The Modern State of SEL in the Classroom

Over the last decade, there has been a significant rise in popularity of social-emotional learning (SEL) within schools across the country. Especially in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic, which resulted in remote learning programs on a large scale, SEL has become a major talking point for educators when addressing concerns regarding students mental health after a long period of isolation. As of April 2021, there are nine states that require SEL in their K-12 programs, but all fifty states have legislation passed to require SEL in Pre-K programming.

Now this is not to say that SEL does not have its critics. It has become clear in this time that utilizing these social-emotional strategies can be incredibly controversial. The conversations and ideas inherently held within SEL activities, topics and resources regarding sensitive topics are bound to come about. With race being such a radical societal variable that influences the social and emotional lives of all students, SEL has been implemented to promote "Social-Awareness" (a major aspect of CASEL's SEL framework) which is predicated upon having students actively practice "Taking others’ perspectives" or "Showing concern for the feelings of others". This has actively been co-opted to imply that students are being taught to hate their identity. NPR has an illuminating article on this recent history. Obviously proper PR and communication of the actual goals of SEL is vital to its sustainability. In a time period where students are still reaping the consequences of a world-wide pandemic, regardless of the powerful influence their identity can have on their emotions, I firmly believe that there are many tangible benefits when implementing SEL into the modern classroom. As is customary in this field, politics muddies the waters of an otherwise impactful, research-backed concept. This conversation cannot simply happen in a bubble, removed from a political context, so I understand if you take these ideas with a grain of salt.

Does SEL Actually Work?

Social and emotional conditions affect learning a great deal within the greater school environment. There are obviously distinct social and emotional factors that lead specifically to bullying perpetration, and this can be attacked head-on when utilizing SEL in the school environment. This stems from the modern work of Dr. Dorothy Espelage, Professor of Education at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill. What is ideal about this intervention, Espelage finds, is that SEL is not specifically targeted and all students can ultimately benefit from it. Not only does SEL help the overall environment with bullying by lowering sexual harassment, homophobic, and aggressive behavior, but it also helps all students in the long-term by positively impacting academics by lowering bullying behavior.

Dr. Espelage's ideas on the need for "high fidelity" social-emotional learning in the school environment rings true anecdotally as well. Within my experience teaching high school, there was a significant push back from some teachers when attempting to performing SEL activities within our classes. Educational leaders need to be concerned with the fidelity of which these programs are put into effect in order to see the most realistic long-term results. Many educational leaders are apprehensive to make large changes in the first place, and even then they are made, they can be quickly rolled back after significant pushback or due to short term results. These type of "fad policies" as I call it, only serve to hop on a band-wagon of a trendy policy rather than actually make significant change for the better in the school context.

Beyond bullying, Special Education is perhaps the single department within a school environment that may gain the most benefit from these practices. Looking into this, Merrell et al. (2008), investigated this exact topic. The study utilized age appropriate programming for students whose grades range from 7th-12th grade who were classified to have an “emotional disturbance” for 1 hour weekly sessions across 12 weeks. By the end of the SEL programming, the students actively improved their behavior, getting closer to their goals within the Special Education program. This is vital when looking at the benefits of SEL beyond an intervention for bullying, but as an overarching program to support students that struggle with emotional control and mental health.

Of course, this research has been garnering much more political scrutiny, so I am interested to see the conclusions of future research.

With all of this being said, these methods will only truly work when done with consistency and fidelity. Doing a simple "mood meter" as described later on, once at the beginning of the semester and calling it effective SEL, is simply not enough. Can educators get away with doing one 10 minute activity, and think their students have successfully learned a concept? If only teaching were that simple. No, we must consistently reinforce learning with high quality activities, which align with the teachers own philosophy and personality in their own authentic way. Without this fidelity, students will see right through the thin veneer of this inauthentic implementation, and valuable classroom time is ultimately wasted.

