contributed by Meg Priceemployment insurance experience
Social-emotional learning (SEL), by definition, is a process of learning life skills, including how to manage oneself, others, and relationships, and work effectively.
While there are many excellent SEL programs available, SEL can also be integrated into each lesson to teach students to understand how to implement the skills in various situations and to form positive habits. All students begin school with some level of social and emotional skills, and all will develop their social and emotional skills at different rates.
Parents and teachers are both responsible for teaching students necessary life skills, and it is certain that much of what they learn will be learned by observing our actions. The five strategies below will not only benefit students’ social-emotional learning, but may also benefit teachers’ well-being.
See also The Benefits of Social-Emotional Learning
5 Strategies for Incorporating Social-Emotional Learning into Your Classroom
1. Through mindfulness
Mindfulness is: paying attention, in a particular way, intentionally, to the present moment, without judgment.
We are hearing more and more about the benefits of mindfulness for children. Increased attention leads to better academic performance and increased emotional and social intelligence. Children are better able to learn, nurture themselves and be aware of their own emotional needs.
Mindfulness practices help students focus on their breathing, their body, their thoughts, their feelings, and the world around them. When they can observe their thoughts and feelings, they have the freedom to choose how they will speak and act, which can lead to a happier, more harmonious classroom.
There are many mindfulness activities available for free, on YouTube for example. Additionally, there is mindfulness and meditation apps which can provide frameworks to get started. Why not start each lesson with a different mindfulness activity?
2. Make it clear that thoughts lead to feelings
Research shows that more resilient students perform better academically. Resilient students bounce back faster, are aware of their thinking, understand their beliefs, and most importantly, are able to challenge their beliefs and thoughts to create more positive outcomes.
This is an important concept because we may not always be able to influence what happens to us, but we have a powerful influence on how we interpret and cope with what happens to us. Many students don’t realize that their thoughts play a large role in influencing how they feel.
No matter what happens to you, no one can take it away from you. It’s a challenging lesson to teach any time you hear a student express frustration, anger, and other negative emotions. As a teacher, you can help by listening to the emotion, then helping your student understand where that emotion is coming from and how to adjust their thinking in ways that contribute to their social-emotional well-being.
3. Persistence and pattern determination
A very important aspect of wellness and SEL is the ability to accomplish things in life. Many students naturally strive to improve in some way, whether they are seeking to master a skill, achieve an important goal, or win a competition.
Other students need support in this area. Teaching students every lesson that accomplishes things takes effort, patience, and perseverance. Praising effort is essential in this area of SEL. Each student should be encouraged to set ambitious goals during lessons to feel a sense of accomplishment.
By being mindful and challenging negative thoughts, students can be encouraged to dig deep to find the determination to succeed.
4. Listen with empathy
In other words, listen to be surprised.
Part of SEL is understanding the importance of positive relationships. To nurture these relationships, we must have and teach empathy. Teachers have a wonderful ability to model empathy. Encourage students to listen to others, then ask them to listen to be surprised and understand what other students might be feeling. What opportunities do you have in each classroom to find ways for students to help each other and learn something new about each other’s ideas?
Take the opportunity in class to teach students to ask questions phrased in a way that encourages responding, not encourages defensiveness. For example, when John says, “Sam, why can’t you just follow the instructions?” » encourage John to rephrase his question to better understand what Sam is looking for: “Sam, can we follow these instructions together to make sure they make sense?
Tone matters in teaching.
5. Emphasize gratitude
Once again, research shows us that a very important aspect of well-being is gratitude. This research indicates that those who regularly express gratitude have more energy and enthusiasm, less stress, and better physical well-being. There are very simple ways to increase your experience and expression of gratitude; however, this may require that we train ourselves to think differently.
For students, this can be done by incorporating a few simple exercises into each lesson. At the end of each lesson, ask students to reflect on the lesson using these three questions:
– What aspects of this course did you like today?
– Who did you like working with today?
– What areas of this topic would you like to know more about?
And above all, have fun in each lesson; learning should be fun and play is a very important part of social-emotional learning!
