This is Part 2 of a series on my personal SEL toolkit in the classroom. Check out Part 1 for an overview on the controversy on SEL, it's effectiveness and need in the classroom, and my tools for getting students to "know themselves."

Toward Emotional Intelligence

In our post-COVID educational world, behavior problems as a whole have been on the rise. It is not uncommon for schools to see an outburst of fighting between students. Your school may be the same. It is absolutely disheartening to see. What is scary on top of this is that in some schools, this behavior is becoming so common that students as a whole are becoming more desensitized to these acts of violence. As we progress into this proverbial brave new world while our students are continuing to cope with the consequences of COVID-19, we as educators can support this growth by helping students become more socially and emotionally intelligent. Research here is seemingly sparse, but there is an indication that SEL is our best bet to reduce school extreme behavioral issues in the classroom. Though it may be controversial from an outsider's perspective, below I will give you my tools to achieve CASEL's four other domains in a meaningful, authentic, and safe way that can be easily setup in your classroom.

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2. Building Relationships

How exactly do we relate to others in a responsible and constructive way? Building a true community in the classroom is one of the most difficult things for teachers to cultivate, but once established can have significant benefits to student learning through collaboration.

Community Circle (5 to ∞ Minutes)

One of the best parts of the job is talking and getting to know students, and though a little contrived, community circles can be an incredibly fun way to build a relationship with a student as well as amongst students. Here, the class is brought together to answer a meaningful question as a group in order to generate conversation. Asking a simple question like "What is your favorite food?" can quickly light a flame in students to discuss and share, and find commonalities between their rich identities and cultures.

For my classroom, I always establish norms every time we have an in-class discussion like this:

• Be Kind
• Be Respectful
• Listen
• Have an Open Mind!

Even for my students who are learning another language, community circles can be a fabulous way for students to practice English in more of an authentic and conversational way. In some of my classes, we have even implemented a "talking stick" to solid success for classes that needed that tend to talk over each other out of excitement. As an accommodation for students that experience greater social anxiety, I always give the option to opt out of the whole class discussion, but will always follow up with the student during or after the rest of the lesson.

In terms of implementation, community circles can be easily integrated in the class, and even serves well as a "Plan B" for new teachers still adjusting to creating whole-class lessons. With a simple whip around the classroom with one-word answer and no follow-up questions (which would be very difficult for me), this activity can take as little as 5 minutes. In the nightmare scenario where the internet cuts out and you completely online lesson goes down the drain, a series of community circle questions can be a fun, low-prep, and incredibly meaningful way to make the most out of a bad situation.

A simple Google search for "Community Circle questions" will yield a ton of results, but this website in particular has solid questions.

3. Self Responsibility

How can we get students to grow and reflect to become the best version of themselves possible? Through Self Responsibility, students will be able to continuously build themselves even beyond the walls of the schoolhouse.

SMART Goals (15 to 30 minutes)

I try to do this nearly every year for my students. For me, I usually attempt to plan for an entire class period in order to explain what a SMART goal is, writing them, revising them, and even sharing them/displaying them to keep as a consistent reminder.

SMART actually stands for something that can help shed light on how students write them. SMART goals are:

• Specific
• Measurable
• Achievable
• Realistic
• Time-bound

To help break this down for students, I usually supply students with a graphic organizer to put down their thoughts similar to this.

Now, it is not simply enough to do the activity, but you must actually do something with the product. I know some teachers who have these goals chronically displayed in their class, and will revisit them throughout the quarter/semester. For me, I will usually have students simply submit them online, and once each quarter ends we will have an opportunity to reflect on and revise their goals. Though it takes a hefty amount of time to dedicate to, students will be able to begin monitoring their abilities and continue their growth.

4. Collective Responsibility

How can we best instill a deep understanding of how our actions change and grow the world around us? Particularly as students transitioned back to in-person learning last year, the responsibly we have to ourselves and our peers as learners is immense. The choices we make ultimately determine our success and our impact on the world around us.

Classroom Contract (~45 minutes)

I absolutely love creating a classroom contract. I think it is a fabulous way to get students actively engaged in how they want our classroom to run. Though there are many ways to facilitate classroom contracts, the hear of the activity stems from students collaborating to create rules for the classroom environment.

To create materials for this activity, I looked through and modified the procedures laid out in the Facing History lesson on Contracting. I actually made a Nearpod that takes students through different sentence prompt that students will complete such as:

• When we have an idea or question we would like to share, we can...
• When we have an idea but do not feel comfortable sharing it out loud, we can...
• When someone says something that we like, we can...
• When someone says something that might be confusing or offensive, we can...
• To make sure all students have the opportunity to participate in a class discussion, we can...
• If we read or watch something that makes us feel sad or angry, we can...
• To show respect for the ideas of others, we can...

