Teaching Basic Social and Emotional Skills in the Classroom

Play video: CoffeED: Sarah Whaler & Kara Mulkusky (20 minutes 10 seconds)20:10

Kids learning manners and social skills not taught at home The Bay District Schools in Panama City, Florida have a PreK-12 student membership of 27,784 across 47 schools. The majority of students in the district come from homes on the lower end of the income scale, with nearly 57 percent of students qualifying for free and reduced lunch. It’s an environment where there are many social and emotional needs to be addressed.

Interestingly, the Bay District’s data suggests between grades K through 5, the overwhelming majority of disciplinary issues originate from kindergarten. Sarah Whaler, the Coordinator for Student Placement Options for the district, shares how previously there were expectations that kids would already be versed in “please” and “thank you” and have at least a rudimentary understanding of sharing and communication skills by the time they entered kindergarten. “The kids are lacking that now,” she adds.  “It’s something that we have to carve some time out into our educational day. It takes a lot of extra time, space, and patience to teach the kids the basic social and emotional skills.”

Kara Mulkusky, the MTSS Instructional Specialist at Bay City Schools, takes it a step further. She sees an urgency in teaching kids the social and emotional skills needed to succeed far into their futures. “What are we doing to teach those students on a school-wide level,” she asks? “What are our expectations that we want our students to learn? How are we modeling those expectations for our students? And what are we doing to make sure that those positive behaviors are reinforced appropriately so that they’re maintained throughout life?”

MTSS (Multi-tiered System of Support) is designed to change the way schools support students with learning and behavior problems by systematically delivering a range of interventions based on demonstrated levels of need. Sarah and Kara see lots of discipline problems on a daily basis. They both believe in the restorative discipline approach, using the offending behaviors as a learning and healing tool for both the victim and the perpetrator. The old punitive approach of long-term suspensions left no room for healing or growth, and rarely left anything but resentment and unresolved anger in its wake.  

Using restorative discipline, they ask students with behavioral issues, what happened? Why did it happen? What were you thinking? How can we fix it? They follow what they’ve termed the “R cubed factor” which represents recover, reflect, and return. Sarah adds, “The most critical factor is the second ‘R’ which is to reflect. It’s the reflection piece that includes all five restorative questions ending with ‘What can we do to repair the harm that’s been done? What can I do to make things right?’”

Sarah and Kara mention wanting to find a program that brought continuity, viability, and affordability. Suite 360 from Evolution Labs with the ISS360 content library of content for restorative justice not only came within budget but worked very effectively with the social and emotional component. It proved an intricate and viable part of the PROMISE Program. “If we can make this work and help spread this to other districts, it would be the most we could ask for,” Sarah says.

Further Reading

1. Psychology Today – 5 Steps To Help Kids Learn To Control Their Emotions
2. PBS – Seven Tips for Practicing Positive Discipline
3. HuffPost – Searching Deep for the Triggers that Challenge Student Success

More on Social-Emotional Learning