Social-Emotional Learning (SEL)
What is Social-Emotional Learning?
Social-emotional learning, or SEL, is the process in which people develop and apply the attitudes and skills needed to learn, live, work, and be awesome people. The Collaborative for Academic, Social,and Emotional Learning (CASEL) has created the graphic to the left, which identifies five core competencies that play important roles in our lives:
Self-Awareness
Self-Management
Social-Awareness
Relationship Skills
Responsible Decision-Making
For information on SEL and how you can support your child's SEL development at home, please look below for some videos and other resources.
The Five SEL Competencies
Self-Awareness
Self-awareness includes the following:
Understanding your identity and values
Identifying how you feel and why you feel that way
Understanding how our thoughts and feelings are connected
Identifying your strengths and areas for growth
Developing your self-confidence and self-efficacy
Grownups can help children develop self-awareness with the following activities:
Help your child explore their identity and values by learning about their family, culture, and identifying things they love and care about.
Encourage your child to use I-Messages to express their feelings ("I feel...when...because....").
Encourage journaling for self-reflection of feelings and experiences.
Help your child set and monitor goals.
Encourage a growth mindset and helpful self-talk.
Self-Management
Self-management includes the following:
The ability to regulate thoughts, feelings, and actions across settings and situations
Impulse control
Emotion management
Self-motivation
Working toward goals
Grownups can help children develop self-management with the following activities:
Talk with your child about their academic and personal goals. For resources on goal setting with kids, head over to the growth mindset page of this website.
Help your child identify how emotions feel in their body.
Practice coping skills with your child to help their toolbox of strategies grow.
Encourage your child to stop, breathe, and think before acting.
For younger kids, this article from Sesame Street in Communities may be of use. There is even a Sesame Street app called Breathe, Think, Do where kids can practice breathing as they "pop" bubbles and brainstorm solutions to a problem.
For older kids, I like to ask kids to remember STAR: Stop, Think, Act, Review
STOP: Pause and take deep breaths
THINK: What are some positive ways to handle the problem?
ACT: Choose the best choice and try it.
REVIEW: How did it go?
Social-Awareness
Social-awareness includes the following:
The ability to think about and identify how others may be feeling (empathy)
Acting upon feelings of empathy and compassion, treating others with kindness and respect
The ability to look at a situation from someone else's point of view
Here are some things grownups can do to help children develop social-awareness:
Encourage your child to think about how others are feeling by looking at clues. What facial expression do they have? What does their body language show? Tone of voice?
Encourage your child to imagine how others are feeling. Ask them how they might feel if they were in that situation. You can practice together this when you read books or watch a movie.
Practice perspective-taking when the opportunity arrises. For example, if siblings disagree, encourage them to try to see each other's point of view.
Expose your child to books about characters from various backgrounds. Books should be not only a mirror for children (seeing themselves in the characters), but a window as well (learning about and developing empathy, caring, and understanding for characters who differ from themselves).
With your child, brainstorm ways you can show kindness with family, friends, and in the community. Think about things that would help others or brighten their day.
Relationship Skills
Relationship skills include the following:
Ability to create and maintain healthy relationships
Communicating clearly
Active listening
Asking for help when needed
Handling conflict in a peaceful way
Avoiding peer pressure
Here are some things that grownups can do to help children develop their relationship skills:
Talk with your child about the character traits of a good friend (kind, patient, good listener, fun, etc).
Encourage your child to spend time with their friends.
Remind your child to practice Kelso's Choices when they have a small problem with a peer. Check out my conflict resolution page for more information!
Review what it means to be a whole body listener. We listen not only with our ears, but our whole bodies! Our eyes look at the speaker, we turn our bodies toward them, our brain thinks about what they are saying, and our hearts care.
Responsible Decision-Making
Responsible-decision making includes:
Thinking about the pros and cons of choices
Thinking about how choices can help or harm yourself and others
Choosing the best possible choice
Grownups can help children develop responsible decision-making skills by doing the following:
Help your child reflect on a choice they made. Talk about what happened, why they made the choice they did, and about how it made them and others feel. If needed, talk about what your child can learn from this experience and what they will do differently if a similar situation arises.
When reading books or watching a TV show or movie with your child, pause now and then to reflect and brainstorm what a character may do to solve a problem. What would be the pros and cons of each choice?
Just like with self-management, encourage your child to stop, breathe, and think before acting. This helps kids pause and think through their options and choose the best choice.
For younger kids, this article from Sesame Street in Communities and the app Breathe, Think, Do may be of use.
Older kids may like to remember the acroynm STAR: Stop, Think, Act, Review
STOP: Pause and take deep breaths
THINK: What are some positive ways to handle the problem?
ACT: Choose the best choice and try it.
REVIEW: How did it go?