The Next Step: Acknowwledging the Imprortance of Social Emotional Learning in Academic Life
Georgina Hudson, Argentina
Georgina Hudson lives in Argentina, she teaches English and Phonology at the Teachers' Training College and she teaches Business English in company. She's also a free-lance translator and live interpreter. Georgina is interested in Social Emotional Learning in all aspects of life. She's keen on mindful education and strongly believes that healthy classroom environments depend on the creation of a classroom culture that allows learners to develop emotional intelligence competencies to recognize, regulate and manage emotions positively. She is a teacher of English, teacher of Spanish, Master's in Teaching English as a Foreign Language and Neuro Linguistic Practitioner.
Menu
Introduction
How to become interested in this topic ( and hopefully you too)
The importance of developing Social Emotional Intelligence (SEL)
Developing SEL in Teachers
Developing SEL in our students: How it impacts on learning and interactions
Sources to draw on Emotional Intelligence
Conclusion
Appendices
References
This article has at its core the desire to discuss and show the critical role of social emotional learning (SEL) in learning in general and in particular in teaching and learning English as a foreign language. The ones who adhere to a constructivist view of learning believe our students will learn better if they are motivated to activate previous knowledge and to share it to negotiate, accommodate and construct meaning. The two biggest exponents of constructivism were Vygostky and Piaget. For the latter, who was inclined on the cognitive version of constructivism, learning is “a developmental process that involves change, self-generation, and construction, each building on prior learning experiences” (Kaufman, 2004:304). For Vygotsky, who saw constructivism as a social act, “children’s thinking and meaning making is socially constructed and emerges out of their social interactions with the environment” (Kaufman, 2004:304).
If we take Vygotsky’s revolutionary idea that thinking and meaning is socially constructed and emerges out of social interactions, then it is vital to equip our learners with the social-emotional tools to interact effectively at home, at school and in the community. The capacity to understand emotions and to know how to deal with them will favour our learner’s developmental process of change, self-generation and construction, which Piaget so wisely highlighted. Besides, scientific research has started to prove how social-emotional competencies not only promote mental and physical health but also harness academic performance.
Children who enter kindergarten with more positive social-emotional profiles have more positive school attitudes and early school adjustment and greater academic success, even controlling for cognitive skills and family backgrounds (e.g., Ladd, Birch, & Buhs, 1999). Further, children’s ability to regulate emotion, behaviour, and attention has been found to be related to their school adjustment and academic achievement (McClelland et al, 2007). In concert with this proof, this article seeks to demonstrate the importance of teaching the learner as a whole. The target is to help teachers introduce the learner to the world of SEL (social-emotional learning), to observe changes in social interactions, which as a result, will have a positive impact on the learning process.
On a personal level, I feel that incorporating the tools aforementioned in every aspect of my life – as a mother, wife, daughter, teacher and learner – has made me a more tolerant person not only of others’ behaviour but also of my own. I have become a more compassionate person when it comes to my own weaknesses and mistakes and a less judgemental individual towards others. Being patient and transparent has had a beneficial effect on my interactions and it has certainly helped me promote a healthy environment at work.
We all accept the importance of having insights into the subjects we teach and how to go about them. Nobody can deny the importance of how we conceive, structure, plan and deliver our classes. However, a few will stop to think about what is going on in our learners’ hearts and bodies and how to provide our learners and ourselves with the skills and attitudes to lead a healthy life on a mental, spiritual and physical level. Fortunately, a more holistic approach to teaching and learning has been adopted by some over the last decades and science has come to support the importance of such an approach. Research has shown that emotional skills are prerequisite to the thinking and learning skills that comprise the time honoured academic focus of education (Elias et. al, 1997:5). “We know emotion is important to the educative process because it drives attention, which drives learning and memory” (Syllwester 1995:72) It’s been proven that emotions impact perception, motivation, critical thinking and behaviour (Mayer and Salovey, 1997:10)
The present article has been divided into two main sections. The first presents the theoretical foundations for incorporating SEL in our teaching lives. The second discusses the relevance of introducing SEL into the learner-centred classroom and the implications and scope of practices like RULER®, mindfulness and compassion in the field of emotional intelligence.
