Social Emotional Learning & Well-being

Outside of explicit SEL programs and curricula, there are specific routines and strategies designed to promote SEL skills that can be integrated into a classroom's general operations and ethos. Although some of the strategies can be integrated into instructional practice, the aim is to foster SEL skills so that students might be better prepared to learn, rather than instructional routines or practices designed to learn academic or cognitive skills while practicing SEL skills. These routines can be applied in various classroom contexts and might include classroom meetings, and norms for engaging in conversation or talking circles. Routines and strategies can be systematically integrated into an instructional practice to consistently provide students with opportunities to practice and apply their SEL skills.

Educators can also embed SEL skills and competencies within academic content. For example, in a novel study or read-aloud, students might build perspective-taking and emotional literacy skills by considering the emotions of different characters and by noticing what the author inferred about how a character was feeling (through gestures, body language, tone of voice, etc.). Other times, educators might apply instructional techniques like cooperative learning, where students work together toward a shared goal (positive interdependence), thus taking up and applying social and emotional skills. Students must work collaboratively, and monitor their progress toward meeting their goals (Johnson & Johnson. 2004; Zins et al., 2004). When SEL is practiced, students have opportunities to use their voice to contribute, listen to others in their community and foster meaningful relationships with peers.

There are many pathways to include SEL in your practice; one of the simplest is establishing routines and practices that can be integrated throughout the day as a way to provide opportunities to naturally apply and develop social and emotional skills. You might consider this the “low-hanging fruit” of SEL-promoting practices—that is, ideas that are quick and fairly easy to introduce tomorrow but have a positive impact on SEL skill development and fostering a caring learning environment. CASEL (see CASEL.orgLinks to an external site.) and Oakland School District partnered to create Three Signature Practices for weaving SEL into any learning sequence/day and across any discipline.

Welcoming Inclusion Activity:

At the beginning of a day, class or learning experience, we can use routines or rituals to welcome each person into the learning space. The goal of the welcoming inclusion activity is to ensure that each person in the community feels seen, heard, welcomed and valued. The activities help to transition students into the next activity.
Examples:

• Simply welcoming each student, by their preferred name, as they enter the classroom.
  Morning meeting/circles
• Name & Motion: In your morning meeting/circle, invite students to share their names and to do a motion that represents something they like to do. For example, "I'm Jane and I like ballet (twirls like a ballerina)" or "I'm Alex and I like playing video games (mimes playing games)."
  Modifications can include just saying the activity. Some debriefing that can come from this is:
  "Why it is important to know each other’s names?”
  “What's something you had in common with someone?”
  “What is something several people in the group had in common?”
• Check-in using an emotion check-in SEL tool (for example, Mood Meter, 5-finger scale, temperature)

Engaging Strategies:

Throughout the learning portion of the lesson, engaging strategies help to support students’ focus and motivation to stay present in the learning. These strategies enrich learning through experiential, active and collaborative activities.
Examples:

• Think-ink-pair-share (students take time to think about a posed question, write about it, then discuss their response with a partner, then share their ideas in a larger group discussion)
• Brain breaks: A calming activity to promote focus and readiness to learn (see https://www.gonoodle.comLinks to an external site. for examples), and
• Chalk talks: Learners respond to ideas or questions silently, in writing, both to the prompt and to others' ideas (see: http://www.pz.harvard.edu/resources/chalk-talk)

Optimistic Closure:

It’s easy to rush to the next activity or scheduled block without thoughtfully wrapping up a learning experience. Optimistic closures provide students with opportunities to reflect on their learning, noticing what is a strength and what is a stretch. It might also provide a chance to set goals for what’s next for them. Optimistic closures can be framed as a ticket-out-the-door or a share-aloud of a sentence stem starter.

Examples:

• Something I learned today…
• Something I am still wondering…

One-Word Whip Around:

• Prepare a statement or question prompt. For example, “Pick one word that sums up how you feel about your learning today."
• Allow everyone a few minutes to think of their word.
• In a circle (or from their desks), students take turns sharing their one word. Saying "pass" is OK too.
• If time permits, you can debrief about themes that emerged or create a class "Word Cloud" of the words that were shared, to return to them later.

Being mindful “is a state of being aware of your own mind, at any given moment. It means to pay attention in a particular way: on purpose, in the present moment and without judgment” (Kabat-Zinn, 1994Jon Kabat-Zinn). Mindfulness relates to two key social and emotional competencies: self-awareness and self-regulation.

When students engage in mindfulness, they build an awareness and acceptance of their internal state (e.g., their thoughts, feelings, and emotions) and the external world. Mindfulness helps children feel calm and relaxed and can help manage feelings of stress, which allows them to focus on the present moment (and not worrying about the future or perseverating on the past). Mindfulness cultivates the skill of focused attention, which is necessary for learning.

