Social-Emotional Learning: Self-Awareness

Adult SEL is an integral part of human development – and it is important to remember that our personal development continues throughout our lives.  Which is why I want to remind people that SEL is not only for our students. We need to engage in growing our own SEL competencies, too!

I mean, there is so much new to learn, every day. And if we stop learning, catching up will be hard. Also, the teaching profession is really REALLY a learning profession - so the day when we stop learning is also the day when we need to stop teaching.

While teaching and learning are not the two sides of the same coin - they are literally two extremely different processes - they are closely related to each other in the future-oriented focus of the actions. And while thinking about the future is important, recalling happy memories from the past is an easy way to grow our own self-awareness because it answers some of the important questions like:

• Who am I? Who do I want to become?
• What is important to me?
• How have my interests shifted over the years

The flowers in the image are wood anemones and I have so many wonderful memories of them from my childhood. They were the first wild flowers to bloom in southern Finland - often emerging just before mother's day. Near our summer cabin the flowers covered huge areas in the forest floor, which made picking them so fun and easy - knowing that having a vase full of them would not diminish the beauty of the forest.

Social-Emotional Learning: Responsible Decision-Making

Observing collaboration in nature is always amazing: I see this lichen in the spring with beautiful gray-purple colors, and soon again it goes back into hiding. But it is the collaboration of algae and fungi, often also yeasts and bacteria. that makes lichens possible. Lichens are how we learned about symbiosis (close, long-term between organisms or species). 

We don't need to be in a symbiotic relationship, but choosing to collaborate (instead to compete) increases our chances for success in most situations. 

In Finnish we call these lichens as “Nahkajäkälä” - nahka meaning the leather or just a leathery look and feel and jäkälä meaning lichen - and I have always found lichens so interesting ever since I learned about their symbiotic nature. 

I think Responsible Decision-Making is a lifelong process to master. We certainly want to start teaching it early, but as it is tied to our Executive Function skills (EF), we cannot expect people to master it before they turn 21 - and there is a lot of individual variation, too. Here is a great definition of EF: 

Executive functioning skills refer to the brain-based, cognitive processes that 

help us to regulate our behavior, make decisions and set and achieve goals [1]

What is one thing that we can choose to collaborate on, instead of competing for it? In my work it has been the realization that supporting the success of my colleagues is much more beneficial than trying to compete with them.

How about you?

:)

Nina

[1] https://learn.mciu.org/the-intersection-of-executive-functioning-skills-and-social-emotional-learning-starting-with-the-brain/