When I started teaching English 18 years ago, I was so in love with the language and especially with the pedagogy that I felt like I had been given a magic wand to motivate students to learn. In general, my students were satisfied with my classes but there were some who were just disappointed with them or my style. The question was always the same “what’s wrong? What can I do? After all, I kill myself designing each and every class” Time showed me that each individual is different, that every student has a different motivation to come to class, that each person leads their own private life with its ups and downs, and I realized I was teaching the class as a whole but I was ignoring my learners’ individual differences.
As time went by, my teaching started to change, I like to think that it improved, and it started to do so just because I learned to relax about my lesson plans and to cater more attentively for the different individuals in my classes. I never threw in the towel pedagogically, of course, but I started to have a more flexible, more whole person and student-centred approach. My attention started to shift from my lesson plans to my students. Letting my learners take over the centre of the teaching-learning process helped me discover new ways of relating to them. I started to focus a lot more on the affective factors influencing their learning. I also became more available, I started to study NLP to address my teaching and my students more effectively and one thing led to another until I learned about the Greater Good Science Center (GGSC) for Educators at the University of California, Berkeley
http://greatergood.berkeley.edu/news_events/event/summer_institute_for_educators
I can say that my life has been a before and after my course at the GGSC. I was so thrilled to meet other teachers with my same interests and motivation to transcend the cognitive and help learners and myself as a whole (not only our brains). But the most significant element was that I left the institute with cutting-edge, scientifically proven strategies, tools, and techniques which promote social and emotional well-being for me, my family, my students and school. The Greater Good Inaugural Summer Institute was an in-depth learning laboratory where we engaged actively with material related to EI through workshops and discussions, role-plays, peer coaching, and other interactive techniques that could easily be used with students.
In this day and age, we, teachers are faced with the challenge of having to relate with highly stressed student populations. While talking to teachers of many countries, we concluded that in most countries, a good part of our learners is a witness of social injustice, poverty, drugs, discrimination and home violence. It’s just natural for those students to come to our classrooms feeling unprepared and unwilling to learn. Many students feel hungry, others feel angry and others just feel tired and lonely. It’s our duty, as teachers, to foster a good learning environment by providing learners with the tools to recognize and label emotions at the same time as managing them in the wisest possible way. In Guy Claxton’s words: ‘Learning itself is an intrinsically emotional business’ (Claxton 1999: 15).
The process of learning in any context can involve struggle, frustration, thrill or excitement. In the public and formal context of the classroom, with all of the dynamics between teacher and learner and between learners, and with the perception that there is the prospect of success or failure, the potential for strong feelings is heightened. It follows that if the job of a teacher is to help their learners to learn, a teacher needs to be able to recognize the emotional dimension of learning and to work with it. Teachers need to use their emotional intelligence (Mortiboys, 2005:1)
A teacher who is interested in developing SEL in herself/himself should be capable to acknowledge her/his emotions without judging them. He or she should be able to handle emotions efficiently to relate to herself/himself and to others. The notion of emotional intelligence (EI) became popular after Daniel Goleman’s book “Emotional Intelligence” (1995) Goleman defined EI as ‘the capacity for recognizing our own feelings and those of others, for motivating ourselves, and for managing emotions well in ourselves and in our relationships’ (Goleman 1998: 317).
I particularly like Salovey and Meyer’s explanation of what EI involves as described below:
- the ability to perceive accurately, appraise and express emotion;
- the ability to access and/or generate feelings when they facilitate thought;
- the ability to understand emotions and emotional knowledge;
- the ability to regulate emotions to promote emotional and intellectual growth. (Salovey and Meyer 1997: 10)
According to Goleman (1998:318) EI encapsulates:
- Self-awareness: Being alert to your feelings;
- Self-regulation: Managing your feelings;
- Motivation: Using feelings to help achieve your goals;
- Empathy: Tuning into how others feel;
- Social skills: Handling feelings well in interactions with others.
