Tag:

SEL

Understanding Self-Awareness and Impulses

by James A. Bailey June 26, 2023

written by James A. Bailey 6 minutes read

In last month’s column, we explored some of the misconceptions surrounding self-awareness- an essential skill for today’s leaders, especially in schools and districts. Another common misconception about self-awareness is that to be self-aware means that we typically think about self-awareness in the long term. In other words, we believe that to be self-aware means to know how our day-to-day actions add up to our permanent likes and dislikes, our personalities, our strengths and weaknesses, and our strongest values and beliefs, some of which may never change.

Self-Awareness in the Moment

Self-awareness, however, can also be about the short-term, the more immediate side of our emotions or our impulses. CASEL discusses impulse control as a skill under self-management or what you can do to minimize or control the urge you have to act. We believe, however, that being more self-aware of impulses in the moment is a recognition of how these skills need to interact to make us better leaders and better humans. In essence, it is almost impossible to control an impulse if you are not first aware that it exists.

Take this situation for example. Over the course of a morning, a busy principal finally gets five minutes to decompress after dealing with many different situations, both easy and hard, and people, both easy and hard. A teacher walks in and asks a simple question to which the principal snaps at her, telling her to just give him five minutes. In this case, the lack of self-awareness reduces self-management of the impulse.

Recognizing What is Emerging

Scenarios like this repeatedly play out in the exceedingly busy world of school and district leaders, but without our awareness, these instances can begin to label leaders as demanding or hard to work with. Our belief is that one important form of self-awareness means recognizing what is emerging in the moment and choosing whether to act on it.

This form of self-awareness acts as the critical gateway to all other SEL competencies for leaders. You can’t self-manage, be more socially aware, build better relationships, or make more responsible decisions without better self-awareness in the moment. Too often leaders in their harried and fragmented days often forget that awareness in the moment can prevent many larger issues down the road.

Impulses

What exactly is an impulse, and how do they emerge? An impulse can be defined as a strong and unreflective urge to act or a non-deliberate action, in essence suggesting we have no control over them. An impulse expresses an urgency to act. I feel angry, I snap; I feel hungry, I eat.

The impulse also acts as a desire for something, especially an emotional calming- if I do action X it will quiet emotion Y causing me less discomfort. The impulse doesn’t consider the bigger picture but demands emotional calming, as in our example. If the principal shows irritation at being bothered, he may be able to get five minutes to calm his nerves, but not considering the impact on the teacher.

Impulsive behavior is typically seen as negative, but we have impulses all the time. Our brain appraises a situation, predicts and shoots forward a thought or emotion often without our knowing it. Our mind tells us to do that, say that, eat that, go there, and we often follow blindly to soothe our emotions. We feel the slightest bit of boredom, and our brain tells us we need a quick shot of interest, so we check our smartphone without even thinking about it. Rapidly and without conscious thought, we stifle the emotion over time, creating a habit.

Some impulses are helpful, and some are not; it depends on the content and context. An impulse that leads to saying the wrong thing to a large group is much different than saying something helpful off the top of your head to a single person. Over time, however, without realizing it, these impulses become habits that begin to define how people perceive our leadership. So how can leaders become a steady, emotional resource for their teachers, not prone to impulses, rather than a demand on their emotional state?

Sharpening our Self-Awareness

Most of us who have led districts and schools recognize the insight we have at the end of a long day of meetings, calls, and situations. We often realize we have lost touch with ourselves, our inner feelings sometime early in the day, and only when walking to our cars to drive home, do we realize how stressed or tired we really are. Over the years, we have become masterful at stuffing our feelings and awareness away and out of touch. To improve our self-awareness in the moment, we need to sharpen the precision of our awareness and then understand and tame our impulses.

