, but it’s one of the most important pieces of SEL work in the classroom.
These are just a handful of ways we can teach students to regulate themselves:
- Using fidgets.
- Standing, walking, stretching.
- Flexible seating.
- Meditation.
- Using a distraction (a fun crossword, listening to music).
- Jumping jacks (to up-regulate when kids are bored or tired).
We can also help students set appropriate goals for themselves. I like to use a range of situations for goal setting. My kids are making goals for school, a sport, chores at home – whatever they are passionate about! With this, it’s almost important to teach kids how to handle the challenges that will come up when they are working towards their goals. Perseverance is critical to overcoming setbacks.
SOCIAL AWARENESS
Now more than ever, we need to help kids understand how to interact with one another. One of the first things I work on with my students is empathy. We teach students how to connect with one another. Empathy is the idea of understanding how someone else feels. We want kids to connect with others, cheer them up, and be a source of support.
Social awareness also looks at making positive contributions. We can develop a desire to make a student’s environments better. This includes maintaining positive contributions to their classroom, school, or city.
This area of SEL also works with students on cultural proficiency. Students learn skills that allow them to understand others’ viewpoints. They connect with peers who are diverse, develop respect for all, and examine stereotypes. Depending on your grade level, this can also include examining bias towards others.
Lastly, students learn about social cues and how to respond to others appropriately. In my classroom, a phrase you’ll hear me say is “Thought bubble or speech bubble?”. It’s important to teach our kids that thoughts will pop into our head. That’s how our brain works! But we get to decide what comes out of our mouth. It’s just as vital to look at nonverbal communication, too.
RELATIONSHIP SKILLS
Similar to Social Awareness, this competency looks specifically at working with others and how to make the best of any situation. One of the first concepts I teach is active listening. How do we show others we are listening to them? We spend a lot of time covering why we should listen to understand instead of listening to be heard or make our next argument.
I work with my students on feedback (both self and others) and how to give and receive it. This is covered in-person, and we also talk about social media and email.
Spending time talking about what makes good relationships is critical when we’re talking to our kids about this. How do we make others feel welcome and belong to our group? How can we be inclusive of others?
We also spend time on conflict resolution and peer pressure. These topics usually come up as the year goes on and we need to talk about them. These skills are often better taught “in the moment”, but we can still frontload some ideas for kids to handle this when it does happen.
RESPONSIBLE DECISION MAKING
The final SEL competency is all about making decisions. We know, as adults, that decisions need to be made all day long. Our students may not realize it, but they have decisions to make as well. We create lists of all the things we make decisions about. We talk about how we can use our critical thinking skills to make the best decision we can. It’s also important to help kids understand that, sometimes, we make the wrong decision – and that’s OK! We will learn from it and try again.
There are a lot of concepts that are woven into decision making. We can help kids understand problem solving skills, reliable sources of help, and respecting others and their own decisions. It’s also critical to talk about what new situations might look like, and how to handle productive struggles and managing transitions.
LOOKING FOR EVEN MORE IDEAS, TIPS, AND ACTIONABLE STEPS TO SUCCESS?
You can grab The Ultimate Guide to Social-Emotional Learning by clicking the image below!
HOW DO I FIT SOCIAL EMOTIONAL LEARNING INTO MY DAY?
This is probably my #1 most-asked question. And I get it! We have so much on our plates as teachers. Social emotional learning is so important, and we need to find ways to make it work in our already-packed schedule. Here are some of my tried-and-true methods:
Read-Alouds Are Your Friend!
No matter what you teach, you can always read aloud a book. It’s one of the best parts of being a teacher in my eyes! You can find social emotional themes in just about any book, whether that be a picture book or a novel. For example, in science, we learn about the Earth. I use the book Here We Are: Notes for Living on Planet Earth as one of my “Engage” activities. As we read, we talk about how to treat the Earth and its inhabitants kindly and with respect. This also leads into physical aspects of Earth that make it inhabitable! Science + SEL = win win!
Thermostat Check
Check in with your kids and see how they’re feeling. Sometimes, y’all… we just have to stop teaching! The truth is, kids can’t learn if their social-emotional needs are out of whack. Stopping class when the thermostat is too cold or too hot allows you to help regulate the temperature of the class. This, in turn, boosts academic achievement. A 5-minute pause is worth it.
Just Do It
Much like the thermostat check, sometimes we just need to do what we need to do to help our students be successful. I am not shy about taking 20-30 minutes a week and doing purposeful SEL lessons with my students. My administrators support this wholeheartedly, and I know I am lucky in that sense. Show your principal that taking time for SEL is working – the kids are happier and better regulated, discipline referrals are down, and student data is trending upwards.
You’ve got this!!! The best tool you can have in your classroom for SEL is already there. It’s YOU!!! Your kids are so darn lucky to have you in their corner, and ultimately, you’re the reason SEL will be successful in your classroom. These tips and tools will only enhance the amazing teacher you are.
Remember, you can find even more ideas and suggestions for your classroom by downloading The Ultimate Guide for Social Emotional Learning! It’s totally free.
Questions? Ideas? A burning thought you’d like to share? Leave a comment below!
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