I find it vital for a teacher to develop their EI to create a classroom climate which is conducive to learning. On the one hand, the teacher can acknowledge and regulate his or her own feelings to meet their students’ needs and hopefully, to help their students to become aware of their own feelings and how to handle them efficiently. On the other hand, teachers and students who are emotionally intelligent are more open to teaching and learning. Teachers can show empathy towards their students and students can feel more motivated to relate to their classmates and their teacher because they feel confident and they trust in the other. Last but not least, EI develops metacognition, which helps to think about our thoughts and feelings and their corresponding reactions.
One very important point to make is that one of the most evident proofs of students’ satisfaction with teachers is probably connected with affective factors. These behaviours include “recognizing individuals, listening to students, showing respect, being friendly, sharing a joke, making some self-disclosure”. (Harkin 1998: 339, 346) In fact, Smith et al. (Smith 1997: 45–6) asked students what qualities should the ideal teacher in higher education have, and found that interpersonal characteristics such as ‘empathic’, ‘approachable’ and ‘relates to students as equals’ were regarded as important as the teacher’s skills and knowledge of their subject. In that respect, Carl Rogers in his book “Freedom to Learn” (1983) emphasised that the teacher who displayed the personal qualities of genuineness, empathy and acceptance with learners would, by that fact alone, bring about change in their learners. He wrote, ‘none of the methods mentioned in this chapter will be effective unless the teacher’s genuine desire is to create a climate in which there is freedom to learn’ (Rogers 1983: 157)
Teachers’ Burnout
When teachers don’t have the inner resources to manage the social and emotional challenges within their classroom, children show lower levels of on-task behaviour and performance. (Marzano, Marzano, & Pickering, 2003). In addition, the classroom atmosphere might become stale leading some teachers to suffer from work related anxiety. Sometimes, the evidence of an unhealthy learning environment is shown in students’ misbehaviour and/or students’ uninterested attitudes, which may add to teachers' emotional exhaustion. This added to overbearing parents, inadequate salaries, excessive paperwork, cutbacks on materials or problems with co-workers and administrators may drive to physical ailments attibuted to school stress better known as "teachers' burnout".
Burnout results from a breakdown in coping ability over time and it is viewed as having three dimensions: emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, and feelings of a lack of personal accomplishment (Maslach, Jackson, & Leiter, 1997). Feeling strained and incapable to deal with the aforementioned complicated situations may make some teachers feel dismayed and unwilling to return to work. As a matter of fact, the teaching profession is known for being one of the most stressful professions as teachers are confronted with emotionally challenging situations daily and have no formal instruction related to EI in their Teachers Training courses.
It’s crucial that teachers get the insights into understanding their emotions and regulating them when assessing whether the conflict they are going through is a real threat or whether they are distorting the situation. Teachers who are well trained in EI will be able to reach their students and guide them to construct a way out of challenging school situations. On a personal level, teachers who are acquainted with EI will be empowered by the notion that their experience is shared by other teachers whom they can share what they feel and talk it out. They will also find a sense of purpose and value in what they do as professionals. The opposite would be true of a teacher who avoids confronting conflict or who has an aggressive reaction in the face of it.
Vicki Zakrzewski (2012), Director of Education at the GGSC, Berkeley, wrote in a very compelling article:
Thankfully, science has also found a positive way to deal with these emotions through something called self-compassion. Kristin Neff, pioneering researcher and author of the book Self-Compassion, believes the practice can greatly benefit educators. “With the burnout issues teachers face, taking care of themselves through work/life balance is important, but it isn’t enough,” says Neff, “Teachers need to give themselves permission to be self-compassionate for the stress they’re under.” (…)Neff says that the first component of self-compassion is self-kindness, or treating ourselves with the same care we would give a loved one. As teachers, we care for our students every day but often forget about caring for ourselves.
http://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/self_compassion_for_teachers
The best and most effective way of developing SEL in our students is becoming a role model ourselves. Our behaviour will have an effect on (i) the learning atmosphere; (ii) our learners’ feelings about our classes; (iii) our students’ behaviour itself as we are going to be our students’ referents. Another important factor to bear in mind before we embark on activities which develop SEL is to bond with our learners on a basis of trust. In my experience, being transparent and showing my learners how much I acknowledge them has helped me to motivate them to engage in a myriad SEL activities because they know I hold the best interests for them.