First, train yourself to slow down throughout the day. Set a timer on your phone or watch every hour for 3-5 minutes to check on your self-awareness. Imagine a camera strapped to your forehead, constantly looking outward. For this three to five-minute period, visualize turning the camera inward to see what is happening with your thinking, your breathing, and your type and level of emotion.
Second, begin to associate your impulses with signs in your body. Does your impulse to speak start as a feeling in the back of your throat? Does your impulse to react with anger start with a tightening of your jaw? Whatever the feeling you have, begin to associate it with what it is asking you to do and what emotion needs calming at the time. Is your impulse to check your phone boredom or a reluctance to do something? Is your impulse to avoid somebody fear or reluctance to have a hard conversation?
Third, once you can begin to become more aware of your impulse in a moment, you can begin to use a simple recipe that combines self-awareness and self-management to tame these impulses:

Self-awareness-Feel the impulse and the emotion
Self-awareness-Determine the strength of the impulse and if it deserves any attention
Self-management-Disengage from the impulse by telling yourself to slow down
Self-management- Evaluate the need to act and consider the action in relation to your values, the other person, or the long-term relationship and the upside or downside of acting
Self-management- Choose to act or not

These small actions, if intentionally done and practiced during the ups and downs of the day, can help all leaders become more self-aware in the moment and begin to tame those impulses that we believe we have no control over. The increasing demands on leaders today don’t often allow leaders time and space to worry about self-awareness. But if self-awareness in the moment is the gateway to all other SEL skills a leader needs today, they can become a more supportive resource to others around them as they become more practiced at acting rather than reacting. Leaders just need to practice curbing these impulses and raising them to a different level of awareness.

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June 26, 2023 0 comments

Educators K-12 Teachers Professional Development Community Hidden

Teacher Mental Health: Causative Stress Factors

by Donald Perras June 8, 2023

written by Donald Perras 6 minutes read

Teaching is a career devoted to the education of a diverse generation of students. While an altruistic pursuit, there is a tsunami of disruptive issues impacting that quest and affecting teacher mental health. Shifting family values, unstable home environments, diminished parental engagement, and less ‘quality time,’ among others, are prevalent across the country. Political input, funding conflicts, public accountability pressures, and testing results further complicate the mission.

Since attracting, hiring, and nurturing educators is fundamental to bolstering student performance, it’s imperative to assess the deterrents that disrupt this process. A RAND 2022 survey indicated approximately 59 % of teachers are burned out, especially linked to students’ academic performance and behavior management (Will, 2022).

In comparison to 20th–century professionals, today’s teachers must minimally possess an inquisitive, problem–solving intellect, emotional stability, self – confidence and maturity to succeed. Hiring Generation Z candidates, however, is fraught with potential concerns, as they are prone to seek immediate gratification, are frequently independent, and rely on technology. Their lives are more chaotic, less stable, and aligned with economic pressures, family obligations, and self – actualization.

Factors of Stress Affecting Teacher Mental Health

A growing trend of utilizing professional therapists is an indicator of stress-disrupting equilibrium. Achieving independence is a multi-faceted stage influenced by career options, financial resources, and significant others, all potential impediments to becoming an educator. Finding roommates is frequently a necessity for employment, a common denominator for new hires. Burdened by loans, it often sways decisions toward lucrative positions in other careers. Relocating to rural communities frequently deters candidates. Graduate degree pursuits are also a major priority that might limit geographical options.

Besides compensation, limited options for advancement, few opportunities to shape innovation, and a general stagnation of assignments all worsen teachers’ mental health. This restricts the expression of talent, compelling premature resignations to more progressive communities. A self–fulfilling cycle of staff turnover perpetuates impoverished districts, penalizing remaining personnel with excessive obligations that eventually result in their burnout.

Support For Teacher Mental Health-Professional Development

Coupled with training and mentoring further complicates any initiative to attract, nurture, and retain qualified professionals. Consequently, there are .55 candidates for every one position nationally (NEA, 2022). Unfortunately, this scenario is prevalent across thousands of schools nationally, exerting an enormous toll on teachers’ mental health (ABC News, 2023).

A progressive university preparation with varied experiences in multiple locations is mandatory to compliment personal attributes. Unfortunately, there’s a significant gap in many graduates’ preservice training, especially in programming for special education students and classroom management practices. Premature burnout and resignations are correlated with these deficits in communities struggling to reduce depressed test scores.

Shifting Technology & Accountability Standards

Instructional programs rely on innovative technology, an especially challenging shift for veterans who have successfully relied on teacher-directed methods in prior decades. Modified strategies are ‘tiered’ to complement students’ unique profiles, alternative goals, assessments, and outcomes. Personalized plans of specialized teaching procedures are coordinated by teams of colleagues depending on compliance and cooperation. A complex task for most professionals is data collection which provides the foundation for appropriate adjustments.

