Social Emotional Learning (SEL)

Building students’ empathy and understanding for others from diverse backgrounds and perspectives is essential to their academic success, and it generally develops nicer humans.

Why am I angry? How do I feel about what I just read? Can I pass Friday’s test or only the smart kids seem to do well? Students’ ability to understand their own emotions, thoughts, and values, and develop a healthy sense of themselves and their abilities, is crucial in building their confidence and purpose.

Keeping your eye on the prize while dealing with stress and varying degrees of motivation takes courage and initiative as well as planning and organizing. Tweens and teens need many opportunities to develop self-discipline and problem-solving strategies for when things don’t go as planned.

Understanding how to develop positive relationships is a big part of adolescents’ social and emotional development. Students needs many opportunities to collaborate, constructively resolve conflict, and help one another as they build positive social connections and stand up against negative ones.

You might think adolescence and responsible decision-making are contradictory terms but how often do your students have opportunities to practice analyzing a situation or problem from multiple perspectives while considering its implications and consequences? As you well know, students need a lot of practice figuring out how to make responsible decisions as they grow into young adults.