My Deep Learning Journey - Lifelong Learning

As an educator, I am first and foremost a learner. Modelling the learning process for our students by being lifelong learners can help us evolve as teachers to meet the ever-changing needs of our students. Each day, I reflect on my practice, noticing strengths and areas for improvement. Then, I strive to set learning goals to become a better educator. I believe strongly that professional learning is not confined to a few days a year; rather it must be a daily part of one's practice. In my new role this year as Student Success Teacher, I realized that I needed to grow my understanding of Social-Emotional Learning and, more specifically, how to help students deal with emotions during these unprecedented times.

During the Global Deep Learning Lab conference by NPDL in the Fall, Mark Sparvell shared information about the Yale course "Managing Emotions in Times of Uncertainty or Stress". It sounded like a topic that fit well with my professional learning goals , so I signed up immediately. Through the last several weeks, I've had the opportunity to reflect on how we can become effective "emotion scientists" and help both ourselves and our students manage these uncertain times.

I had several key takeaways during this course. Learning results in a change of knowledge, beliefs, behaviors or attitude and my learnings from this course will undoubtedly improve how I am able to meet the needs of my students. Some of these key learnings included:

1) using a mood meter to help build students' emotional vocabulary

2) how to approach student emotions in scientific and culturally responsive ways

3) the importance of being an emotion scientist and helping students identify and label emotions

4) how ethnocentrism and the fundamental attribution error contribute to emotion biases and the mislabeling of emotions

5) Develop a five step process to co-regulate emotions with students and help them through times of emotional disregulation (so helpful that I made this graphic organizer to have at the ready for a quick reminder)!

So often we talk about the importance or the 'why' of social-emotional learning; but we often neglect to share the 'how' and show how educators can develop plans to address disregulated students. It was a pleasure to complete this Yale online course and put into practice my key learnings. Next up on my learning journey, I plan to complete my Google Certified Educator Level 2, do the Indigenous Canada course from University of Alberta, do a deep dive into the Universal Design for Learning guidelines from CAST and read the book The Five Paths of Student Engagement!