Social-Emotional Learning: Self-Awareness

The beauty of the nature helps me grow. Visiting the Lake Crescent last weekend and seeing all the beauty of an old groth forest and the lake was amazing. I have learned that I need to make time to focus on the beauty of the nature as a part of my self-care. 

NCS2022 Lake Crescent, WA

Taking care of one's own wellbeing starts from having self-compassion. Being kind to myself includes visiting beautiful places, and we have plenty of those in Washington state, Taking time to enjoy them is important. The research of self-compassion states there are three components:self-kindness, common humanity and mindfulness. [1] I find the nature walks to soothe my soul and help me be a better me.

[1] Neff, Kristin D. "Self‐compassion, self‐esteem, and well‐being." Social and personality psychology compass 5.1 (2011): 1-12. https://self-compassion.org/the-three-elements-of-self-compassion-2/

 https://self-compassion.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/SC.SE_.Well-being.pdf

Social-Emotional Learning: Relationship Skills

 Having healthy relationships is a key ingredient both for life and learning. We need skills to communicate clearly and collaborate with each other, and resolve conflicts in a constructive way. (CASEL)

For teachers it is sometimes hard to ask for help, especially in learning context, just because we are subjet matter experts in learning. We spend our days helping others to learn. Therefore, focusing on our own help-seeking skill is important!

NCS 2020 Hawai'i

Asking for help can make learning a much more enjoyable experience - and having positive learning experiences helps us to want to learn more. In modern world everyday learning, or life-long learning is an essential skill. This is true for everyone, but even more so for educators, which is why my preferred question for my teacher students is: How can I help you today?

Please visit Notes from Nina to learn more about 

Three Dimensions of Teachers' Learning  and Teachers' Pedagogical Knowledge

Social-Emotional Learning: Social Awareness

Social awareness is about our ability to understand the perspectives of other people. This includes having compassion andnrespect for others, regardless their background or culture. (CASEL) 

For us as teachers, this means having very keen understanding about situational changes in the classroom, and how to build an emotionally supportive learning environment. 

NCS 2021

Sometimes I see people heading west on the beach near my house (where this picture was taken), regardless of the time for the next high tide. Sometimes the waves can get suprisingly high, leaving very little or no beach at all between the waters and the pretty high bluff without a road nearby. Similarly, being aware of the social and emotional situations in the classroom is important, and we can learn to understand the ebb and flow of classroom interactions. Fostering positive emotions in classroom  is easier by intentionally using student-centered practices.

Student-centered and emotionally safe pedagogy is a choice, an instructional approach in any level of education. It is not a handbook of tips and tricks, to add diversity and equity into instruction, or help us survive our challenging days in the education profession. It is being intellectually and emotionally present when a student needs us. It is also about choosing the instructional strategies to support every students’ individual learning process and learner agency[1]

:)

Nina

Smith, N.C. (2017). Students’ perceptions of learner agency: A phenomenographic inquiry into the lived learning experiences of high school students. (Doctoral Dissertation).  Northeastern Repository

Social-Emotional Learning: Self-Management

Learning how to manage our emotions is an important part of education. Taking turns, making friends and helping others are necessary skills to be successful in life and learning. We don't acquite these skills magically overnight, they require lots of practice. (CASEL) Feeling motivation and agency to accomplish goals. 

Stress-management skills have been very necessary during the past two years. Learning something new helps us to focus on the future. But learning doesn't happen overnight, and we need to have the growth mindset to try again. And again. Until we meet our goal. Our students need this too! Engaging in positive self-talk helps! 

NCS2020 

This obviously means that we must build a learning environment where students can practice failing - if every assessment is high stakes it is impossible for students to learn from their mistakes. Emphasizing Growth Mindset is important, but even more important is to build student-centered assessments for students (projects, portfolios, etc.) so that they can get feedback about their learning, and try again.

To support students' self-management we must have strong pedagogical competence in all 3 areas of Teachers Pedagogical Knowledge: Instructional Process, Learning Process and Assessment. 

Social-Emotional Learning: Self-Awareness

We often have too narrow view of learning. It is so much more than just memorizing what we are taught. Deep learning encompasses the whole personality when we try to make sense of what we learn, which leads to life-long learning. Isn't that exactly what we want as educators? 

Focusing on engaging students in Social-Emotional Learning (SEL) during every lesson makes the learning experience better and deeper. We must provide ample opportunities for students to grow on all 5 areas of SEL: Self-Awareness, Self-Management, Social Awareness, Relationship Skills and Responsible Decision-Making. (CASEL)This is a process that takes time - which is the reason for preschool focusing on SEL skills. Self-awareness is the first step!

Identifying one's own emotions and personal & social identities is a great start! Please check the CASEL framework!  Engaging in dialogue with our students helps them learn!

More about SEL: NotesFromNina blog  and  Tweets

All teaching & learning needs SEL!

 

Social-Emotional Learning #SEL is crucially important in all levels of education! 

We as teachers are constantly working on becoming communication professionals. Just think about it: learning really happens in interactions.

In addition to this, with all our interactions with students, we communicate about many things like:

• how important learning is
• what is appropriate behavior in the classroom
• about the content we are teaching
• what learning strategies students might need
• why growth mindset is so important 
• how metacognitive skills (learning how to learn) are needed throughout our lives
• how learning cannot end in graduation, but is a lifelong process

...and about so very many other things. Every day. It's part of our work! :)

 We also communicate to parents and administrators about how our students are progressing.

Choosing to teach with respect towards students and support students’ ownership of their own learning is a good start! Social- emotional learning (SEL) provides great tools for supporting learner agency. CASEL framework has identified 5 areas in SEL:

• self-awareness (CHT SEL)
• self-management (CHT SEL)
• social awareness (CHT SEL)
• relationship skills (CHT SEL)
• responsible decision making (CHT SEL)

These are not something new and surprising items, teachers throughout the time have focused on supporting students skills in their classrooms. And we know from decades of research how successful students already use all these skills – I am thinking all the research about self-regulation and co-regulation, engagement and participation, executive functions, metacognitive skills - important parts of Emotionally Safe Learning Environments.

 All SEL skills are necessary for successful learning, but too often they are not taught throughout formal education. And as  children arrive to school with different skillsets of SEL, some will need more help than others.  All the five SEL elements are organically present in our lives, in our societies. Classroom learning shouldn’t be an exception of this. Choosing to teach with the focus on supporting students’ learning process also helps us empower our students to learn more on their own.

Focusing on 3Cs - Constructive, Cooperative and Cognitive practices makes it easy to implement SEL elements in our teaching.  Helping students to learn who they are and how to make responsible choices is a crucially important life skill. Let’s not waste our opportunity to support their agency by embedding SEL strategies to our instruction and adding more students’ voice and choice to every learning interaction!

More information about learner-centered education: NotesFromNina.com

EMPOWER students to learn!

 Here is an infographic about Learner-Centered education! Feel free to share it! :) 

And here is a recording of it: