Social-Emotional Learning: Stop Adding, Start Integrating

SEL doesn’t need to be one more thing to add — it can enrich all that you’re already doing.

KELSEY HAMMOND
Lead Professional Development Coach
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If you’re a teacher, parent, administrator — or anyone who works with children in any capacity at all — you’ve likely heard about social-emotional learning. 

The Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning (CASEL) defines social-emotional learning, or “SEL,” as “the process through which all young people and adults acquire and apply the knowledge, skills, and attitudes to develop healthy identities, manage emotions and achieve personal and collective goals, feel and show empathy for others, establish and maintain supportive relationships, and make responsible and caring decisions” (“Fundamentals of SEL,” 2023). 

Reading the definition of CASEL, I am struck by just how delightful it sounds. Imagine a world full of young people (and adults) who can learn and demonstrate new knowledge, regulate their emotions, achieve their goals, and show care for others. Wouldn’t that be a wonderful world? I can almost hear the productive dialogue, see the best friends hugging one another after a particularly awful disagreement, and touch the letters on the page of a student’s list of dreams for their future — are we doing anything important today?

I forgot my computer! 
Sam pushed me and he – 
Can I have extra credit….even though I didn’t do the last five assignments? 
What were the directions? I wasn’t listening. 

As a teacher, I often felt like I was oscillating between these extremes: my hopes for bettering the world, uplifting and liberating the voices of tomorrow, remembering my “why,” repeating the directions for the fifth time in a row, begging students to stop touching one another, frustratedly handing out computer chargers and searching for usable outlets. 

Too often, I’ve seen social-emotional learning presented as the catch-all solution for every problem that teachers are facing in the classroom today. Social-emotional learning can feel like one more thing to add to teachers overly long to-do lists. 

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Integrating reflection skills

Teachers know better than anyone that young people need help: to learn, to manage, to care. But, they also know firsthand the weight of hundreds of expectations. 

So, if you’re a teacher who wants to embrace social-emotional learning, but you are also feeling overwhelmed at the prospect of adding one more thing, our social-emotional learning resource is for you. This resource includes 41 prompts that can be used for your own reflection or with your students as they reflect and build their social-emotional skills. 

​The prompts included here are organized into five themes, drawn from the core social-emotional competencies identified by CASEL. The themes and their explanations are as follows:

• Decision-Making: Making choices by reflecting on how they will impact you and those around you; thinking about the realistic outcome of actions when making choices.
• Empathy (Social Awareness): Imagining perspectives outside of your own; recognizing the support and resources that exist in your community (family, school, neighborhood, etc.).
• Relationship Skills: Building and maintaining supportive and fulfilling relationships; being reflective of your relationships.
• Self-Awareness: Noticing your emotions and thoughts and what causes them to change; identifying how your emotions and thoughts affect how you act.
• Self-Care: Taking time to reflect on how you are feeling and taking actions to improve or support your overall well-being. 

These prompts don’t need to be added, but they can be integrated into the practices that you already have in your classroom: in writing, in discussion, in reflection.

Here are some places you might integrate the prompts into what you are already doing: 

• “Do-now” questions: If your students already begin class with some kind of writing or discussion, consider offering them an SEL question as a “do-now” activity when they first enter the classroom.
• Quiet time after students turn in an assessment: When my students passed in assessments, I encouraged them to read quietly or do work for other classes while they waited for others to finish. That quiet time, which already exists, is an ideal moment to invite students to quietly reflect using some SEL questions.
• Conflicts: Do you ever have students get into a disagreement with you or with peers? Depending on your school-wide expectations, it could be that you are already expected to resolve moments of conflict with students. SEL prompts can be great ways for students to reflect and to work toward conflict resolution.

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​I said it before and I’ll say it again: teachers know better than anyone that young people need help: to learn, to manage, to care. But, they also know firsthand the weight of hundreds of expectations. 

SEL doesn’t need to be one more thing to add. It can enrich all that you’re already doing, and you’re doing so much. 

Thank you to every teacher, past and present — I am because of you. 
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FOSTERING STUDENT EMPATHY

CLASSROOM CONNECTIONS

BUILDING CLASSROOM COMMUNITY