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With pandemic numbers at an all-time high, we find ourselves in a similar place to almost two years ago when it started. We have pulled from the work of the Harvard EASEL lab and Dr. Jones to share 4 SEL practices she pulled from her research on evidence-based SEL learning programs designed for schools and other settings that are useful right now with children and youth. *
4 Social-Emotional Practices to Help Students Flourish Now
By Dr. Stephanie M. Jones*; From Education Week: September 28, 2021 4 min read
“Student learning starts with stability”
So, what can teachers, OST providers and parents do to help children and youth feel stable, safe, and ready to learn? Here are Dr. Jones four recommendations for approaches that will help children and youth participants feel understood, express themselves, and flourish during this school year in school, during OST and at home
1. Ask questions and listen actively.
Children are feeling intense pressure this year from parents and teachers. Both feel the need for their children to catch up after a year of online, hybrid, or just unpredictable learning. In addition, many kids (especially older students) lost out on meaningful rituals—homecoming, prom, graduations, and sports events. Many also experienced the trauma of losing a family member to COVID-19 or witnessing a parent or grandparent fight the illness. Indeed, educators experienced many of these stressors themselves.
This disappointment and trauma will show up in the classroom and in the home, and everyone needs space and time to process what is happening and has happened.
So, what can we do? It helps to take time to check in with children and ensure their feelings are heard. A conversation with a teenager might go like this:
Adult: “Hey, I see you are upset (or especially quiet, or something) today. Is something going on that you’d like to talk about?”
Student: “I’m not sure, I just don’t feel like myself, and everything has me worried.”
Adult: “I hear you; everything really can feel out of control right now. I’m here for you, you can talk with me any time, and I’ll do my best to listen.”
2. Let your students know what’s going to happen and establish clear and predictable expectations.
In unstable times, it helps to over communicate with students about school schedules and expectations and establish concrete procedures when possible. Predictability is the name of the game—students of all ages will thrive when they feel safe, and safety means knowing what’s coming next. If students are slow to fall into step, give them more space, slow things down, and exhale.
Encourage your students’ families to do the same at home. Keeping wake-up time, meals, and bedtimes as similar as possible makes a difference, and establishing rituals and routines for these everyday activities adds an opportunity for connection. Parents might ask, “What was the hardest and easiest for you today?” Or: “What are you grateful for today?”
3. Provide extra social and emotional time, not less.
If children are to thrive in the current climate, incorporating social and emotional tools and practices into both classroom and at home is essential. Clearly, the exact approach will differ for younger and older students, but both do best in respectful, open, and accepting learning environments.
These are some simple foundational SEL strategies for the classroom:
Use journaling. Encourage children to express their feelings on paper.
Do daily greetings. Smile warmly and greet each other by preferred name; use whole-group greeting activities.
Hold class/family meetings. Foster camaraderie and group-behavior norms.
Incorporate art. Use visual arts to document and express feelings.
Talk about managing emotions. Engage in a group discussion about emotions and effective and safe ways to express them in class.
Employ optimistic closings. “What I learned today is …,” “I am looking forward to tomorrow because …,” “What I might do differently is …” are some examples.
If you are a parent yourself, share what’s hard for you about the current situation, thus modeling vulnerability for your kids.
4. Enlist families to step back, connect, and listen at home.
While many place the burden on teachers to get students back up to speed in school, it shouldn’t all be on them. Parents and other guardians can play a uniquely valuable role in providing children with feelings of stability and comfort.
Most of all, let parents know they don’t need to double down immediately with academic pressure—only when children feel safe and comfortable back at school will they be able to fully focus on their work.
If you are a parent yourself, share what’s hard for you about the current situation, thus modeling vulnerability for your kids. Then sit back and actively listen. Mealtimes are a great time to have family meetings. Let your kids of all ages know they’ve been heard. (“I hear you, it’s really hard when you can’t spend time with your friends.”) And validate their feelings. (“I understand it must be tough being a new student right now with everyone wearing masks. I feel the same way trying to make connections with my new students.”)
With the education system focusing heavily on addressing learning, it’s tempting to pull back on the important social and emotional components that research has demonstrated are crucial for student success. But it is only when students feel safe, listened to, and supported by adults in their life that they can fully engage in academic work and everything else they do. This is true both in the family home and in the classroom.
Stephanie Jones is the Gerald S. Lesser Professor in early-childhood development at Harvard University’s Graduate School of Education. She is the primary author of the July 2021 report “Navigating SEL from the Inside Out: Looking Inside & Across 33 Leading SEL Programs, A Practical Resource for Schools and OST Providers, Revised and Expanded 2nd edition,” commissioned by the Wallace Foundation. Also see: The Ecological Approaches to Social Emotional Learning (EASEL) Laboratory, led by Dr. Stephanie Jones of the Harvard Graduate School of Education, which explores the effects of high-quality social-emotional interventions on the development and achievement of children, youth, teachers, parents, and communities.