Social-Emotional Learning What is it?
Social-Emotional Learning What is it?
“Emotional Intelligence: Why It Can Matter More Than IQ” by Daniel Goleman was published in 1995. I left the classroom in 1998 to raise a family and had not heard of this book or this terminology, but I knew my students needed something that I didn’t have in my academic “toolbox.” I remember saying that I taught Language Arts through lessons in life. I taught middle school. My students were in the throes of up and down emotional upheaval every single day, or so it seemed. Prepositional phrases really had no interest to them. In order to help them become great writers, I had to figure out what spoke to them. It did not always work. I tried. I was quite clever with many of the tactics I used. I was reaching for something that I did not know existed and I did not know there was a book to read that could help me.
Fast forward 20 years. I have since learned a lot about Emotional Intelligence. This is now a very “hot” topic. The nuts and bolts of it follows:
Social-emotional learning, SEL, is a method of fostering empathy, self-awareness and control and interpersonal skills.
As an isolated skill to be taught to children, it is now being emphasized and taught to children in schools.
Parents often “stumble” upon it and teach their children naturally, without either knowing or trying.
This is what I had done in 1995. Emotional intelligence or emotional quotient is the measurement of these skills.
Many people and resources use the three terms interchangeably and in the end, they all are relevant to the same important areas.
SEL is typical divided into 5 areas:
Self awareness:
- The ability to identify your own emotions
- Recognize and acknowledge one’s strengths and weaknesses
- Evaluate prejudices and biases
- Understand the connection between feelings, values and thoughts
- Develop interests
Self management:
- The ability to regulate one’s emotions, thoughts and behaviors
- Gain confidence in your abilities
- Manage stress
- Self motivate
- Control impulses
Social awareness:
- To take the perspective of and express understanding with others
- Demonstrated empathy and compassion
- Understand social and ethical norms or behaviors
- Express gratitude
- Identifying diverse social norms, including unequal or unjust ones
- A desire to contribute to the well being of your community (friends, family, neighborhood, school)
Relationship Skills:
- The ability to maintain healthy and rewarding relationships with diverse individuals and groups
- Practicing teamwork and collaborative problem solving skills
- Resist in appropriate social pressure
- Effective communication
- Ability to seek out or give help when needed
Responsible Decision Making:
- These skills are consistent and follow a procedure to produce a result
- Identify the problem
- Analyze the situation
- Solve the problem
- Consider ethical responsibility
- Evaluate and reflect
As I wrote this article I evaluated each of the areas of social emotional learning and our society.
I find us as a whole not doing well in this area .
I would be interested to know which of the five you think you are best at and which of the five you think we, as a society are best at?
I think we are most capable of doing #5: Responsible Decision Making, which gives me some hope.
Not because we are especially evolved, but because it has a specific formula it asks us to follow.
We can follow “rules” or procedures if we want to – have you ever been to an airport?
The TSA line is incredibly efficient, everyone knows exactly what to do and does it very quickly.
I do believe the decisions would vary even if the “problem” identified were the same.
I am heartened to also believe, that if we all went through this recipe for decision making we would possibly put less anger and prejudice into our decisions and more consideration and thought into the problem.
I especially like the “evaluate and reflect” part.
I do not know how many of us actually identify a problem, analyze it and solve it and then consider the ethical ramifications and evaluate our decision and reflect on it. It is much easier to drop the gavel and decide.
“I’m sure if they just bothered to sit down and talk it through, it would be a different story.”
~Grandma, Paranorman