Education is slow to change. As educators we have seen the system struggle against the pressures of an ever changing world. While the COVID example is a more physical example of the system struggling, educators have also seen the mentality change of the system struggle. One of the new ways the system is starting to change is Social Emotional Learning, but what is SEL? According to the Committee for Children, "Social-emotional learning (SEL) is the process of developing the self-awareness, self-control, and interpersonal skills that are vital for school, work, and life success."
Now that we have defined SEL we can discuss the learning implications. One of the first learning implications of SEL is building better questions. Building better questions is an essential initiative in creating a better learning process. Often times educators and students alike ask level one questions. Questions that entail a yes or no process are seen as level one. However, SEL focuses on the importance of higher level questions. Using higher level questions is a great way to build a higher Bloom's vocabulary and helps students to really think about the content. Students, with higher level questions, are better tasked to be strong critical analyzers and strong workplace colleagues.
Another great implication of SEL is co-authoring a class mission statement. When starting class for the very fist time using a rules protocol is extremely helpful. Student voice is one of the best ways to show students that as an educator you care about what they have to say. In turn, as an educator you can establish three "set rules" and allow students to come up with the other two. Student voice in class rules also establish a learning community where students take initiative. As a social reconstructionist, the classroom should be student centered, and utilizing student voice is an imperative step for student centering. I truly believe that SEL is one of the most useful tools in classrooms today. I hope that this blog post was helpful in understanding how to utilize SEL.
For more see the link below:
https://www.edutopia.org/video/5-keys-successful-social-and-emotional-learning
I like this, Thomas! This blog post is indeed helpful in understanding how to use SEL. I appreciate how you explain it, too! When you mention how both students and teachers tend to rely on/fall back on level one questions, this got me thinking about my own K-12 experience and where I may have encountered such things. If it counts, I remember being asked a lot of questions like:
ReplyDelete1. "Do you understand?"
2. "Have you been paying attention?"
I don't know if these necessarily count as accurate examples, but, basically, I usually received surface-level questions to respond to. To try and incorporate an SEL approach in asking similar questions, I might ask students:
1. "What did you learn from our lesson today? Was it helpful? Or do you have any questions?"
2. "How supported do you feel in our class? Has the content been organized in a way that supports your learning?"
Thank you, Thomas! SEL is one of those concepts that sounds great in theory but feels complicated to practice. I've been exploring that link you shared and woah! There are so many great blog posts, videos, resources and ideas about how to put SEL into practice for all ages.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.edutopia.org/article/3-gratitude-practices-dont-involve-journaling
^ This link is a blog post titled "3 Gratitude Practices that Don't Involve Journaling" which is such a helpful tool in the ELA and Social Studies classrooms. I feel like we often resort to journaling as a tool, but we don't have to. This article recommends setting up a "Gratitude wall," creating motivation and playing on student strengths by genuine "Positive Affirmations," and utilizing the "Notice-think-feel-do" strategy to talk about what students are grateful for. Such cool ideas.
This resource is awesome. Thank's for my new morning reads!
Good post Thomas, Although I disagree with some of the language within the SEL framework I also think that it's a great tool to help build not only resilient students, but also interdependent learners. The Washington state OSPI has benchmarks (linked below) that should be used to help guide us a teachers. The ultimate goal, as you stated above, is for students to understand that their values are important, they CAN rely on themselves AND their classmates to overcome obstacles, and that people are different and that's ok and should be respected.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.k12.wa.us/sites/default/files/public/studentsupport/sel/pubdocs/SELStandardsBenchmarksIndicatorsLongForm.pdf