Have you heard of SEL, or “social & emotional learning” recently? You may be hearing it (a lot!) and for good reason. The research supports what many of us already know, that improved social & emotional skills help everyone, especially young children, in many areas of life. Educators are well aware of this connection. The kids who have solid SEL skills do better in school, and not just academically. We now know with undeniable research that strong SEL skills help with emotional & physical health, academic achievement, employment and active community engagement. What’s really important is that SEL skills are not a set of tools that only help out in sticky situations. Learning and teaching these skills helps us become more flexible, adaptable and creative. These are long-term, lifelong benefits that extend outside the classroom.
SEL skills start at home. They start at birth. YOU are building strong, empathetic connections.
Skills in the “Core Competencies" helps build the foundations of social & emotional learning. Let’s take a deep dive with help from the leaders in this field, the Collaborative for Academic, Social and Emotional Learning (CASEL).
“More than two decades of research demonstrates that education promoting social and emotional learning (SEL) gets results. The findings come from multiple fields and sources, including student achievement, neuroscience, health, employment, psychology, classroom management, learning theory, economics, and the prevention of youth problem behaviors. (CASEL.org)”
Self Awareness
It may seem counter-intuitive, but a good sense of self allows us to better empathize and understand others. We all know someone who lacks awareness in this area, and hey, it might even be us! We are all working to build better self awareness skills throughout our lives. We work hard to understand our thoughts and emotions, and how they impact and shape our world. Our actions, thoughts and beliefs create our values, and our values go on to affect others. This understanding helps us better recognize emotions, form accurate self-perceptions and recognize our own strengths and weaknesses. Self awareness also has a lot to do with building self confidence and promoting self-efficacy, which is the ability to advocate for yourself and pursue positive and beneficial actions. Having a strong sense of self awareness helps us understand our strengths and limitations and therefore helps us know what areas we can build upon or share with others.
Self Management
We all work on this, constantly it seems. For children we can help them build ways to manage their emotions, thoughts and behaviors in a variety of situations and we can start by regulating with them. It’s all about building flexibility, tolerance and skills to manage stress, control impulses and find ways to motivate yourself. This is where we set goals and adapt them to changing times. Yes, even very young children can set goals. Self management is also the building block for organizational skills, the skills that help children manage their academic, home lives and eventually, social and career lives.
Social Awareness
This is all about perspective taking and having the ability to understand how others thoughts, beliefs and values differ from ours. You’ve likely heard the phrase to “put yourself in someone else's shoes”. While this is said with the best intentions, you can never really fully be in '“someone else’s shoes”. At best, you can have one of their shoes on and one of yours on. We really cannot remove the lens of personal experience and perspective that we bring to the table. Even so, social awareness opens us up to empathize and better understand the actions and intentions of others. It takes into account that we have to understand social norms and apply appropriate social behavior in certain situations, while adapting to changing scenarios all the time. All while maintaining our true values and beliefs. While some of us do this naturally, many children struggle in this area and they require explicit support so they can make strong social connections. Social awareness is a lifelong skill and requires perspective taking, empathy, appreciation of diversity and respecting others.
Relationship Skills
Strong relationships are what we are all working toward as little people and adults. We want our kids to build healthy relationships within our family world and within their social worlds. This is the ability to establish and maintain healthy relationships with a variety of people, and across a variety of settings. Strong SEL skills help us communicate our intentions clearly, truly listen to others and cooperate even when it’s not our first choice. Strength in this area helps us resist negative social pressures that conflict with our values, find our allies, negotiate conflict and seek out and offer help when needed. We can help kids build the skills of communication, social engagement, relationship building and teamwork that they will use to form their own individual greatness.
Responsible Decision-Making
This is all about making thoughtful, responsible and ethical choices based on values and standards, safety concerns and social norms. Yup, even little kids are learning these complex skills! And yes, obviously we as adults are still learning these complex skills! We are constantly evaluating the consequences of our actions and words and considering the well being of self and others while insuring that we are also responsibly caring for our self. We want kids to begin to be able to dentify problems, analyze situations, form solutions and promote ethical responsibility in line with their own personal goals.