Bringing Social and Emotional Learning into School Life
The need for SEL
The school-wide realisation that there was a need for enhanced social and emotional awareness came about during COVID when we saw a rise in the number of students struggling with their new reality: cases of depression, anxiety, and isolation went up drastically. Students were struggling to manage themselves in social settings and they had become disconnected from each other. As adults, we were grappling with the new world order ourselves as we watched students flounder, and in some cases, spiral out of control. It was hard to watch young people genuinely suffer and not be able to step in and rescue them in the way we would in normal circumstances. It became apparent that teaching students how to tune into their feelings and giving them a toolkit to help them help themselves was essential. Traditionally, emotional growth has been the forte of the family, and we dip our toes into the realm of the personal development through programmes such PSHE. COVID made schools realise that supporting wellbeing was a priority. I knew SEL was important on a personal level. I had spent years reading related material and sharing ideas with like minded people. I’d even worked in a school where it took precedence so I knew there was a way to bring it into a mainstream school context. As the old adage goes, every problem has a silver lining. I took full advantage of COVID and went looking for the perfect programme for our school.
The research
I set about searching for a programme to bring in social and emotional learning into my school. As part of my research I re-read Daniel Goleman’ best seller Emotional Intelligence which I had encountered when it first came out in the 90’s as a young teacher. There I re- discovered the work of The Nueva School which was, according to Daniel Goleman, a “pioneer” (Goleman, 1995, p. 289) in teaching Social and Emotional Learning (SEL) as part of a ‘Self Science’ curriculum. I knew I had struck gold! If Daniel Goleman was writing about a school which had nailed SEL then this was the right place to look further. I followed the trail a bit and found the former director of the Nueva Learning Center, Anabel Jensen, had become president of Six Seconds. Voila, I found the source of training and a curriculum I was looking for.
My choice of programme was confirmed by reading the 2011 meta-analysis of 213 studies involving school-based, universal SEL programs which included over 270,000 students in K-12 (Durlak JA, Weissberg RP, Dymnicki AB, Taylor RD, Schellinger KB.). This research showed SEL competencies could be taught, modelled, practised and would lead to positive student outcomes that are important for success in school and life. This was bigger than COVID. The Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning (CASEL), the world authority on SEL, through such research has been able to identify and share the key success factors for SEL to really have impact, noted below for ease of reference:
SEL is integrated with academic instruction;
there’s youth voice & engagement;
there’s a supportive school climate;
there’s a focus on adult SEL;
there are supportive discipline processes;
there’s a continuum of integrated support;
there are family & community partnerships;
there’s a system for continuous improvement.
The Six Seconds training and curriculum aligned beautifully with CASEL’s framework and ticked a few of the items on this success criteria. I embarked on an intense training period and began to plan the process of introducing and developing this across the whole school.
The rest of this article shares the exact steps we took to bring SEL into the mainstream in a ‘for profit’ school where there was very little knowledge of what SEL encompassed and a school which had historically focussed on ensuring the academics took priority. I hope the outlining of the steps we took and the processes we followed will help other schools and leaders seeking to bring SEL into their school. The good news? It’s possible to bring SEL into a school and it’s not as hard as I imagined. The process to roll it out is crucial though and it’s a long road (we’re at the end of the second year of implementation and we’re still on it).
The how
Like anything else, before we can teach something we need to know it ourselves. During my training I realised that SEL was unlike other pedagogical training which typically gets rolled out in schools; this training was not just a toolbox of tricks to use; it was about learning how to be.
I launched SEL at my school with a professional development day to introduce all teaching staff to what Social and Emotional Learning means, the Six Seconds model and the 8 competencies which lie at the heart of this model. Following the training day I knew I needed to create a team of ambassadors to really get this out across the school and get buy-in. Inspired by the lesson from ‘Leadership from a Dancing Guy’ I decide to be the first one to take to the makeshift dance floor. I invited the Pastoral Coordinators to join me as we met fortnightly for me to model lessons and then as a group to collaboratively tweak the lessons to suit our students and contexts. I became we. They in turn invited their Homeroom teachers to join them by delivering the lessons to them every fortnight and invited them to tweak them before finally delivering them to their Homeroom students in their Personal, Social, Emotional and Health Education (PSHE) lessons . Slowly we have sought to build a crowd and I hope by now there’s a mixture of teachers, students and parents all enjoying the SEL dance!
Through this cascaded method I sought not just to instruct how to teach SEL but also to give Pastoral Coordinators and teachers the opportunity to process content through experiential learning themselves (remember SEL is about a way of being) so I knew they needed to feel it to buy in to it.
The lessons
Lessons were all active in their nature and aimed to develop the language of SEL, metacognition and a toolkit students could use to help themselves on a daily basis. We ran drama workshop to explore the main emotions; fear, joy, anger, sadness and disgust through creating tableaux of these emotions and communicating feelings through facial expressions and body language. In another lesson students explored the relationship between thoughts, feelings and actions and ways of changing one of these and watching the domino effect (if you change one the others follow suit). We played with cut outs of blank faces and asked students to create emotions using face parts whilst others guessed the emotions. Knowing the words to describe emotions and being able to use them can have a powerful effect on managing them (watch this film ‘Name it to Tame it’ by Dan Siegal who explains how naming an emotion accurately can calm emotions in a crisis). In addition to the work in school, I also wrote fortnightly articles for the school Weekly Brief so parents were informed about what their children were learning and also shared some research with tips and links to articles or films which explained the aspect of SEL we were exploring with students so that parents might too learn some of what their children were learning and thereby support embedding this learning.
