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