Students complete these prompts on a collaboration board (I make all of mine anonymous in order to lower the social stakes), and we will created rules based on the common responses that we see. With Nearpod, I was even had students sign their names to the "contract" if they agree with it, and printed out different copies for each period I have.

Likely the most difficult thing regarding the classroom contract is actually remembering the specific rules that are implemented. For one of my classes, students said that if they hear something they like, they will clap. We did this for the first few weeks, and one Tuesday morning after a 4 day weekend, I forgot about this rule all together. It was absolutely phenomenal to see students actually begin applauding an idea they liked without me. Stunned, this moment really got me contemplating how little buy-in there would be if I had not consistently followed up with our laws in the beginning weeks of class.

5. Social Consciousness

How can we build lessons that help students see the world beyond their own identity? This is where the vast majority of the controversy for SEL stems from. Though some vocal stakeholders may believe that this tool is pushing a leftist or social justice narrative, all this tool effectively does usher in empathy and recognizing other points of view. This is absolutely essential skills when building strong leaders for the future work force.

Underrepresented Voices (Ongoing)

This is not as much of a clear cut activity as much as it is an ongoing practice to bring diverse voices into your own field/subject. This practice is vital to expanding students world view in order to promote a sense of empathy and compassion for other human beings.

This can be such a fresh and exciting opportunity for teachers to learn about and showcase divergent and relevant concepts to students who may feel disconnected from the classroom material. Investigating underrepresented voices can elevate and given new connections to students and their own identities in the classroom. The more they see themselves in the curricula, students will likely be more engaged and gain a more profound understanding of the content at hand.

Social studies and Language Arts classes have been entrenched with these ideas for some time, but implementing diverse voices within STEM can prove to be much more difficult. This topic alone is deserving of a post in and of itself, but two quick ideas for implementation in Math and Science respectively could be:

• How math can be a tool for inequity when used by the police to solve crime.
• The dangers of pseudoscience to fuel racism.

Now, it is best if the curriculum is built with these ideas in mind, but as I am sure you are well aware, this is not the case everywhere. There can be substantial value by initiating discussion on how to implement this within your curriculum, and more intentionally dedicating time to it within the greater classroom/school curriculum. You may need to start small and "pilot" individual lessons, but the positive benefits mentioned above should be more than enough motivation for more widespread implementation.

It is clear that out of all of these elements within this toolbox, Social Consciousness is likely the sole domain which takes the brunt of the criticism from the greater American public. In the same way that CRT is criticized for showing alternative narratives to American history and race, this SEL tool can quite easily fit the same parameters. Perhaps in some school districts there will be a necessity to ensure how this is implemented in classes, but ultimately I find that perspective-taking and demonstrating empathy are two soft skills that are vital to our modern age that I believe most all communities can get behind.

The next time that you meet with your PLC's (if you school environment allows) consider inquiring about different ways to work in underrepresented voices within the classroom.

Overcoming Fear and Apprehension

Perhaps the single largest obstacle to overcome as educational leaders across the country begin to implement some form of SEL is teacher and community pushback. From the teacher perspective, the most common hurdle new and veteran teachers will come across is: How in the world can I possibly make time to accomplish another task in my small 45 minute period? As you likely have already surmised, the best part of SEL is that it simply and effectively mirrors many of the practices that you are already implementing in the classroom. We are simply putting a new name to a familiar face. Many teachers have likely already brought in underrepresented voices into the classroom, have created lessons around goal-building, and have mini-community circles with students as they come back from a long holiday weekend. There is nothing new or surprising here. Now, for teachers who have not quite implemented mindfulness, enforced collective responsibility, or practices reflective writing, it is important to note that some of these practices only take minutes to implement, and are modular in that they are designed to fit into your classroom at any point in time. In all, demonstrating the need for these types of practices on a large-scale, as well as presenting the immediate benefits of these activities on a small-scale can certainly help spell out the why and the how to SEL.

As for the community writ large, the answers are less clear. With clear communication and a well established vision as a leader, the community can learn a great deal about the intentions of its local educational institutions. By providing clear, concise, and non-partisan information (though difficult to come across), many schools may be able to reach a consensus with the local community regarding what degree of SEL implementation they are ready for. As you have likely seen throughout this series, many of these activities clearly illustrate good teaching. Building relationships in particular is a cornerstone of effective pedagogy in the modern age, and frankly should be inoffensive to any concerned stakeholder. I want to be clear, the concern over SEL is certainly nothing new from a historical standpoint, and public oversight of their educational institutions, I believe, should be held to a high degree of scrutiny and transparency. But these tools are just that: tools that we can use to help us obtain the best educational outcomes for the future of the world.

I hope you enjoyed this two-part series and I hope you got something tangible out of it to implement in your classroom soon.

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