Social Emotional Learning IN ART

Empower Students to Take Charge.

• Prepare students ahead of time for what is coming next.
  Before students leave the art room, explain what they will be doing next class. Students will come to class with a knowledge base of the expectations. Instead of starting from scratch, they will only need simple reminders to get learning and working.

• Label locations throughout the room.
  Labels help students take ownership when obtaining supplies and cleaning up. It also teaches students to care about their peers who will be using these materials next. Consider using images and writing the labels in multiple languages. This will make the labels accessible for English Language Learners and younger students.

• Pre-identify student jobs.
  Having pre-determined and pre-assigned tasks prompts students to consider their role in the classroom. It also pushes students to consider how their actions impact others. Sweeping up paper scraps or passing out materials can promote conversations about social awareness and relationships.

Model Apologies

Recognize Student Experiences

Check in Periodically

Circulate the room.
Don’t wait for students to come to you. Stop by and check in while they are working. Ask them questions about their experience, their needs, and their self-management. This will help them process any challenges that show up. A lot of learning happens during the spontaneous conversations that take place during studio time.

Use empathetic sentence starters

Empathetic sentence starters help keep your one-on-one conversations with students focused on them. You should aim for your students and their experiences to be the focus, not you and your response. Print and reference these starters to encourage empathetic and clear communication.

Clarify your understanding

Once students start talking more freely, make sure you’re truly hearing what they tell you. Instead of saying, “You’re angry because your friends left you out,” reflect back what you think you’re hearing. That provides students the opportunity to correct you if you’re not quite understanding what they want you to know.

A word of caution: Don’t simply repeat a student’s own words. It can sound to them as though you’re only hearing the words and not trying to glean meaning. Instead, paraphrase your understanding using one of these phrases:

• Let me see if I have this right….

• I want to make sure I understand what you’re telling me. What I’m hearing is….

• What I hear you saying is…. Is that right?

Show you’re listening and paying attention to other cues

Conveying a message can be difficult for some students, particularly in emotional or stressful situations. For instance, students who find social interactions challenging may also have a hard time expressing their emotions out loud (even if their body language shows it). Other students may not have the emotional vocabulary to describe their feelings.

You can model how to express and name emotions. As you do so, you’ll also show students that you’re paying attention to both what their words and their body language are saying. The following sentence starters can facilitate that process:

• It sounds to me like this might feel….

• I can sense that you are feeling [emotion]….

• I can hear how [emotion] you are feeling.

• Your face is telling me that….

• I can hear in your voice that….

Affirming students’ feelings

Feelings aren’t right or wrong. You may think a certain reaction isn’t appropriate to a situation, but that reaction is a result of how the student feels. Acknowledge the vulnerability it takes for students to share those feelings with you.

Affirm that it’s OK to feel as they do. Even if you feel a student’s reaction isn’t entirely appropriate, you can affirm their feelings by saying things like:

• Thank you for sharing this with me.

• I understand you feel that way.

• That sounds like an [adjective] experience.

• I hear you.

• I’m not sure what to say right now, but I’m here to listen.

Empathetic phrases like these can encourage in-depth conversations — or can help to quickly check in with a student so you can carry on with class. Plus, when you use these phrases, you’ll model for students how they can have empathetic conversations with their peers.