Early childhood is a time when socialization is mostly focused on family. From infancy to preschool age, many students interact with a fairly limited group of people. The circle will at first only include family—and perhaps close family friends—before growing to encompass a limited number of children. This may include the children they encounter in daycare, places of worship, or a neighborhood playground.
Since parents are the primary drivers of these early socialization experiences, different children can have vastly different levels of exposure to people from different cultures or with varying abilities. For many students, the classroom is the first place that they learn how to interact with people from diverse backgrounds and who have different ways of seeing and interacting with the world around them.
And, because these individual experiences can differ so widely, early learners may arrive in the classroom with varying levels of social competence, having had little to no exposure to real diversity. Social and emotional learning (SEL) is meant to help overcome disparities in socialization by giving all students the tools they need to succeed.
In recent years, SEL skills have become more important than ever due to the COVID-19 pandemic and the months of learning disruption that it has led to. In the two years since the pandemic began, the learning losses have been significant and have extended beyond academics. In a time when face-to-face conversations are often replaced with online chats or messages, socialization is already a challenge. The isolation brought on by the pandemic has made this problem much worse.
When schools first began to close, teachers were thrown into virtual learning environments with little preparation time. Many students struggled with this new technology due to inadequate parental support, a lack of quiet space for learning, and unreliable internet access. Some students disappeared from learning entirely during this time and now need many months of remedial help to reach their learning milestones.
For younger students, the situation became even more difficult. As schools remained closed and families endured long periods of social isolation during lockdowns, students in grades K-3 missed their chance for peer socialization during a critical time in their development, which will undoubtedly have long-lasting consequences.
In addition, COVID-19 has inflicted significant trauma on countless families—from those who have lost loved ones to those who have suffered severe illness, unemployment, and prolonged separation from their extended family and communities. Studies have found that the pandemic has had significant negative impacts on mental health, with reports of depression and anxiety at unprecedented levels. As years of ever-escalating pandemic stresses have negatively impacted caregivers, children also feel the effects.
What are the goals of social and emotional learning?
The main goal of social and emotional learning is to give students the social and emotional skills necessary to develop supportive relationships and make better decisions. The Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning (CASEL) has identified five core competencies in their social and emotional learning framework: self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, relationship skills, and responsible decision-making.
By promoting competence in each area, we help students unlock the power of self-mastery, reinforce prosocial behaviors, and build equity. In this way, we can prepare students to be ethical, engaged citizens who have all the tools they need to succeed in the classroom, the workplace, and in their interactions with others.
SEL curriculum
Integrating SEL skill development across the curriculum creates consistency and a common language. Through the consistent promotion, modeling, and explicit instruction of SEL skills, teachers can help students practice these critical life skills in an affirming, supportive environment.
Social and emotional skills are critical not just for improving academic performance, but also in the day-to-day lives of students. One could say that subject matter knowledge is important for helping a student land a job, but SEL skills help them keep it.
Studies across several years and multiple countries further support that the integration of SEL instruction across the academic curriculum improve student achievement and have positive impacts on prosocial attitudes and behaviors.
SEL in the classroom promotes several benefits that strengthen the learning environment:
- Educational equity
- Increased engagement
- Resilience in the face of challenges
- Empathy for others
- Improved mental health
- Healthier interpersonal relationships
The benefits of social and emotional learning in the classroom extend beyond students. Teachers and parents benefit as well. For teachers, cultivating an emotionally healthy classroom culture reduces the incidence of negative behaviors and reduces inequity. In addition, SEL skills empower students with the right mindset to learn and grow.
For parents, practicing SEL skills with their children helps to strengthen their bond and build trust. This improves the quality of their interactions and reinforces strong coping and conflict resolution skills.
