Social Emotional Learning and Community Building in a New Normal

On the suggested schedules it lists Social Emotional Learning for the first 15 minutes.

What does Social Emotional Learning look like for students? It is a time in the day taken to check in with students and allow them to express how they are feeling in order to recognize any stress or anxiety they may have and to support a healthy and safe social-emotional environment. This may look like a temperature gauge, or “how do you feel today” questions. Visuals are helpful to exteriorize emotions in order to recognize, process, redirect and continue on with the school work at hand.

The goal is to help students transition to academics with ease in order for them to be successful. This activity of “checking in” is the foundation of community building. Human beings learn and interact with those they trust and we must build that trust through getting to know each other and how we are doing or feeling. As we begin to transition to in person and our city and state begin to open, new anxieties can manifest, so how do we ease this stress and anxiety?

Checking in with our own emotions is important. We need to recognize how we feel and take deep breaths, focus our attention with tasks at hand, and prioritize goals for the day and the week. Children need guidance on how to do this and understand what they might be feeling and help define it, diminish intensity or de-escalate and redirect thoughts and behavior in order to be mindful of the larger group and academic expectations. The idea is for children to learn to recognize their feelings, manage their thoughts and create habits of mind that are healthy for their overall well-being. From this starting point, a sense of community begins to build with a new group of individuals and create safe spaces to learn, ask questions, grow and ultimately thrive socially, emotionally and academically. Creating a sense of community provides a place to ask deeper cognitive queries and feel comfortable to think outside the box and build divergent thinking. Student imagination, ideas, voice must be amplified in order for them to succeed in and out of a school setting. A safe social- emotional setting gives way to trial and error without judgement and builds resilience over time. Now more than ever Community Building is necessary at the micro and macro level of our society in order to turn to each other for growth, clarity, guidance and encouragement.

Just for fun click on the sun...