Intense accountability standards are stressful for teachers lacking sustained training and mentoring throughout this process. Schools with persistent achievement gaps often assign teachers to subjects beyond their certification, further weakening teachers’ commitment and longevity. This scenario is a primary contributor to teacher mental health stressors because of its prevalence and resistance to change.

Supporting Students Social Emotional Needs

Students’ psychological ‘neediness’ is another factor impacting teachers’ success. Coping with the pandemic was a catalyst for complex affective needs requiring school and community services. Mental health initiatives, social emotional learning programs, and psychological counseling have dramatically altered schools’ orientation and functioning (Cauthen, 2019). Addressing students’ vulnerability, immature socialization, and interpersonal skills, for example, subtracts instructional focus, imposing extra tasks to accomplish. While legitimately critical to students’ welfare, many staff have received minimal preparation for this new assignment, straining their flexibility and tolerance.

An equally challenging responsibility is managing student behavior. Most beginning teachers enter the profession with an idealized vision of instructing capable students who respect authority. While certainly accurate in many communities, all teachers will be exposed to some variation of management problems during their careers. Primary-grade learners, for example, are attempting to master basic academic expectations and social–behavioral norms. Peer relationships are defined by cooperation, friendships, and tolerance. Misbehavior is generally attention-seeking, impulsive, and egocentric. Persistent misbehavior is stressful since students remain with their grade teacher for the entire day.

Secondary students, by contrast, are entering the mystifying stage of adolescence, which has a profound effect on acquiring socially appropriate conduct. Self-identity, social popularity, and independence are hallmarks of this stage. Coping with adolescents’ emotional nature and the quest for self-expression often disrupts instruction, frustrating teachers’ authority. Middle school learners are particularly obsessed with socializing, expressing excessive energy to misbehave without self–restraint.

Daily exchanges typically exhaust teachers’ composure and confidence, a pattern that eventually precedes mental health issues. This reality is a predictor of staff shortages in middle schools. High school students’ passage toward graduation requires teachers’ support, patience, and empathy, a complex task balanced by instructional expertise. Coping with ninth graders’ immaturity is especially difficult for beginning staff, who anticipated the opportunity to instruct their specialty.

How Teacher Mental Health Manifests

Stress is manifested in a variety of actions that follow a progression from mild to severe. Missing assignments, ignoring deadlines, interpersonal conflicts, and emotional–physical symptoms are general predictors. Responses are often subtle during phase one, while overt differences in personality often appear as stress intensifies. Excitement and composure decline, and apathy to anxiety dominate. Optimism is replaced by pessimism toward both students and colleagues, especially linked to behavior challenges. Cooperation diminishes, followed by indifference or hostility. Ultimately, emotional and physical exhaustion results in chronic absences and burnout.

A coordinated national inquiry into the current teacher mental health crisis is imperative to address the shortage of educators impacting our country’s schools. An analysis of the myriad of factors correlated with both preparing and nurturing staff is crucial to reverse this cycle. Otherwise, student performance will be severely compromised. The nation cannot tolerate this dilemma festering without severe consequences.

Teacher Mental Health Sources

Cauthen, Leilani, ‘Schools Say Highest Pressure Stems From Their Students’ Social – Emotional Needs,’edCircuit, 8/23/2019
Will, Madeline, ‘Stress, Burnout, Depression: Teachers and Principals Are Not Doing
Well, New Data Confirms.’ Education Week, 6/15/’22
WE ARE TEACHERS, ‘THESE 2022 TEACHER SHORTAGE STATISTICS PROVE WE NEED TO FIX THIS PROFESSION,’
Pelika, Stacey, ‘6 Charts That Explain the Educator Shortage’, 9/30/’22
Jones II, Arthur, ‘Most of the US is dealing with a teaching shortage, but the data isn’t so simple,’ 2/11/2023
Teacher Mental Health: A National Dilemma

June 8, 2023 0 comments

Educators K-12 Teachers Social Emotional Learning

Connecting SEL and Formative Instruction

by Kathy Dyer May 18, 2023

written by Kathy Dyer 5 minutes read

To me, SEL and formative instructional practices are ways of being in a classroom, moving beyond the practice of “doing to” students to “doing with” (Purkey & Novak, 1996). It’s interesting that formative assessment skills draw on and build SEL skills, and these skill sets feed each other. Let me explain.

