We should learn to focus on positive things, avoid worries, overcome difficulties, and reach ambitious goals without overstrains.
For some reason, it is believed that a person should learn to control one's emotions naturally, without any external support. Traditional schools focus on what young people know but do not care about what they feel. As a result, we have many erudite but socially maladjusted graduates who struggle to find their place in the world.
Social-emotional learning (SEL) is an increasingly popular educational trend. Within its framework, each learner is treated not only as a future specialist who should have a certain set of skills, but also as a personality with one's own fillings, experiences, and attitudes towards the surrounding reality. Thanks to SEL, young people learn deeper, show better academic results, understand their emotional needs, mitigate stress and aggression, build strong interpersonal relationships, undertake big projects, and accomplish them successfully.
There are many ways to instill a social culture in learners. Teachers may use holistic SEL programs or set extracurricular tasks thus supplementing a traditional curriculum. Each educator has the opportunity to find an ideal learning formula that suits one and one's students best.
SEL principles
Here are the 5 elements on which all SEL activities are built:
- 1.Self-awareness. Young people should be able to assess their own thoughts, emotions, sensations, and behavior. This approach is very different from the traditional academic system where attention is mainly focused on teachers, textbooks, and assignments, i.e. external things. SEL shows the value of education in each individual's life, helps students to look deep inside their own minds, understand what they want to do and how to find inspiration to work hard. Learners can recognize stress, have tools for mitigating it, know about their own strengths and weaknesses, are able to foresee possible problems and face obstacles with dignity, understand that failure is a normal thing, have optimistic mood, and strive for self-improvement.
- 2.Self-management. Once young people study themselves, they should be taught to manage emotional states and develop good behavioral patterns. This applies to anger control, self-motivation, perseverance, and resisting negative emotions.
- 3.Social awareness. It is important for students to interact with peers and educators, study social environment, analyze other people's emotions and actions, be interested in their worldview, values, and unique experience, show respect, ask and answer questions, and develop empathy.
- 4.Relationships' building. The ability to communicate efficiently and build useful links is important for success in any life area. It is always beneficial to have many business partners, reliable friends, and keep in touch with relatives. That is why young people should perform group projects, boost teamwork skills, learn to cooperate, seek compromises, solve problems together, undertake the responsibility, and inform other team members about actions taken.
- 5.Responsible decision-making. Some learners make mindless choices, just go with the flow, do not understand what for they come to lectures and do homework daily. As a result, education turns into a tedious duty and a school resembles a prison. Young people should act consciously, understand their motivations and goals in order to make well-informed, safe decisions that meet their own moral codes and do not violate social order.
Why do schools need SEL?
A classroom is a place where students spend 30+ hours a week, get the most of their social experience, interact with peers and educators. After coming home, young people usually perform academic assignments, play video games, watch TV, read posts in social media, which means that live communication is reduced to a minimum. It seems unreasonable for educational institutions to ignore learners' emotional needs because there is no better place for developing social skills.
It is worth taking into account that people grasp information better at a young age, so studentship is the most suitable time to form lifelong behavioral habits. Schools should provide something more than academic knowledge. It is not enough to just be literate and know math formulas to enter adult life. Thanks to character traits shaped by SEL programs, students get more chances to find prestigious jobs, create their own businesses, build families, and find good friends in the future.
People face their first challenges and victories in an educational environment. Kids who are accustomed to being pampered and protected by parents have to make independent steps, undertake the responsibility, manage their work, perceive criticism adequately, and correct mistakes. As students mature, they become more confident, curious, and enthusiastic, learn to seek opportunities for personal growth.
Adolescence is the time of serious physical and psychological transformations. Young people are not kids anymore but not adults yet. They strive to try new things, understand what they like and want from life. Teachers' emotional guidance allows to reduce conduct problems, hooliganism, drug abuse, helps students to fight depression, always stay motivated and optimistic.
25 helpful SEL resources
Experts from Pro-Papers have compiled the list of resources which should help you get started, implement SEL strategies in the classroom, and track the latest trends in this area:
1. Social Decision Making/Problem Solving Program
2. 4Rs
3. Tribes Learning Communities
4. CASEL
5. Raising Healthy Children
6. MindUP
7. Too Good for Violence
8. Edutopia
9. Resolving Conflict Creatively Program
10. Responsive Classroom
11. I Can Problem Solve
12. Center on the Social and Emotional Foundations for Early Learning
13. Positive Action
14. Education Week Webinar
15. PATHS
16. Second Step
17. Competent Kids, Caring Communities
18. The Incredible Years Series
19. Social and Emotional Learning Standards
20. Open Circle
21. RULER Approach
22. NoVo Foundation
23. Michigan Model for Health
24. Steps to Respect
25. Caring School Community
We hope that this article proved to be useful and the resources above would help educators to provide unforgettable learning experiences for themselves and their students.