The learning
At the end of the academic year I carried out a review. Here’s a flavour of what students said…
When asked what the most helpful aspects of the SEL lessons were, students said….
Understanding someone's feelings and emotions and knowing how to know that i am listening
Learning through activities and sharing and learning through pair/ group discussions.
Learning even more about how emotions and behaviour affect each other
Knowing how to control feelings
Learning about the name it to tame it strategy
I can control myself from being angry
Learning body language of other people when they are hurt or sad.
Thinking about how other people feeling when you do something
The 6 second pause
How to release the emotions
Intrinsic and extrinsic motivators
Optimism
Fight, flight, freeze
How to show empathy
Learning the psychology & neuroscience behind the strategies
Learning about how emotions are contagious
EVERYTHING
When asked what they most enjoyed, students said..
Learning to be a better person
The emergency kit activity
Learning about how to identify emotions.
Learning through activities
Sharing my experiences
Learning how to feel empathy for people to make them feel better
A Year 13 wrote:
“In the past few weeks, we have gained a deeper understanding of various topics in our PSHE lesson, such as: how to exercise optimism using optimism bridges, intrinsic motivators and how to show empathy. The outside-of-our-textbook knowledge may seem unnecessary at a glance, but the hidden value of it is that it can bring a long term benefit in our lives. Everyone has times when they feel unmotivated and depleted, but with the help of tools like optimism bridges, we can view challenges differently, believing it is only a short term problem and motivate ourselves out of our despair. We all may suffer in uncomfortable relationships, but if we all can understand how to use the tool of empathy, then we will have more ever-lasting relationships. As the saying goes, “Anger is easy, but empathy takes practice.” All these things I can never learn from reading textbooks.”
My children attend the school I work in, they now are learning about SEL through school and home. As a parent of teenagers, I have found the development of a common language to talk about our experiences and think about how to approach setbacks and difficulties particularly profound. Recently, my daughter, reflecting on a difficult situation at school, told us at the dinner table that she realised she had a choice in how she perceived a friendship situation and with that realisation she chose to change her response to her situation. Wow! “Between stimulation and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response” (Frankl, 1946). She moved from being disempowered to being empowered. I could have cried with happiness! To hear my 12 year old daughter had in fact followed Victor Frankl’s dictum was truly wonderful. Therein lies her growth and her ability to cultivate her own well being and happiness. I hope that in sharing and revisiting the SEL competencies every year that other students will have similar epiphanies and be able to ultimately coach themselves as my daughter did. Maybe we can reduce the rising levels of anxiety, depression, isolation and the need to find interventions such as medication or external counselling (albeit these are sometimes needed and helpful- but perhaps they don’t need to be the first port of call) as young people learn to navigate their emotions, choose their perspective or a tool to help them work through a challenge. It is every parent's dream to know their children will be able to withstand adversity and be happy. Life can be hard. Navigating it can be learned. Life can be wonderful too and we can play a part in ensuring we make the best of everything and that, in most cases, we are in fact empowered to do so in some way, however small it may seem. As an educator I feel passionate about teaching this, as a parent even more so as I want nothing more than for my children to have the tools to live a fulfilling life and to grow into people who are deeply compassionate because they have also learned about what it is to be human.
What worked & why?
CASEL reports that a systematic approach to SEL is required. While keeping an eye on the benchmarks for success I took lessons from the dancing guy and used ‘The Factors in Managing Complex Change’ (Knoster, 1991) to navigate my way through unchartered waters. I worked with others to create a shared vision and goal. There was a clear action plan. We skilled our teachers and created buy-in through involving them in the planning process and creating context appropriate lessons. the programme was well resourced and we made it as easy as possible to follow. the Ambassadors or First Followers were nurtured. Further still, I believe the drip method of rolling this out after the training day has also enabled teaching staff to learn the language and skills over a longer period of time. How many times have we attended training, been inspired, then forgotten all about it? This process has kept it on the agenda. Also, the cyclical nature of the curriculum means we return to the competencies and skills year after year so learning is remembered and built on, for teachers and students alike.
What now?
Whilst we have put SEL on the school agenda we still have some way to go. We need to move it into the academic arena so that the use of the 8 competencies are modelled and utilised on a daily basis. We need to run parent workshops so parents also absorb the teaching and can support their children practise the skills they are being taught at school. We need to give more time to it. If we get this right we will create resilient learners who are equipped to navigate their inner worlds, manage adversity and learn to cultivate their own wellbeing and happiness. As an educator and parent I know that this is one piece schools are often missing or pay lip service to. I know this is too important a subject matter so I hope we can continue to build that crowd.
Want to know more?
Take a look here to find out more about why investing in SEL is so important.
To learn more about the Six Seconds methodology, read this case study and the SEL Resources for Education from Six Seconds. Also, why not reach out to me or join me for an EQ Cafe in the near future (details appear on https://www.linkedin.com/in/indu-bedi)to explore some of the identified SEL competencies.