How can you teach social-emotional learning?

Model, Model, Model! To teach social-emotional learning we must first assess and attend to our own emotional intelligence. I have found the best teaching and learning occurs in the moment and by example.

For international teachers, it's also important to understand the context of your host country; cultural background, political situation, and social norms, to further understand your learners' social-emotional needs.

It’s part of growing up. You learn it yourself. No need to “teach” it. Why do we think we need to teach it? Who will make up the program? That is the big issue on this

Educators must know their students, and they must realize that students' needs, strengths, and areas for improvement will change. It's essential that we identify their background, individual, and environmental characteristics. From here, we can begin to develop curriculum that incorporates the core components of SEL.

For this initial stage of understanding interests and preferences, I usually follow Design thinkikng method. It helps me better systematize the connection with students and understand more about school and parents needs.

An example of creating a supportive, trauma informed community in your classroom includes creating norms and expectations with your students. When students have agency and voice in their spaces, it becomes a community. The goal is to create behavioral change through inherent personal drive for the student. Allow failure as a learning experience, create opportunities to fail forward with safe vulnerability. Students who engage in unexpected or non productive behavior are communicating a need. Investing time into learning more about your students outside of school, will help bridge those tough conversations.

There are a number of ways to establish and maintain a positive learning environment. For example, educators can: be open and welcoming, taking time to chat with students and get to know them; emphasize their belief in students’ success, incorporate cooperative learning, develop varied content, and use growth mindset oriented language.

Some examples of how incorporate SEL into your content: In Math, teachers can use problems to teach students about problem-solving and decision-making. For instance, a teacher may ask students to solve a problem that involves share a prize among several friends In Science, teachers can use experiments to teach about collaboration and team work. For example, work together to build a model of the solar system. It's really important to provide feedback and help them to unbderstand the SEL skills they are working with and how this impact their everyday lives.

There are a number of ways that SEL can be promoted through learning activities. They include: self-evaluation and reflection, case studies, role play, small group collaboration, problem-solving, and teach-backs. Educators can also incorporate a focus on racism, sexism and other bias within the discipline and guide learners through discussion and reflection.

When using explicit instructions, language should remain consistent across grade levels and scaffolded to higher grade levels. SEL language when taught and used in this way can create changes in school culture. When students are met with consistency, routine expectations and also given agency to make change they can feel success. SEL learning and common language should be visible in common spaces, classrooms and used frequently by staff. Additional supplementary information can be sent to parents and guardians through school letters, newspapers, social media posts or classroom updates. Sharing the explicit and implicit ways with parents and guardians can assist with home school communication and community involvement.

Explicit and implicit SEL teaching are complementary. Im my experience, teachers in regular courses (Math, Science, History...) works more in an implicit manner and SEL teachers works explicitly. However, implicit SEL teaching can be very effective since SEL teachers are a relatively new field in Education

In addition to the strategies noted, it is important to gather data through meaningful, personal connections. This can be achieved by choosing a couple of students each week couple students each week to connect. This can enable educators to improve relationships with learners, getting to know them and gaining valuable feedback that can be used to further improve and individualize their learning experiences.

Connect the emotions with the actions. When teaching children SEL skills, its important to be explicit about the connection between emotion and behavior. When a student in at baseline post an incident, that's a good time to drill down, have them express what they were feeling, and directly connect it to the behavior. "So, you're saying that when you don't know the answer, it makes you frustrated, and when you get frustrated, you throw your pencil," or shutdown or start talking or etc. Whatever the example is, its important to spell out the connection for the child. Then, you can create a plan together to utilize different coping skills when that situation occurs again.

An important point here is the engagemente of families and communities. SEL is more effective when around a child's life is working together. Teachers can work with families and communities to practice SEL skills outside of school

Really great points, Benjamin. Educators need to be more aware of learners' behaviors and the events that lead up to them. The ABCs of behavior are key: antecedent (what led up to the student's behavior), behavior (what happened), and consequence (what was the resulting action. We also need to be aware of underlying causes that may not be visible, such as physical, environmental, and emotional.