From a pedagogical perspective, the practices embedded within formative instructional practices support CASEL’s SEL framework. These formative assessment practices allow teachers to explicitly integrate social emotional learning into academic content.

Comparing SEL and Formative Instructional Practices

SEL (CASEL framework)	Formative Instructional Practices
Self-awareness – the ability to understand one’s own emotions, thoughts, and values and how they influence behavior across contexts	Clarify learning – Teachers clarify and convey the focus of the learning. They share the success criteria so students can make sense of it to set goals, build a plan, and take action to meet them. Teachers make the content relevant to the learners.
Self-management – the ability to manage one’s emotions, thoughts, and behaviors effectively in different situations to achieve goals and aspirations	Elicit evidence of learning – Students and teachers identify ways to demonstrate learning. Methods of problem-solving are taught and practiced.
Social awareness – the ability to understand the perspectives of and empathize with others, including those from diverse backgrounds, cultures, and contexts	Provide feed-forward feedback – Giving and receiving feedback allows learners to recognize and manage their emotions. As givers and receivers of feedback, the members of the classroom learning team learn to understand others’ perspectives and emotions. As self-assessors, learners demonstrate self-awareness of where they are in relation to learning goals.
Relationship skills – abilities to establish and maintain healthy and supportive relationships and effectively navigate settings with diverse individual and groups	Activate learners – Helping learners become instructional resources for one another means that they navigate personal interactions, demonstrate respect, cooperate/collaborate, self-advocate, demonstrate empathy, cope with frustration, learn to persevere, and promote self-regulation and self-awareness.
Responsible decision-making – abilities to make decisions and constructive choices about personal behavior and social interaction across diverse settings	In the five areas listed above, learners have multiple opportunities for choice to make decisions that are both academic and behavioral.

Defining Formative Assessment

In 2018, the CCSSO FAST SCASS developed the following definition of formative assessment:

Formative assessment is a planned, ongoing process used by all students and teachers during learning and teaching to elicit and use evidence of student learning to improve student understanding of intended disciplinary learning outcomes and support students to become self-directed learners.

Effective use of the formative assessment process requires students and teachers to integrate and embed the following practices in a collaborative and respectful classroom environment:

- Clarifying learning goals and success criteria within a broader progression of learning;
- Eliciting and analyzing evidence of student thinking;
- Engaging in self-assessment and peer feedback;
- Providing actionable feedback; and
- Using evidence and feedback to move learning forward by adjusting learning strategies, goals, or next instructional steps.

As you see in this definition (bold added by me), students are called on to play an active role in their learning. This role requires clear communication, active listening, cooperation, self-management, and checking understanding (academic and social).

The CASEL Framework of SEL

These five behaviors come from the CASEL framework of the skills taught in SEL. Using formative instructional strategies in the classroom helps establish routines and provides strategies and processes to support a safe learning environment.

These strategies allow learners to focus on learning while they practice communication, check for understanding, practice self-awareness (academic and social), and self-management. The formative assessment process teaches learners to own their learning, and SEL teaches learners how to manage themselves and their learning.

In Leaders of Their Own Learning, Ron Berger et al. (2014) offered this:

“The most important assessments that take place in any school building are seen by no one. They take place inside the heads of students, all day long. Students assess what they do, say, and produce, and decide what is good enough. These internal assessments govern how much they care, how hard they work, and how much they learn. They govern how kind and polite they are and how respectful and responsible.”

Connecting SEL and Formative Assessment

For me, this idea supports the intertwining of SEL and formative assessment. Learning to be self-aware means students can identify where they are in their learning. They know and understand the goal, have a clear picture of success, and can determine where they are in relation to the goal. With their self-management skills, learners can accept feedback and use it to adjust their strategies and learning to meet the goal. Their social awareness and relationship skills allow them to be a positive, contributing member of the classroom learning team, learning with, from, and for one another.

Ownership happens when learners have choices and a voice in the learning process. When the learning is personalized and elicits a positive emotional response from them. This fits with the idea of learners being invited to be part of the process, such that the process is focused on “doing with” learners rather than “doing to” them.