My Toolkit

When looking inside my own SEL toolkit, I have attempted to assemble a realistic activities that I implement in the classroom that are modular, and can fit in to nearly any lesson. I have also provided ranging timeframes for how long these activities take to complete within the classroom. One of the largest factors that I hear that impact my colleague's ability to implement SEL is time. Within the 45 minute class period, it can be daunting to enact yet another activity into the period, especially when you have bell-to-bell lessons already prepared from previous years. So hopefully this post helps eliminate some of this apprehension.
I have listed these using the CASEL 5 Competencies, given that this framework is regularly used in professional development trainings across the country, and should be relatively familiar to most educators. I re-named some of these competencies to more effectively communicate how I use them within my classroom. This week, I will discuss one of these competencies and some activities I use implement this concept with fidelity.

1. Knowing Yourself

Know who you are, and how to calm and build yourself in a hectic world. Self-regulation is an indispensable skill that will set any student up for success in any future they choose.

Mood Meter (1 to 5 Minutes)

This is one of the easiest strategies to implement that I always direct alarmed colleagues to when told that of our school expectation of SEL. The Mood Meter is just a simple chart divided into 4 quadrants (Green/Pleasant-Low Energy, Blue/Unpleasant-Low Energy, Red/Unpleasant-High Energy, Yellow/Pleasant-High Energy), where students describe what category they fall into, and what sub-emotion they are feeling on a greater spectrum. This can provide teachers with vital intel on what interventions/care that students may need most on a given day, and help students most effectively describe and articulate their emotions in a healthy and constrictive manner.

In the height of COVID and remote learning, we had students take one minute to fill out a survey, mapping out where they fall on the mood meter and are given an opportunity to describe what they are feeling in their own words. This proved incredibly helpful to view this information in a simple Google Sheet, in a time where we did not see our students face-to-face.

Luckily for our teachers, my school actually prints, laminates, and places these inside of every classroom. Here, teachers can have students point to/say where they fall on the mood meter to gauge student moods. This can be done any time of class, but probably best fits as a beginning Check-In. Teacher's have the opportunity to understand how students feel on an individual basis, and can be followed-up with in a meaningful way. By doing this regularly, students can build the important skill of pinpointing their emotions, describing how they feel, acknowledging it, and using this information to guide their actions. There is a language-learning theory from Richard Schmidt called Noticing Hypothesis. To put it simply, it says that students cannot learn without first noticing the features of what they are learning. By learning to notice their emotions, students can learn who they are and how they work as human beings.

Mindfulness (1 to 10 Minutes)

Particularly for regulating emotion, mindfulness activities can build a scaffold for students to self-reflect and calm themselves when anxiety inevitably strikes. To accomplish this, I typically use the Headspace YouTube channel. Headspace (known for their app of the same name) has hundreds of free videos on YouTube ranging from 1 minute mini-meditations in English and Spanish (as well as German, French, and Portuguese), to much lengthier 10 minute or even hour long meditation sessions for more advanced groups. I typically start small and work my way forward as time goes on to ease students into practicing breathing and mindfulness techniques. The beauty of headspace it that these videos are free, quick, professionally guided, and even feature faces from familiar franchises, including Sesame Street and even Star Wars.

For those of your more inclined to creating your own activities, Headspace provides meaningful resources for educators including posters and classroom guides. My school also uses the tool Calm Classroom for pre-recorded activities. This site also provides written scripts for teachers to read out to the class.

If you're as much of a fan of Nearpod as I am, they recently implemented the feature "Brain Breaks" which can be brought into any Nearpod lesson completely on-the-fly with the push of the "Brain Break" button. It is becoming easier now than ever to incorporate mindfulness into your classroom, and the results of which could help students exponentially .

These activities can be incredibly impactful in my experience, directly before a high stakes exam, but more frequent practice should be implemented in order to make mindfulness an instinct for students in a stressful situation.

I will leave it here for this week! Consider subscribing to keep up-to-date with next week's continuation!