There is abundant literature on the many benefits of promoting student choice (for an accessible overview see, “The key to making improvements: as the students”).

Among the positive outcomes associated with giving students authentic choices in what they will learn, how they will learn it, and how they will demonstrate their learning are:

• Better attainment of learning objectives
• More engagement in the classroom
• Better generalization of classroom learning to real life situations

I would like to suggest another reason for providing students, especially adolescents, with meaningful choices and then honoring those choices – they know better than adults what is really important to them.

This may be particularly true in the field of social and emotional learning (SEL). Although tremendous gains have been made in the past 25 years in terms of understanding the importance of SEL, best practices in implementing SEL, and the many positive outcomes associated with high quality SEL programs, it is still a budding field, as evidenced by the existence of at least 40 different SEL frameworks encompassing more than 100 social and emotional skills.

In my work in the SEL assessment field, I have advocated strongly for “data-driven SEL.” For example, in order to use data to drive SEL instruction, a K-8 teacher would rate how often they observe students engaging in various social and emotional skills and then use this data to identify skills that are not yet being exhibited. Then they would implement strategies to teach these skills to the student. The goal is to ensure that each student has a robust set of social and emotional skills to facilitate their success in school and in the community.

Data-driven SEL for 9-12^th grade classes would leverage and honor the emerging self-identity and agency of adolescents. For example, a high schooler would rate their own social and emotional competencies, review their results, and then select what area(s) they would like to focus on. Unlike the teacher-driven model in which the results determine the next steps, in the student-driven model the results inform, but do not determine, next steps.

Here’s an example to illustrate why this is so important. For the sake of simplicity, let’s assume that both the high school teacher and the student have assessed the student for self-management skills (a youth’s success in controlling their emotions and behaviors, to complete a task, or to succeed in a new or challenging situation) and relationship skills (a youth’s consistent performance of socially acceptable actions that promote and maintain positive connections with others).

In both the teacher’s and the student’s assessments, self-management was rated in the low-average range of scores and relationship skills rated as a strength. The teacher chose to focus on strategies to strengthen the student’s self-management skills given the lower score in that domain. However, the student chose to focus on their area of strength. Why? The student had recently been informed that they had been selected as the drum major for the school’s marching band and the student wanted to do everything they could to bolster their relationship skills so they could excel in this new, valued, leadership role. Consequently, they chose to learn strategies related to encouraging others, making requests of others, and showing appreciation. Both approaches are reasonable, but the latter honors the student’s values and personal goals.

One of the challenges in promoting student choice can be getting the teachers to listen to, understand, respect, and support student choices. The use of a standardized tool, such as a student self-rating of social and emotional skills, especially one that measures the same skill set as the teacher-completed rating, can provide a shared frame of reference that facilitates student choice. A common vocabulary and understanding of key social and emotional domains, a common metric (assessment scores) that enables a discussion of results, and a curated set of strategies, as well as a defined goal-setting process, together facilitates productive discussions and shared understanding. Importantly, the shared framework makes it easier for the teacher to honor the student’s choices and also actively support the student’s efforts. A standardized approach also respects teachers’ time by providing a defined process to follow.

We all want our students to be able to make good, responsible choices. The use of a student-completed SEL assessment (i.e., student self-report) provides a defined, attainable, and effective means of providing students with meaningful choice-making opportunities.

Educational equity is achieved by equipping students with tools to overcome some of the pre-existing barriers that impede their ability to succeed in school and thrive. Although educational equity was a priority in many school districts prior to the events of the past year and a half, talks surrounding the initiative have amped up–of the 10 largest school districts in the United States, eight now identify equity as part of their mission statements or core values.

Achieving educational equity requires multiple strategies and initiatives because the sources of inequity are so numerous and varied. One of the most important strategies is the promotion of students’ social and emotional competence (SEC).

First, we must understand how equity is defined. Recently, Jagers, Rivas-Drake, and Borowski asserted that educational equity “means that every student has access to the resources and educational rigor they need” (2018, p.1). Similarly, the Center for Public Education stated that, “equity is achieved when all students receive the resources they need so they graduate prepared for success after high school” (2016, p. 1). Both definitions make clear that the focus of educational equity efforts needs to be on the individual student. Equity is achieved when every (Jagers et. al) or all (CPE) students can benefit from education.

However, providing physical access to an evidence-based curriculum does not by itself ensure that a student who lacks, for example, optimism and a sense of agency will benefit from that curriculum and be prepared for life after graduation. To meaningfully “access” or “receive” an educational resource requires that the student has skills such as the ability to engage with the material in an organized way, persist in efforts to master the material, and apply the content to solve real life problems and challenges. These social and emotional skills enable the student to master and derive benefit from the curriculum.