Cozolino (2013) in an insightful book called “The Social Neuroscience of Education” explains how evolution has shaped our brains to be cautious and afraid in the face of the unknown. Fear activates the amygdala, which interferes with prefrontal functioning. Fear also inhibits the need to take risks, it shuts our brains down and drives “neophobia,” the fear of anything new. In addition, when confronted with fear, anxiety, stress, or depression, the brain releases cortisol, a steroid hormone produced by the adrenal gland. Cortisol or “the stress hormone” is secreted in higher levels during the body’s ‘fight or flight’ response to stressful situations. Among many other negative effects, the production of high levels of cortisol over time impairs our immune system and decreases our mental clarity. It should come as no surprise that academic performance will vary depending on our learners’ capacity to manage adverse situations.
It’s our responsibility to help our learners feel relaxed and driven to have the most optimal performance possible in the learning process. Creating an atmosphere that helps to decrease the natural stressful feelings that many students may experience during the learning process is certainly key to meet the purpose aforementioned. “Teachers can use their warmth, empathic caring, and positive regard to create a state of mind that decreases fear and increases neuroplasticity and learning” (Cozolino, 2013). Mihalyi Csikszentmihalyi described an ideal emotional learning environment as ‘flow’ (Csikszentmihalyi, 2002). Flow is that state when you are completely absorbed by a task.
Flow occurs when there is a balance between your motivation, your ability and the demands of the task, in a goal-directed, structured context. You are not self-conscious about your activity and time seems to fly by. Most importantly, there is no sense of pressure or anxiety that distracts you and prevents absorption. It is important to remember that an optimal learning state does not mean a complete absence of stress for learners. … While you are not solely responsible for how they feel, your role in influencing the emotional environment and the learning state of your learners is crucial (Mortiboy, 2005:30).
Scientists and researchers (Lantieri & Goleman, 2008) have shown how teaching children Social and Emotional Skills (SEL) at an early age (as in kindergarten) can make wonders in their physical, mental and emotional health in the long run. Teaching kids to understand, accept and manage emotions thoughtfully will improve their academic and social performance. Key to creating an emotionally wholesome class is the teacher’s empathy, compassion, flexibility, openness and awareness to intervene during students’ disruptive behaviour or classroom conflict.
Some of scientific research regarding Social Emotional Learning and its positive effect on the teaching-learning process will be discussed in the following sections.
SEL (Social Emotional Learning)
The Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning (CASEL) created in the United States has at its heart the mission to help make evidence-based social and emotional learning an integral part of education from preschool through high school. Through research, practice and policy, CASEL collaborates to ensure all students become knowledgeable, responsible, caring and contributing members of society (www.casel.org/about/)
CASEL asserts that the goal of Social and Emotional Learning programs should be increased academic success and enhanced students’ social-emotional competence. SEL programs assist teachers to become more socially and emotionally intelligent and provide them with the insights into classroom management and activities which develop a nurturing, peaceful, committed learning disposition. The teachers who are familiar with or have been trained in SEL are better prepared to plan lessons which build on student’s previous knowledge, strengths and stimuli. These teachers know how to draw behavioural guidelines and how to coach students in challenging situations.
Central to SEL is students’ development of the skills to
(i) become more cognizant of their feelings (self-awareness) and to (ii) regulate them suitably (self-management). SEL also helps learners to feel and show empathy for others from diverse backgrounds and to (iii) understand social and ethical norms of behaviour (social awareness), to (iv) establish and maintain positive relationships (relationship skills), and to (v) make responsible decisions (responsible decision-making). SEL influences students’ outlook on academic life and demeanour in a constructive way, which enhances learning and a sense of kinship with school.