Think about where in the learning process you are currently providing voice and choice for your learners. Where might you add opportunities? It might be something as simple as asking students to reflect at the end of a unit or test on how they did (and why), where they are in their learning (and why), what they need next (and why), and what they might want to learn more about.

Resources

Berger, R., Rugen, L. & Woodfin, L. (2014). Leaders of their own learning. John Wiley & Sons.
Purkey, W. W. & Novak, J. M. (1996) Inviting school success. Wadsworth.

May 18, 2023 0 comments

Educators K-12 Teachers Social Emotional Learning

Relationships Foster Social Emotional Learning

by Kathy Dyer May 9, 2023

written by Kathy Dyer 5 minutes read

Explicitly or implicitly, educators, students, and families have used social emotional learning strategies and skills to transform their relationships during the pandemic. Communication with families increased, as did communication among educators and leaders. Collaboration with families shifted as students needed to learn at home.

John Hattie (2009) tells us those teacher/student relationships have an effect size of .72 (almost one standard deviation). “Students who have a sense of belonging and purpose, who can work well with classmates and peers to solve problems, who can plan and set goals, and who can persevere through challenges—in addition to being literate, numerate, and versed in scientific concepts and ideas—are more likely to maximize their opportunities and reach their full potential” (Jones & Kahn, 2017). The skills and behaviors Jones and Kahn spell out seem similar to those listed by CASEL (2023) as part of social emotional learning.

Collaboration for Social Emotional Learning

Learning to leverage technology on both sides of the screen required collaboration and intentional communication. Having seen students’ homes or the space they used for learning at an intimate level and having (in some cases) more ready access to families provided insights previously unavailable. Figuring out how to use that information to foster relationships when students are present in schools is strategic.

When school community members are sensitive to each other’s emotional needs and perspectives, it creates a more positive emotional climate for learning and thriving. Healthy relationships require the skills and desire to communicate clearly, listen well, cooperate, negotiate, and resolve differences. Authentic partnerships form.

The Importance of Trust

Trust is key for all relationships to reach their full potential. It’s no different in schools. Trust starts by building a relationship with your learners (and their families). What do you know about each as an individual? Quate and McDermott (2009) tell us “… that the development of a nurturing classroom community in which students are known well by both the teacher and their classmates matters…” trust is gained when learners see that you know them and believe in them.

Trust requires both physical and emotional safety. When students feel safe from physical harm, they can focus on learning. Offering a safe place to take academic risks as part of learning also helps build trust. Establishing strategies, processes, and routines helps alleviate students’ stress about what’s next and what they should or could do.

These predictable supports for learning allow students to focus. Students can more readily own their behaviors when the relationships and environment are consistent, equitable, and fair (self-manage). Meeting expectations (social, academic, and behavioral) that have been shared and discussed is much easier and makes sense to students.

Social Emotional Learning Relationship Skills

The Search Institute created a Building Developmental Relationships Checklist in 2020. Although designed for use during the COVID-19 crisis, this checklist includes five relationship-building steps with multiple strategies to support each step, which include ideas like expressing care, pushing students to get better, providing support, giving students voice and choice, and expanding possibilities.

Think about relationships you have (or had) in school. Which previous ideas made a difference to you personally as a learner? Which of these strategies do you consistently practice with your learners?

When you did (or do) work with learners remotely, what strategies did (or do) you use to keep connected with learners? Which were (are) most effective? (And how do you know they were effective?) Are you now using the remote learning communication practices that helped you build stronger relationships with students and families?

Modeling Behaviors for Students

The relationship skills outlined in SEL include clear communication, active listening, cooperation, self-management, conflict resolution, and checking to understand (academic and social). As educators working to build relationships with learners, modeling the behaviors and skills we want to see one way to support teaching them.

Another is developing the classroom learning team (the teacher, individual learner, and peers). These skills can be challenging to learn. These skills fit into the durable skills category employers look for.

Regularly employing strategies and routines that allow learners to practice communication, check for understanding, practice self-awareness (academic and social), and self-management as part of the classroom learning team gives them multiple opportunities to develop and deepen relationships in the classroom.

Learning and practicing these skills in a safe environment supported by mutual experiences prepares students for other relationships. Developing solid relationships can help in dealing with stress and better health. Having people to count on can make a big difference in learners’ lives.