The five competencies of social and emotional learning
Each of the competencies identified by CASEL contributes to a student’s overall well-being and contributes to their ability to succeed in school, life, and work. The goal, of course, is to help students develop a framework for social and emotional health that will benefit them throughout life. So let’s look at how each of the essential SEL competencies benefit students:
Self-awareness
Self-awareness is the means by which you understand and assess your emotional state, goals, and values. Self-awareness is fertile ground for nurturing a growth mindset, which requires that students be able to work through failure and develop a healthy approach to learning. This mindset recognizes that it is only through resilience and determination that we achieve our goals.
Students with strong self-awareness are able to:
- Identify their feelings
- Assess their emotional state and how it impacts their decisions
- Manage difficult emotions
- Overcome feelings of failure
- Develop a healthy outlook on learning and growth
- Safeguard their mental health
- Ask for help when they need it
Self-management
Self-management is a term that refers to the way that we manage our emotional state and our behaviors. When we teach children how to manage their feelings in productive ways, we empower them to overcome difficulties and focus on taking proactive steps to improve their circumstances.
Students who develop strong self-management skills are able to:
- Manage stress
- Employ strategies to manage attention
- Control negative impulses
- Delay gratification
- Persevere through difficult emotions and circumstances
Social awareness
Because socialization in early childhood is so often limited to close family and their social circles, the extent to which students have had exposure to people from other cultures and backgrounds can vary widely. Some students in your classroom may feel at ease interacting with people from diverse backgrounds because they have had the opportunity to develop these skills. Others may have been socialized in tighter-knit circles with little to no exposure to diversity. Teaching SEL in the classroom prepares all students to learn in an equitable way.
Students who develop skills in social awareness are able to:
- Show empathy for others
- Consider the perspective of people who are different
- Recognize social norms and how those norms can look in different cultures or social contexts
- Demonstrate curiosity and openness to learning about others’ experiences
Relationship skills
Children aren’t born with an innate understanding of how to interact with those around them. They develop these skills over time through their relationships with others. This means that many students begin school without developing the skills they need to form and maintain healthy relationships.
The norms of one family or social circle may not translate well as the child begins to engage with a new group of peers. This disparity can impair the student’s ability to develop healthy friendships.
Students who develop strong relationship skills are able to:
- Cooperate with others
- Resist peer pressure
- Handle conflict
- Know when and how to seek help
- Communicate clearly and positively
Responsible decision-making
Responsible decision-making is another essential element in developing strong social and emotional skills, and is likewise a necessity for students as they leave school and enter the workforce. To prepare students to make responsible decisions, we have to give them the habits of mind needed to evaluate the choices before them. This enables them to make informed decisions based on their understanding of the risks and benefits of each choice.
Students who develop the skills necessary for responsible decision-making are able to:
- Describe rewards and consequences
- Identify risky behavior
- Apply ethical standards
- Consider how their actions could impact the well-being of others
- Recognize how the high quality of their choices affects the opportunities that are available to them
Social and emotional skills beyond the classroom
In the classroom, promoting SEL skills has several powerful benefits. First, it teaches prosocial behaviors that reduce interpersonal friction in the classroom while decreasing the incidence of conduct problems by rewarding positive behaviors. Second, SEL skills are essential for cultivating a growth mindset, in which students learn to view failure as a means to an end rather than a reason to stop trying.
Teaching SEL skills in the classroom is also critical for equity. Since every student has their own story, background, and life experiences, it’s unrealistic to expect that they will arrive each morning in the same state of learning readiness. In this way, SEL skills are a rising tide that lifts all boats, giving every student the chance to succeed, regardless of their personal circumstances.
Social and emotional skills are not just for students. Moving beyond the classroom, SEL skills empower students to navigate challenges throughout their lives. With these essential skills, we enable students to form and maintain healthy relationships with others, make better decisions, develop a healthier view of failure and growth, and become more engaged, empathetic and informed citizens. These skills also set them up for success in future learning environments, careers, and interpersonal relationships.
Photo Credit: Google Edu
Social Emotional Learning