To live and learn in a social world …we need a social decision making and problem solving strategy that includes … understanding of one own’s and others’ feelings, accurately labelling and expressing feelings, identifying one’s goals, thinking of alternative ways of solving a problem, especially when planning a solution and making a final check for possible obstacles, thinking about long and short term consequences for oneself and others, reflecting on what happens when carrying out one’s strategies, and learning for the future (Elias et. al., 1997:27)
RULER ® (Yale University)
Ph.D. Marc Brackett has been extremely active in researching the extent to which his RULER® model can assist students, educators and school climate. Brackett is director of the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence and he is also a senior research scientist in Psychology and faculty fellow in the Edward Zigler Center in Child Development and Social Policy at Yale University. Brackett has developed two university courses on emotional intelligence focusing on RULER®. The RULER ® model of emotional literacy identifies five key emotion skills: recognizing, understanding, labelling, expressing, and regulating (i.e., ‘‘RULER’’). To ease understanding, each emotion skill will be described in isolation below. Nevertheless, in practise these skills may overlap.
Key to this first skill is the idea that if one can recognize one’s emotions and those of others’, one is capable of doing the necessary adjustments in one own’s behaviour to respond in fruitful ways in a given situation. Being able to determine our emotions as well as how one lets them out is central to pinpoint what is actually behind those emotions, what their aim is, and what is meant to be achieved by oneself and of others (self and other- awareness)
Acknowledging the origin of one’s emotions and its repercussion is very effective to respond effectively to the emotions recognized in oneself and other people. In general the reasons that people experience many emotions is quite universal: the loss of something meaningful causes sadness, the achievement of an important goal triggers happiness, the blocking of a goal brings forth anger, the real or imagined threat to the self or to significant others initiates fear (Lazarus, 1991, cited in Brackett & Rivers, 2011:84).
The idea behind this skill is to provide learners with a broad range of feelings vocabulary. The reason for managing a large bank of words to describe emotions is that it makes it easier for learners to talk about their feelings, their needs and their mood more accurately and creatively. In addition, learners are better prepared to understand what their peers are experiencing and expressing about themselves. Below is a nice example,
Imagine a teacher’s response to a student who says ‘‘Not great’’ versus ‘‘I feel discouraged’’ when asked how he feels upon turning in an assignment. The latter phrase is more likely than the former to provoke the teacher to work with the student to increase confidence with the material” (Brackett & Rivers, 2011:86)
The expression component of the RULER model relies on knowledge that the outward expression of an emotion does not always (and need not always) reflect inner emotional experience (i.e., in the moment, people often do not express the emotions they are feeling). (Brackett & Rivers, 2011:86) The reason for that being that more often than not, one expresses a certain feeling to attain something in a particular situation. E.g. a mother who leaves their child at kindergarten may smile and express that everything is fine for the child to be relaxed. However, that mother might be anxious to leave her child at school at an early age.
The ability to reframe and shape thoughts, feelings and behaviour in connection with the experience of an emotion is what is known in RULER as regulating emotion. For example, one may feel angry at one comment about a friend. Nevertheless, the capacity to pause and to mitigate the experience helps to react in a positive way. So instead of yelling back at the person who said something offensive, one may find a more socially intelligent way to respond.
All in all, the schools which have integrated RULER ® in their school curriculum report greater degrees of engagement in tasks by students, better communication skills, less bullying and greater academic success.
Mindfulness
“Simply put, mindfulness is moment-to-moment awareness,” writes Kabat-Zinn, Professor of Medicine Emeritus at the University of Massachusetts Medical Center, in his groundbreaking book “Full Catastrophe Living” (2005:2) Mindfulness is cultivated by purposefully paying attention to things we ordinarily never give a moment’s thought to. It is a systematic approach to developing new kinds of control and wisdom in our lives.” Mindfulness is scanning our posture, bodily sensations, our feelings, our breath, without being judgemental. The scan is a means to be more aware of ourselves as a whole and to feel more grounded. Mindfulness creates space, changing impulsive reactions to thoughtful responses.
(picture from www.mindfulschools.org/about-mindfulness/mindfulness/)
Bringing about some space between the stimulus and the response, the students learn to solve difficult situations in a more intelligent way, besides, mindfulness improves attention, patience, empathy and compassion. All in all, it helps learners to become more attentive listeners and to be aware of the consequences of their reactions.
