Embedded Files
Journal of Connections to My Professional Community
Module 5
Monday, August 16, 2021
During Module 5, I have explored the Facebook group called “Educating the Heart” to familiar myself what resources I can collect on how we can support each other’s and our students’ social emotional health and wellbeing as school reopens full-time in September during the Delta Variants surge. The creator of this Facebook group “Educating the Heart” decides to create this space/platform to support each other’s social and emotional health and learning ways to teach our children/students in our lives. This platform aims to share learnings and passion that she believes and love in education, teaching, learning and parenting. As she is a huge advocate on social and emotional development and learning for children and adults. She believes that “Our emotional health is imperative to our growth and ability to successfully navigate difficult or stressful situations in life.”
These posts stand out to me as I plan to use these strategies or teaching resources in Fall.
1) The HappySelf Journal: This is a daily journal for children/students to promote happiness, develop healthy habits for life and nurture enquiring minds. This journal encourages children to express gratitude, reflect on emotions and think about the actions. There are 6 elements this journal focuses on: gratitude practice, growth mindset, kindness, mindfulness, digital wellbeing, self-awareness.
2) Instead of “How are you”, try saying
- How have you been sleeping?
- What colour is your heart today? Why?
- What lies do you find yourself believing?
- What story are you telling yourself today?
- What thoughts have been circling in your brain?
- How can I support you?
- What are your top three feelings today?
- What have you done just for you today?
3) These two posts are great read for reopening:
Why every school must have a social emotional learning plan prior to reopening. Since Canada has been working on a reopening school plan, it is good to review this article.
There are 4 consideration of social emotional learning plan for reopening schools.
#1 – Identify and plan to address the needs of staff.
#2 – a social emotional learning plan must include and prioritize a fully staffed school-based mental health team.
#3 – this plan must address the social emotional needs of students. Including identify, understand, and manage their emotions.
#4 – social emotional learning plan must prioritize relationships and human connections.
Return to school: a trauma informed approach
I enjoyed reading this article, it gave me idea for strategies to use at school such as
- Acclimate students back into the school environment
- Do activities to help students reconnect with peers
- Spend time going over new safety procedures
- Do play based activities that acknowledge the time away, such as what new skill I learned while I was at home and what I missed most about school
Tuesday, August 17, 2021
Today, I continue to explore strategies or teaching resources for September
4) Gratitude prompts: these prompts can be used as a journal starter or conversation starter with students/children
5) The well-being of students through kindness curriculum is developed by Kaplan and Kath Koschel. This curriculum allows students, teachers and parents to engage as learning communities to embrace kindness and gratitude as core concepts. There are 10 sections of this curriculum: collaboration, compassion, empathy, gratitude, honesty, humility, humour, mindfulness meditation, perspective, positivity, self-acceptance, trust.
6) Resilience is about how you recharge, not how you endure: a great article for reminding educators to recharge over the summer.
Wednesday, August 18, 2021
My reflection on the interaction with the Facebook group “Educating the Heart”: I’m able to learn from and connect with a group of amazing educators/parents. As September is fast approaching, supporting each other and sharing social and emotional learning are important key to student’s success in the classroom. Connecting and interacting with each other enable us to share our thoughts and collaborate on how we can support each other’s and our students’ social emotional health and wellbeing as school reopens full-time in September. I really enjoyed this Professional community opportunity as it helps “organizations deal with change and successfully carry out reforms, boosting student achievement and teacher learning, lifting morale for both students and teachers, increasing collaboration between teachers and staff and the sharing of responsibility” (Hsu, 2015).
My takeaway is I found that supporting students’ social emotional is important. I am thrilled about the educational transition from subject-centred design approach I was educated in to one that is more about whole-child (learner centred design approach). I am glad to see a more balanced education that emphasizes social-emotional learning as well as academics. As a British Columbia educator, I found that it is pleasing to see that our new curriculum is focus on the “whole child” curriculum design (learner centred design approach). The new BC redesigned curriculum has a huge emphasis on students’ communication, thinking, social and personal core competencies instead of putting emphasis only on academic outcomes. The five key SEL skills that help students excel in school: self-control, persistence, mastery orientation, academic self-efficacy, and social competence. I thought these skills are important to children/students, especially during our navigation of the pandemic. As I learned that “our emotional health is imperative to our growth and ability to successfully navigate difficult or stressful situations in life”.
Thursday, August 19, 2021
Today, I have decided to respond to another article about Social Emotional Learning. This is
the article of Ed Eval TIG Week: Kelly Murphy and Selma Caal on Evaluating the “whole child” in educational contexts: Defining and assessing social-emotional learning (SEL) skills by Sheila Robinson.
Friday, August 2021
Here’s my Output of Module 5: app.popplet.com/#/p/5940743
To download the PDF file: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1cb-V_nUWEU2uASS--b3Xssj0ST4U9dvX/view?usp=sharing
I have shared this mindmap on AEA365.
References:
Castilleja. (2014). Counselling and Social Emotional Learning. Retrieved from: https://www.castilleja.org/page.cfm?p=942902
Eisner, E., & Vallance, E. (Eds.). (1974). Five conceptions of the curriculum: Their roots and implications for curriculum planning.In E. Eisner & E. Vallance (Eds.), Conflicting conceptions of curriculum (pp. 1-18). Berkeley, CA: McCutchan Publishing
Hsu, P. (2015). What can PLCs do for you? Retrieved from: https://ereserves.library.queensu.ca/ares/ares.dll?Action=10&Type=10&Value=124669
McNeil, J. D. (2009). Contemporary curriculum in thought and action (7th ed.). Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley. Pages 1, 3-14, 27-39, 52-60, 71-74.
Ornstein, A. C., & Hunkins, F. P. (2013). Curriculum: Foundations, principles, and issues (6th ed.). Boston, MA: Pearson.
Ornstein, A. C. (1990/1991). Philosophy as a basis for curriculum decisions. The High School Journal, 74, 102-109.
Robinson, S. (2015, May 5). Ed Eval TIG Week: Kelly Murphy and Selma Caal on Evaluating the “whole child” in educational contexts: Defining and assessing social-emotional learning (SEL) skills. [Blog post]. Retrieved from: https://aea365.org/blog/ed-eval-tig-week-kelly-murphy-and-selma-caal-on-evaluating-the-whole-child-in-educational-contexts-defining-and-assessing-social-emotional-learning-sel-skills/
Sowell, E. J. (2005). Curriculum: An integrative introduction (3rd ed., pp. 52-54, 55-61, 81-85,103-106). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson.
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