From Education in a Pandemic: The Disparate Impacts of COVID-19 on America's Students (US Dept. of Education, Office for Civil Rights)
OBSERVATION 8 (K-12 and postsecondary): Identity-based harassment and violence have long had harmful effects on targeted students and their communities. Since the pandemic’s start, Asian American and Pacific Islander students in particular have faced increased risk of harassment, discrimination, and other harms that may be affecting their access to educational opportunities.
Conscious Discipline: Executive Functioning Skills
"The attitude that a teen offers is often a reflection of the feelings they are experiencing and not able to communicate constructively. When a teen rolls her eyes, she is really saying, “I am very frustrated,” but she doesn’t possess the maturity to express her feelings in a socially acceptable way.
Children’s challenging behavior communicates to adults that the child does not feel safe, does not feel connected, and/or needs help with a missing or emerging executive skill: attention, time management, organization, prioritization, working memory, impulse control/emotional regulation, flexibility, empathy, metacognition, goal persistence/achievement and task initiation (page)."
Bailey, Becky. Conscious Discipline. Loving Guidance, Inc., 2014.
This pdf presents a complete list of Executive Skills.
Implementing SEL at the Secondary Level
This article links SEL concepts with academics, peer mentoring, extracurricular opportunities at the secondary level.
Example: While studying the ancient history of the Silk Road, Dennise Grater's AP World History classes learned about the process that refugees and asylum seekers experience as they seek entry into the United States and other countries. The class then created signs and wrote letters to welcome present-day refugees from Afghanistan to Indiana.
Example: Emily Learman's Resiliency Podcast project, students read the novel Of Mice and Men and focused on the essential question: How do people overcome adversity? Students discussed resiliency in the novel's characters and then researched famous people who demonstrated resiliency. As a culminating activity, students created podcasts about their research and listened to their classmates' resiliency podcasts.
Example: This anchor chart addresses discussions about diversity and inclusion. Students in Jeremy Bloyd's work-based class brainstormed the ideas and then captured the key concepts in a graphic.
Regulation Techniques
Breathing
Physical Presence
Mindfulness
Calming Corner
Tactile & Sensory Centers (useful for anxiety)
When teachers are not regulated themselves, students suffer the consequences. This video clip, although it depicts elementary school teachers and students, illustrates the point.