Thirty years of research and, more recently, brain science, offer compelling evidence to support the use of mindfulness in education. The application of mindfulness by students and educators has the potential to improve academic achievement, mental health, and inter- and intra-personal relationships
(www.mindfulschools.org/about-mindfulness/mindfulness/
Many teachers today are witnesses of increasing academic failure due to nutritional deficit, health problems, teenage pregnancy, drug and alcohol abuse, ADD, AIDS, home violence, child labour, negligence and lack of connectedness with the school community. It just takes a couple of minutes for any of us, teachers, to find out why our students are failing. Sometimes we can see bruises, some others we can see an inability to focus, some students even fall asleep in class, some others misbehave and show signs of nervousness, some are dirty or not appropriately dressed to attend classes.
Needless to say, many of our students suffer a lot of stress and feel under a lot of pressure to cope with their circumstances and thus, they feel incapable of focusing and also on having an active role in the learning process. It’s scientifically proven that stress inhibits parts of the brain which are vital for learning. So before embarking on the contents, the materials and the methodology to adopt, it is necessary to ensure that learners are relaxed, acknowledged, engaged and ready to copy with obstacles. The Mindful Schools Organization states:
We use a simple but powerful technique called mindfulness to teach children how to focus, manage their emotions, handle their stress, and resolve conflicts. Instead of simply telling children to do these things, we show children how — through direct experience. It allows children to make wiser decisions in the heat of the moment, rather than only in retrospect. Numerous studies have shown that mindfulness is a powerful tool for combating multiple mental and physical problems and disorders, for example, Attention-Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), Mood and Anxiety Disorders (www.mindfulschools.org/about/our-story/)
"Mindfulness practices may promote cognitive and emotional regulation by supporting the ability to reflect on one’s internal and external experience from a broader perspective that provides a wider variety of interpretations and responses to stressful situations” (Zelazo & Cunningham, 2007)
Compassion and self-compassion
Dr. Kristin Neff, Associate Professor in Human Development and Culture, Educational Psychology Department, at the University of Texas, developed the concept of self-compassion. Basically, self-compassion encompasses the same elements of compassion but it is directed to oneself. To grasp the notion of self-compassion, it is necessary to understand what compassion entails. To start with, to have compassion for others you must notice that they are suffering. If you are oblivious of a student who is tired because she is a full time working mother, then you don’t feel compassion. In addition, compassion involves feeling moved by others' suffering so that your heart responds to their pain. Returning to the example of the full time working mother student, you may feel moved to talk to her, to listen to her, to give her some extra curricular help, etc. Finally, Dr. Neff points out:
Having compassion also means that you offer understanding and kindness to others when they fail or make mistakes, rather than judging them harshly. Finally, when you feel compassion for another (rather than mere pity), it means that you realize that suffering, failure, and imperfection is part of the shared human experience.
www.self-compassion.org/what-is-self-compassion/definition-of-self-compassion.html
In conclusion, self-compassion is behaving in a compassionate way towards oneself. More often than not, teachers are confronted with stress, shortage of time, sleep deprivation, low salaries, pressure to meet faculty deadlines, etc. Instead of punishing oneself, self-compassion teaches one to notice one’s suffering and to try to figure out how one can respond to it in a positive way. It also means one is tolerant of oneself in the face of mistakes or failure. “Instead of mercilessly judging and criticizing yourself for various inadequacies or shortcomings, self-compassion means you are kind and understanding when confronted with personal failings” Dr Neff, www.self-compassion.org/what-is-self-compassion/definition-of-self-compassion.html. Finally, being self compassionate means one understands and honours one’s humanity.
In addition, self-compassion is a means to replace our inner critic by a compassionate inner voice of support and care. I have found it extremely useful to tell my students about self-compassion and to practise it in class. They have, in turn, reported to feel more at ease about their outcomes and they have even mentioned using self-compassion techniques on their own before and after their finals and oral presentations. Self-compassion research shows that far from encouraging self-indulgence, self-compassion helps us to embrace who we are and to make all the necessary adjustments to meet our goals because we care about ourselves.