Strategies For Using Social Emotional Learning to Develop Relationships

Although labeled a “COVID Check-in Survey,” Harvard’s survey for educators to use with students contains simple questions appropriate for in-person and virtual learning situations. Assessing where students are and using the results to better support them as part of demonstrating care and building trust.
Using chats and polls in an online environment created levels of comfort and equity for some learners that don’t exist in the classroom. It is a strategy that may also be useful in a physical environment.

Resources

Hattie, J. (2009). Visible learning: A synthesis of over 800 meta-analyses relating to achievement. Routledge.
Quate, S. & McDermott J. (2009). Clock watchers: Six steps to motivating and engaging disengaged students across content areas. Heinemann.
Brené Brown explains the misconception around feelings of guilt and shame – ABC News.
Educator Well-Being 2.0 – ASCD

May 9, 2023 0 comments

children talking with eacher in their classroom

Hidden

Supporting Social Emotional Environments

by Kathy Dyer April 25, 2023

written by Kathy Dyer 5 minutes read

What makes kids, families, and communities feel safe? Builds their sense of well-being? Empowers them to thrive? Safe spaces for learning, whether inside a school building or out in the community, requires equitable social emotional environments. As Jonathan Aldis (2019) from Stantec said, “We want spaces where students can practice for the future.” That “practice” involves physical, social, emotional, and academic opportunities.

For many, it is about redefining what is possible. Families were and are all in different places, pre- and post-pandemic. A trauma-informed environment is created by promoting the wellness of students and staff. Academic support is part of this. Perhaps more importantly, ensuring that everyone feels safe and supported on other levels – physical, social, and emotional – contributes to an overall feeling of wellness.

Developing Social Emotional Environments

Maximizing physical and psychological safety, facilitating recovery or adjustment, and supporting children and adult’s ability to learn and thrive is critical. Establish routines with clear, concise, consistent communication to start.

Communication and engagement with the community seem to be an area of opportunity for many school districts. As Joe Sanfelippo (2016) says, “Flattening the walls of your school entails eliminating the communication barriers so everyone feels like they are part of the school community.” While districts and schools are invitational with parents when it comes to events at the school, attendance often remains low.

Engaging Families to Develop Social Emotional Environments

Identifying barriers to family engagement is critical. What keeps them from engaging in their children’s schools? Communication with families regarding student performance and needs is sometimes limited to report cards and heavily loaded with information from the school and not as much from the parents. It’s the stories behind the data that build engagement.

How might you share data to enhance parent understanding and engagement? How can you use stories to help families engage? What stories help families understand the school’s vision and goals to personalize them? Remembering that people walk through doors in two directions may be useful. How can educators walk through doors to meet families in contexts where they are most comfortable and accessible? How are educators and the school showing up and going out in the community?

Equity Centric Thinking

In an equitable community, all are welcome, valued, and have a voice. Some educators unconsciously adopt biased and deficit-based thinking. We talk about having high standards for all learners and yet hear the comments about “they can’t do that kind of math.” Deficit thinking has been embedded in our systems for a long time. Changes in beliefs about the potential of learners are a must as we move forward.

Trauma-Informed Social Emotional Environments

Acknowledging the trauma related to the pandemic for all people and the disproportionate impact of COVID-19 on certain communities, along with systemic racism, bias, and discrimination on a broader scale and the violence in multiple communities, it is important to start the environmental transformation.

According to The National Child Traumatic Stress Network, a trauma-informed system is one where all parties involved recognize and respond to the impact of traumatic stress on those who have contact with the system, including children, caregivers, staff, and service providers. Recognizing the impact on children and adults, trauma-informed practice is not something nice to incorporate and is mandatory.

Leading With Empathy

Empathy plays a big role in our environment. Who gets to decide what’s “best” for students and families? Establishing an environment that empowers all members to build and practice empathy will go a long way to creating an authentic and welcoming environment.

The mirror neurons in our brains are activated when we perform an action and observe an action. “Sometimes called “empathy neurons,” these cells help us understand the intentions of others and are active during social encounters.” (Tomlinson & Sousa, 2020). Schools provide a wealth of social encounters in the classrooms, halls, common spaces, and outdoors.

