In the age of digital education, you must be wondering what is social emotional learning and why it matters. As a teacher, you might have heard students say, “Why are we learning this topic? Or “It is useless.” The most intelligent thing you can do then is to think about when you were in school and the concepts or subject themes that caused you the most frustration.
You’re likely to find common ground with your students in wanting to understand why something is important and how learning it will benefit you now and in the future. But the frustration you experience as a student must be adequately addressed and channelized. So, finding constructive ways to deal with emotions and interact respectfully with others are the guiding principles of social and emotional learning (SEL).
In an ever-diversifying world, a classroom is the first place where students are exposed to individuals from different backgrounds having unique abilities and holding different beliefs. Social and emotional learning (SEL) aims to ensure all students are on an equal footing to succeed by accounting for these differences and helping them become more self-aware and empathic with others within their communities and the world around them.
Developing such qualities in virtual and physical classrooms can help learners become more productive, better, self-aware, and socially responsible outside the school environment.
Let’s dig deep into the importance of social-emotional learning and learn more about its benefits in and out of the classroom.
What is Social Emotional Learning?
Social-emotional learning (SEL) is an approach that enables students of all ages to comprehend their emotions better, feel them fully, and show empathy for others. Students become better equipped to regulate their feelings through social and emotional learning. Consequently, this emotional regulation helps learners to make positive and responsible decisions. Also, it aids them in creating a framework to achieve their goals and build healthy relationships with others.
Social-Emotional Learning Competencies
According to CASEL (Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning), there are five vital social-emotional learning competencies.
The five key areas that make up social and emotional learning are as follows;
Self Awareness
Self-awareness encompasses recognizing emotions, identifying strengths and needs, and developing mindfulness about your feelings.
Self Management
The ability to control and own your thoughts, emotions, and actions in various situations and to set and achieve goals.
Social Awareness
The ability to put yourself in someone else’s shoes who may have a different background or culture from your own and to act with empathy and in an ethical manner within your home, school, and community.
Relationship Skills
Relationship skills involve building and maintaining healthy relationships with people from various backgrounds. It focuses on listening to and the ability to communicate with others, resolving conflict, and being aware of when to ask or offer help.
Decision Making
The decision regarding how to act or respond to a situation relies on learned behaviors such as ethics, safety, weighing consequences, and considering the well-being of others and oneself.
Significance of SEL
With the help of the SEL approach, learners can process and integrate their social and emotional skills in school/college/university.
Research suggests the following benefits of social and emotional learning.
Success in School
Developing better social and emotional skills enhances the academic performance of learners. The soft skills developed through SEL improve students’ attitudes toward the overall learning process, thus improving their performance. When learners know that their feelings will be heard and respected, it becomes easier for them to relax and focus on the subject material.
Less Behavioral Problems
Learners engaged in SEL are less likely to be disruptive at school. They are better equipped to regulate their emotions. For instance, when students can learn how to voice and express their anger appropriately, it prevents them from acting out and damaging relationships.
Reduced Emotional Distress
Students with more vital self-regulation skills have lesser depression, anxiety, stress, and social withdrawal occurrences. Integrating SEL programs into the curriculum affects learners’ central executive cognitive functions, improving their inhibitory control, planning, and ability to shift attention from one task to the other. As students learn and practice new behaviors in SEL programs, they are better equipped to express their emotions and needs healthily.
Healthy Social Behavior
Social interaction skills and self-knowledge is vital for students to develop and maintain healthy and productive relationships with their teachers, fellow students, and parents. These essential skills to know how to interact with others are hallmarks of SEL. Learners’ close relationships with their instructors positively impact their performance and have long-reaching benefits beyond the classroom and into the real world. For example, they learn how to apply to a college or how to look for a full-time job.
How Instructors Approach SEL
While social-emotional learning is not a designated subject like science or math, it can be interwoven with the fabric of online learning or school curriculum. When instructors make online or face-to-face lessons more personalized and relatable to learners, students become more inclined to engage actively and participate in the learning process. As a result, they are less likely to check out mentally during the sessions. Educators must foster a sense of empathy, self-awareness, safety, and inclusivity in their classroom sessions to leave a positive impact on students that lasts a lifetime.
There are various approaches to social-emotional learning. For example, some instructors formally designate a portion of the school day to SEL– teaching them in homeroom. They then make these lessons a recurring theme throughout the day to make core competencies of SEL more real to learners.
Educators can have students journal or write down their feelings and thoughts on a specific SEL lesson or get younger students to partner with older ones (buddy classroom) or vice versa to help them bond across different age levels and find common ground.
Other instructors weave SEL-related lessons into formal subjects, such as math, science, history, or reading. For example, SEL in action can involve assigning a group project where learners self-delegate roles to work together for a common team goal, like role-playing as historical figures to better grasp the reasoning behind a person’s actions or conducting formal interviews with one another to assess current events.
A teacher can also help students set goals and chart their progress in areas where they need improvement so they have a measurable way of demonstrating their accomplishments.
How To Incorporate SEL in Classrooms
Teachers can incorporate SEL in virtual and physical classrooms in many ways. However, the central theme remains to provide an ongoing influence of SEL throughout the online session or in-person class. For example, before starting the formal lecture, educators can begin by checking in with learners to see how they are doing and feeling.
Another way to teach them the core of social-emotional learning can be to let students know how a tricky situation is handled. As a result, they will learn how to handle situations like these when they encounter one. Moreover, make sure there is space for students to calm down, where they can feel safe and reflect easily.
Measuring The Impact
If you want to measure the impact of implementing social-emotional learning, well, it goes beyond just the grades of your learners. According to Dr. Christina Cipriano,
“When students are struggling, and school performance is poor, they are more likely to find the school and learning as a source of anxiety, manifesting in diminished self-efficacy, motivation, engagement, and connectedness with the school.”
As you provide students with SEL tools, they will own their actions, cultivating a sense of belonging. Thus, they will intrinsically care about their education. In addition, students consistently exposed to SEL techniques are better able to manage stress and cope with depression.
Conclusion
The most critical goal of SEL is to teach children and students to understand their emotions and respect themselves and others. When learners get the help, they need for self-awareness and social awareness, SEL leads to positive outcomes that have overarching effects on individuals’ lives.