Things will not always go the way you want them to. You will encounter frustrations, losses will occur, you will make mistakes, bump up against your limitations, fall short of your ideals. This is the human condition, a reality shared by all of us. The more you open your heart to this reality instead of constantly fighting against it, the more you will be able to feel compassion for yourself and all your fellow humans in the experience of life.
www.self-compassion.org/what-is-self-compassion/definition-of-self-compassion.html
Experiencing self-compassion means that one is understanding of oneself and one is capable of standing up after falling. It means one is kind to oneself to exercise change, to feel positive, to feel good and healthy in the long run.
Dr. Neff on TED “The Space Between Self-Esteem and Self Compassion”
www.youtube.com/watch?v=IvtZBUSplr4#t=12
It would have taken lots of lines and space to write about the SEL mini sessions that I carried out in my classes at college. All I'd like to share (and anyone who's interested to learn more can send me a quick e-mail) is that as I noticed that my teacher trainees at college were very stressed about academic performance and about all sorts of struggles in their personal lives, I suggested we carried out a 10 minute-SEL- session at the beginning of every class. The goal was to relieve stress and to heighten motivation and engagement in the classes. The interventions were quick activities involving Mindfulness, and some concepts concerning compassion, self-compassion and RULER ®. These interventions proved to be really effective in increasing a sense of calm and focus from the very beginning. As time went by and the practices of SEL deepened and became an integral part of our encounters, my trainees started to be more mindful of what they said and of how they reacted. They started to experience the sense of space between the stimuli they got and the response they offered.
By the end of a three months’ period, the participants felt valued and stood accountable for their faults in an adult way. What’s more significant is that many participants started to make SEL a part of their everyday lives and not only a break from curricular work at the beginning of the classes.
All in all, the participants praised being treated with respect as well as appreciating being heard, being helped, and feeling more articulate. In turn, they learned to become better listeners, who were more compassionate and more helpful.
I consider that at school we absorb the norms of our cultural contexts. Our students will be influenced by their backgrounds when deciding whether to obey, to respect, to apply, to rebel or to fear at college. The more challenging our students’ background, the more difficult it becomes to relate to them.
Apple (1995:13) claimed that teachers need to pay attention to the emotional climate more than to any other area, when trying to establish some sort of classroom control:
Teachers, when encountering difficulties in the classroom, tend to respond with strategies they are familiar with from university or college. Such strategies are in essence cognitive ones, e.g. more and better preparation. In following these strategies they pay too much attention to the task side of their job, and therefore fail to address what might have caused their difficulties in the first place: the emotional relations in the classroom. Their increased effort may well yield no better result because it has the wrong target.
I firmly believe SEL practices can enhance learning by empowering learners at a social and emotional level. Only when students’ social and emotional needs are met in conjunction with their traditional academic needs will schools support the development of the whole child. (Brackett and Rivers, 2011). Social and emotional learning (SEL) provides learners of all ages with the tools to effectively “understand and manage emotions, set and achieve positive goals, feel and show empathy for others, establish and maintain positive relationships, and make responsible decisions” (A National Teacher Survey on How Social and Emotional Learning Can Empower Children and Transform Schools available at www.casel.org/library/the-missing-piece)
“The important thing is not what happens but how you react to what happens. You always have a choice about how you behave” (Revell & Norman 1997:20) Teachers and administrators should get the necessary insights into evidence based SEL skills during their pre-service and in-service experience. There is a robust pool of literature today about SEL best practices and instruction on how to improve school atmosphere, school bonds and classroom management.
We, teachers, should take the necessary steps to provide student and teachers with the knowledge and skills which could ease school and private challenges.
Click HERE to see the appendices.