Practicing Mindfulness in Social Emotional Environments

We can control how we act; we do. Pausing to look for and from other perspectives helps us build empathy. Practicing mindfulness (breathing, brain breaks, etc.) supports our ability to harness our emotions. Developing personal and classroom routines, learning how to set boundaries, and building our vocabulary to describe our emotions allow us to express and receive input from others in ways that demonstrate self-awareness, self-management, and social awareness, all aspects of SEL. All of these contribute to the environment that supports SEL.

Establish an environment that mistakes are part of. One where mistakes are “expected, respected, and inspected” (Peters, 2021). It supports the power of “yet” and a growth mindset. Routines help establish welcoming and equitable schools and classrooms. Recognize that everyone has expertise. In your ecosystem, there are community, family members, educators, and students with knowledge, skills, and experiences to share. Create environments and offer invitations for people to share.

Actions You Can Take

Leverage asset-based language. In Choice Words, Peter Johnston offers a plethora of examples of how a subtle change in words can have a large impact. This relates to the practice of challenging ideas rather than feedback, which is like providing feedback focused on the task rather than the person.
Ask this question of each group – students, families, and community – What can you tell me about the school that teachers and administrators don’t know? (Boss, 2017)
Apply structures, strategies, and tools that support active engagement, persistence, and collaboration, practices that provide routines.
Remember that the school has community spaces – hallways, a lunchroom, a library, and school grounds. Greeting learners, educators, and families in those community spaces go a long way toward making them feel welcome and valued.
Create a word wall for emotions. Provide learners with multiple words to describe the nuances of their feelings. For younger learners, a page of emojis, with the words beneath, is a way to build their emotional vocabulary and their ability to read and understand words.
Support students in processing current events and their personal impacts. Create space for dialogue and other forms of expression. These opportunities help foster resilience and empathy.
Put students and teachers at the center of decision-making about opportunities that more
equitably address and support the wellness of the school community.

Resources

Boss, S. (2017). All together now. Corwin.
Johnston, P. (2004). Choice words. Stenhouse.
Sanfelippo, J. & Sinanis, T. (2016). Hacking leadership: 10 Ways great leaders inspire learning that teachers, students, and parents love. X10 Publications.
The Sciences of Teaching – Educational Leadership (ascd.org)

April 25, 2023 0 comments

Educators Social Emotional Learning Market Research

How SEL Empowers Positive Learning

by Kathy Dyer April 11, 2023

written by Kathy Dyer 6 minutes read

What’s been your best learning experience? What made it the best experience for you? Like many others, the topic may have been personally relevant. You may have trusted the teacher or the environment where you were learning. You probably got to choose either the topic or another big experience aspect. Engaging in this learning and making choices about it probably empowered you. Skills learned as part of SEL, self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, relationship skills, and responsible decision-making all support our best experiences.

Research Behind SEL-Empowered Learning

Schools have access to multiple programs supporting SEL. According to research from CASEL (2019), when SEL is implemented well, 27% more students improve their academic performance (by 11 percentile points), 57% more gain in their skill levels, and 22% more show fewer conduct problems.

Materials in different programs highlight the following aspects of SEL: self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, relationship skills, and responsible decision-making. These ideas fit well with what we know about self-regulated learners—learners who set goals, monitor their progress, plan, and manage their time and resources, make responsible decisions, and practice self-control (Nilson, 2013).

Nurturing SEL Engagement

Ways to nurture emotional engagement include inspiring confidence in learners; demonstrating consistently that all contributions and interactions are valued – acknowledging and reinforcing each contributor; creating an intellectually safe place – encouraging questioning for understanding; personalizing feedback, remembering that the focus of the feedback is the task, not the person.

Making the content relevant allows learners to recognize and internalize why the content is important. The importance of the content and its personalization helps learners develop a positive emotional response to instruction. They feel good about participating and are more open to instruction. As Tomlinson and Sousa (2020) said, “…emotions are a gateway to cognition and learning. When curriculum and instruction evoke enjoyment, surprise, empathy, personal relevance, and so forth, the gateway opens, and learning is likely to proceed more effectively and durably.”