Mindfulness can be taught and can be cultivated through the regular practice of mindful activities such as breathing and engaging our senses. In our classrooms, mindfulness can be particularly helpful before or during a transition, before starting a reflection activity, or shifting the energy in a classroom when it is too heightened for the learning task at hand

Mindful Breathing

Mindful breathing is an effective way to de-escalate anxiety and help our bodies feel calm. It’s important to practice mindful breathing on a regular basis to build up a breathing practice, so we can access this strategy when we begin to feel stressed or anxious. One of the simplest breathing strategies is to simply inhale through your nose for a count of three and then count to three (or four) as you slowly exhale through your mouth.

It’s often helpful for students to have something tactile to support their breath work. Using a Hoberman’s sphere allows children to visualize what happens as we inhale and our bellies expand and exhale and have our bellies constrict. Additionally, having children use figure eight breathing or 5 finger breathing, gives them something to touch (tracing the shape of a figure 8 on their palm, tracing each digit of their finger) can also integrate breathing with sensory stimulation and movement. MindUp (2011), a Social and Emotional Learning program suggests using the following script to build a mindful breathing practice:

1) Sit up tall, eyes downturned or closed
2) Listen for the chime (if using one)
3) Inhale through your nose and out your mouth
4) Fill the lungs fully, extending the breath to your abdomen.
5) Focus your attention on your breath (this could be as little as 3 breaths!)
6) Notice thoughts, return your attention to your breath
7) Listen for the chime a second time, and follow the resonant sound as long as you can

Mindful Sensing

Sensory experiences can enhance a student’s learning experience. There are many disciplines and activities where mindful observation and listening are critical. These same mindful practices applied in academics help to build “mindful brain muscles” so that students are learning mindful strategies to help them feel focused and relaxed.

• Mindful observation: Go outside and invite students to carefully observe a natural artifact (the veins on a leaf, the colours in a stone), this can be done with a magnifying glass; create a “glitter jar'' and have students observe the glitter as it settles.
• Mindful feeling: Go outside and have students engage in a sensory walk (see Walking Curriculum for more suggestions); have students do a “texture” scavenger hunt in the school ground; during a class meeting/circle time/carpet time, have students pass around an object that they feel with their eyes closed (e.g., an orange, a twig, a cotton ball) and have them notice the sensations of the object; have students experience other sensory activities (using play dough, finger painting, measuring with dried rice/beans, using manipulatives in numeracy and literacy activities).
• Mindful listening: Go outside and have students settle into a comfortable spot to sit and invite them to notice all the sounds around them; listen to the sound of a chime; listen to music; read Ten Ways to Hear Snow, by Cathy Camper.

To reach students, we must first care for the teachers. Teachers' well-being and social and emotional competencies (SEC) are integral to the functioning of the classroom and significantly influence students' well-being and success in school (Jennings & Greenberg, 2009). Without healthy and resilient teachers, we cannot expect to successfully promote SEL in classrooms (Schonert-Reichl, 2017).

Stress is contagious. When teachers are stressed and burnt out, it infiltrates the classroom climate, leading to greater stress among students and poorer student outcomes (Jennings & Greenberg, 2009; Oberle & Schonert-Reichl, 2016).

Conversely, when teachers have strong social and emotional competencies (SECs) - such as self-awareness and self-management skills - this leads to stronger relationships with their students, better classroom management, and overall more efficacy in their teaching. (Ibid.)

More and more SEL programs are now including teacher SEL components. For example, Cultivating Awareness and Resilience in Education (CARE). is a mindfulness-based program offered in a retreat setting or a series of daily trainings, that integrates the neuroscience of emotion regulation with mindfulness practices to reduce teacher stress and promote compassionate teaching. MindUP also has a new training for educators, MindUP For Educators

Many of the routines and practices suggested for the promotion of student SEL can have benefits for teachers as well. For example, research evidence has demonstrated that participation in mindfulness-based interventions, such a Cultivating Awareness and Resilience in Education (CARE), can positively affect teachers' adaptive emotion regulation and mindfulness, and help reduce psychological stress. CARE has also been shown to improve teachers' emotional support in their classroom interactions (Jennings et al., 2017).

Finally, supportive and positive relationships throughout the entire school - between teachers, administration, and leadership - have the potential to change the culture of the school and improve teacher well-being. Jennifer Gonzales writes a beautiful piece about “Finding your Marigolds.” The idea is that the secret to teaching, especially to surviving the early years of your career, is to find like-minded teachers that are cheerleaders for you and support your growth - much like marigolds do for the rest of the flowers in the garden.

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