Apple, W. (1995) Education and Power. New York: Routledge
Brackett M. & Rivers, S. (2011) “Achieving Standards in the English Language Arts (and more) Using The RULER Approach to Social and Emotional Learning”, Reading and Writing Quarterly, 27 pp. 75-100. (online) available at http://ei.yale.edu/publication/ (retrieved 29 May 2014)
Claxton, G. (1999) Wise Up: The Challenge of Lifelong Learning London: Bloomsbury
Cozolino, L. (2013) “The Social Neuroscience of Education”, NY: Norton, W. W. &
Company, Inc
Csikszentmihalyi, M. (2002) Flow London: Rider
Elias, M. J., Zins, J. E., Weissberg, R. P., Greenberg, M. S., Frey, K. S., Haynes, N. M.,
et al. (1997). Promoting social and emotional learning: Guidelines for educators. Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development
Goleman, D. (1998) Working with Emotional Intelligence London: Bloomsbury
Harkin, J. (1998) ‘Constructs Used by Vocational Students in England to Evaluate their Teachers’ Journal of Vocational Education and Training 50(3): 339–53
Kabat-Zinn, J. (2005) “Full Catastrophe Living”, New York: Delta
Kaufman, D. (2004). “Constructivist issues in language learning and teaching”, Annual Review of Applied Linguistics, 24, pp. 303-319.
Ladd, G., Birch, S. & Buhs, E. (1999) “Children's Social and Scholastic Lives in Kindergarten: Related Spheres of Influence?”, Child Development, Volume 70/6, 1373–1400
Lantieri, L. & Goleman, D. (2008) “Building Emotional Intelligence: Techniques to Cultivate Inner Strength in Children” Boulder, Colorado: Sounds True
Marzano, R. J., Marzano, J. S., & Pickering, D. J. (2003). Classroom management that works. Alexandra, VA: ASCD.
Maslach, C., Jackson, S. E., & Leiter, M. P. (1997). Maslach Burnout Inventory. In C. P. Zalaquett & R. J. Wood (Eds.), Evaluating stress: A book of resources (pp. 191–218). Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Education.
Mayer, J. D., & Salovey, P. (1997). What is emotional intelligence? In P. Salovey &
D. Sluyter (Eds.), Emotional development and emotional intelligence: Educational implications (pp. 3–31). New York: Basic Books.
McClelland,M. M.,Cameron, C. E., Wanless, S. B.,& Murray, A. (2007). Executive function, behavioral self-regulation, and social-emotional competence: Links to school readiness. In O. N. Saracho, & B. Spodek (Eds.), Contemporary perspectives on social learning in early childhood education (pp. 83–107). Charlotte, NC: Information Age.
Morrison, K. R. B. (1993) Planning and Accomplishing School-Centred Evaluation. Dereham, UK: Peter Francis.
Mortiboys, A. (2005) “Teaching with Emotional Intelligence”, Oxon: Routledge
Neff, K. (2012) The Space Between Self-Esteem and Self Compassion. Atlanta, GA, TEDx Centennial Park Women (online video) available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IvtZBUSplr4 (retrieved 30 May 2014)
Revell, J. & Norman, S. (1997) In your hands. London: Sapphire Press
Rogers, C.R. (1983). Freedom to learn. Columbus, OH: Charles Merrill.
Rogers, C. R. (1951) Client-centred Therapy: Its Current Practice, Implications and Theory Boston: Houghton Mifflin
Salovey, P. and Mayer, J. (1997) ‘What is Emotional Intelligence?’ in Salovey, P. and Sluyter, D. (eds) Emotional Development and Emotional Intelligence: Implications for Educators pp3–31, New York: Basic Books
Smith, B. (1997) Lecturing to Large Groups Birmingham: SEDA
Sylwester, R. (1995). A Celebration of Neurons: An Educator's Guide to the Human Brain. Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development.
Zakrzewski, V. (2012), How Self-Compassion Can Help Prevent Teacher Burnout (online) available at: http://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/self_compassion_for_teachers (retrieved 19th August 2013)
Please check the English Language Improvement for Teachers course at Pilgrims website.
Please check the English Language Improvement for Adults course at Pilgrims website.
Please check the Methodology & Language for Primary Teachers course at Pilgrims website.
Please check the Methodology & Language for Secondary Teachers course at Pilgrims website.
Please check the Teaching Advanced Students course at Pilgrims website.
Please check the NLP & Coaching for Teachers course at Pilgrims website.
Please check the Teaching English Through Multiple Intelligences course at Pilgrims website.
Please check the How to be a Teacher Trainer course at Pilgrims website.
|
