Social and Emotional Growth

I am someone that has dedicated my life to deeply question what is the best learning environment for humans. I question what spaces, environments, tools, energy levels, colors, exposure, noises, create a world for children to develop not just academically, but more importantly socially and emotionally. I have been excited over the last few years that it seems like a lot more people from all walks of life are joining this conversation. However, it seems like companies have also noted these talks of mental health and whole-child development. This seems to be promoting many curriculum developers to create programs to sell to schools and families. I have concerns that this is pushing more time for students to be sitting still and be quiet to listen to what it means to be a good human and then do a worksheet to prove they were listening. I believe that we learn by living and would like to live in a world where we take these concerns about social and emotional health and not turn it into a multiple choice test but instead allow kids to lead the way building their own curriculum. 

We have our first  two weeks complete and it has me reflecting on one of my absolute favorite components of self-directed schools. We don’t spend our first day/week/month/quarter getting to know each other. We just continue our relationships with each other and grow them. I want to share a moment that I witnessed the other day that occurred as a result of allowing children to build authentic relationships with each other, give them the responsibility to set the boundaries/rules/agreements that run our school, and have a space dedicated to whole-child development with an emphasis on social and emotional growth. I was eating lunch, playing chess, and enjoying conversation when I overheard “would taking a deep breath help?”  There were four students aged 5-8 in the other room that were trying to work through a conflict about Roblox. My knee-jerk reaction was to interfere but I have learned that is usually not helpful. I have taught myself through their guidance to not interject unless I am asked for support or mediation. They then proceeded to identify that one of them was feeling overwhelmed and frustrated by the game. They all paused what they were doing to hold space for their friend. They asked what the problem was and found out that the level their friend was on was feeling too challenging. They offered to help defeat the level only to find out that added to the overwhelmed feelings of their friend.  Then because they are genuine relationships with each other one of them was able to say it seems like you are feeling a lot of anger and maybe you should step away for a bit. They offered to take deep breaths with each other and then the Robloxer was able to see that they did need a break from the game and went outside to play a different game.