SEL Empowerment and Engagement

One of the key aspects of a culture of learning is the idea of empowerment and engagement. Once students are open to learning, we want to engage and empower them. There are three aspects of engagement teachers need to ensure learners have regular access to:

Voice and choice: Learners need to know how to make good decisions, as this is more than just who a learner might work with. Think about options regarding when and how the learning occurs, the focus (the learning targets and success criteria), and even assessments.
Collaboration: Opportunities to collaborate may involve brainstorming, problem-solving, assessment, co-creating success criteria, rubrics, peer feedback, peer assessment, or peer observation. To support these collaborations, learners must develop social awareness, self-management, and relationship skills.
Challenge: The appropriate level of challenge not only engages but also may be viewed as fun. Make learning not too easy and not too hard. Make it just right and “desirably difficult.”

Flower Darby (2018) said, “Our emotions are a central part of our humanity… Emotions grab our attention and keep our interest. Emotions motivate us, inspire us, and move us to action.” What was experienced between 2020 and 2023 heightened our awareness of positive and negative emotions, even in education.

Recognizing Students Emotions

There is no way to ignore the emotions of our learners, community, or educational ecosystem. Incorporating emotions into learning is critical moving forward. What stories and histories are we teaching, and whose stories are missing or misrepresented? How can we incorporate current events to increase feelings of personal relevance, interest, and autonomy for all? Brene Brown (2022) spoke about expanding our emotional vocabulary. In Atlas of the Heart, Brown shares a list of 87 emotions and experiences.

Expanding the vocabulary of students (and educators) to better identify and name their emotions can support them in deepening their self-awareness, self-management, and relationship skills, which will support them academically.

Connecting via two-way respect goes a long way to fostering the learner/teacher relationship. How can we teach our kids social awareness and relationship skills if they don’t see us practicing them? Explicitly making the instruction and content relevant helps build self-awareness in students and supports them in decision-making.

Explicit and Implicit SEL

Talking about current events, for example, and why they caught your interest helps build the relationship, encourages students to be self-aware of their thoughts and feelings about relevant issues, and supports the development of social awareness as they listen to how others respond.

Educators currently teach SEL both explicitly and implicitly. These ideas are not new, just organized and presented coherently. Consider these classroom examples:

The language arts teacher asks students to think like the author or explain what a character might think – look from another perspective.
The math teacher asks a student to try a different approach or formula in solving a problem – perseverance and making choices.
The history teacher asks students to write a letter as if they were someone experiencing a historical perspective – self-awareness and social awareness.
The art teacher reads a poem and asks students to create a drawing depicting the emotions of the piece – self-awareness and perspective.

There will be a time when explicit instruction focused solely on SEL is necessary for topics that aren’t as easily integrated into academics. These instances may involve instruction focused on the identification of feelings or empathy.

For SEL to stick, teachers need to create structure and consistency. Students must learn and see that effort builds their knowledge and skills. Implementing learning that empowers students means they are taught equitable content that taps into their funds of knowledge and skills to build their self-management so they can demonstrate self-efficacy.

Build and encourage the classroom team (individual learners, peers, and the teacher). Learners feel valued when they become self-regulated, acting as instructional resources for themselves and others.

Strategies to Support SEL

Breathing and movement strategies include belly breathing, yoga breathing, and counting breaths – all ways to calm breathing and the mind. Some classrooms have incorporated yoga or other movements.
“What might happen…” – this strategy is easily integrable into academics in numerous ways. In historical contexts, learners can imagine what might happen in different events if different choices had been made. This offers the opportunity to investigate perspective, problem-solving, and choices. In reading, when learners are asked to predict, teachers can make connections to current events or instances that may occur at school, at home, or in the community.
Journal writing is one mechanism for learners to reflect, predict and capture emotions related to learning and what is happening in their lives.
Help learners connect their emotions to content to enhance learning and emotion identification. This provides a choice in how students demonstrate their skills in the assessment.
Using talk partners and collaboration fosters learners’ building and maintaining relationships and becoming instructional resources for one another.

Resources

Kautz, T., Heckman, J. J., Diris, R., Weel, & Borghans, L. (2015). Fostering and measuring skills: Improving cognitive and non-cognitive skills to promote lifetime success. OECD Education Working Papers No. 110. OECD.
Nilson, L. B. (2013). Creating self-regulated learners: Strategies to strengthen students’ self-awareness and learning skills. Stylus.

April 11, 2023 0 comments

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