Like any other skill set or trait, students differ in their level of SEC; some students will have well-developed skills; others will have significant skill deficits. Therefore, ensuring that each student has sufficient skills to access or benefit from instruction requires assessing the unique social and emotional strengths and needs of each student and then providing data-driven differentiated instruction. If we believe, as research over the past 20 years has indicated, that SEC is essential to school and life success, then we have a duty as educators to ensure that each of our students has a full complement of social and emotional skills.

Fortunately, good, well-developed, rigorous, and practical measures of students’ SEC are available. Both CASEL and the American Institutes for Research (AIR) have published reports of social and emotional assessments. CASEL also released “Measuring SEL: Using Data to Inspire Practice.” This interactive tool not only provides information on a wide variety of assessments, but also on how to use assessment data. AIR’s tool, “Are You Ready to Assess Social and Emotional Learning and Development Tool Kit,” provides detailed information on assessments of conditions for learning, which includes school climate, social and emotional learning (SEL) implementation, and SECs. Both resources can provide educational leaders with a wealth of information to use in selecting the right SEL assessment for them.

Regarding our collective commitment to educational equity, we should turn the popular phrase, “What gets measured gets treasured,” around so that it reads, “What gets treasured gets measured.” The assessment of each student’s social and emotional skills followed by differentiated instruction will maximize the likelihood that each student in our schools has the skill set they need to access and benefit from instruction. This individualized, data-driven approach is an important strategy to help our schools, districts, and country achieve educational equity.

There is an oft-cited parable in children’s mental health about two individuals fishing on the banks of a river. In the midst of their outing, they notice a child in the middle of the river, struggling to stay afloat and in obvious danger. One of the anglers drops their fishing pole, swims out and brings the child to safety on the shore.  No sooner does the angler resume fishing then another child comes floating down the river, struggling to keep their head above water. Again, the angler swims out and rescues the child.  When the situation occurs a third time, the angler throws down their fishing rod and starts to walk away leading the second angler to ask, “Aren’t you going to save that child too?” The first angler responds, “No, I am going upstream to stop whatever is throwing these children into the river.”

This allegory may well represent the situation that many educators may find themselves in as students return to school this fall.

With limited resources–a big one being time–and so many students in need, teachers could be faced with the dilemma of either focusing on students who are in crisis or “going upstream” to provide supports to all of their students to forestall the development of mental health concerns. This is, of course, a false dichotomy; educators, student support personnel, and administrators do their best to support all children. Nevertheless, students in crisis can exhaust schools’ resources leading to a lack of focused attention on prevention, or promotion of positive mental health behaviors.

The promotion of student resilience, the ability to cope successfully with adversity, is a useful approach for addressing: 1) supporting students in crisis, 2) helping to prevent additional students from developing emotional and behavioral problems, and 3) promoting the well-being of all students.

Central to understanding resilience is the “risk and protective factor framework” (e.g., SAMHSA, 2019). Risk factors are conceptualized as events (e.g., school shootings, natural disasters), circumstances (e.g., poverty, low quality schools) or student characteristics (e.g., health concerns, developmental disabilities) that jeopardize students’ development and academic success. In contrast, protective factors are assets or resources found in the community (e.g., high quality schools, out-of-school time programs), the family (e.g., loving parents, kith and kin networks) or characteristics of the student themself (e.g., strong social and emotional skills) that offset or reduce the impact of the risk factors.

Often depicted as a balance, the goal of resilience-promoting efforts is to maximize a student’s protective factors while minimizing risk factors. Of particular importance for educators is the recognition that the development of protective factors is within their span of control and is often consistent with a whole-child education approach.

Rather than thinking about the promotion of student resilience as yet another demand or expectation added to a teacher’s already burgeoning list of duties, two key insights from leading researchers in the resilience field emphasize that enhancing the resilience of students is a natural outcome of high-quality education. 

First, Jennifer DiCorcia and Ed Tronick (2011) asserted that resilience develops over time as individuals cope successfully with typical, everyday stressors. Helping students learn simple skills that enable them to succeed in overcoming common challenges in the classroom will go a long way in preparing students to overcome more extreme and challenging situations. This, combined with lots of opportunities for students to practice these skills, experience success, and build their confidence, is a key strategy to promoting lifelong resilience.

The second key insight comes from Ann Masten, a leading resilience researcher from the University of Minnesota. Twenty years ago, Dr. Masten published a landmark article in the American Psychologist in which she made the case that resilience is “Ordinary Magic.” Rather than being an exceptional quality that only some individuals attain, Dr. Masten concluded that resilience is a common attribute that develops through normal, typical interactions. Rather than something that we need to give or teach to students, Dr. Masten maintains that most children are, by nature, resilient individuals and what we need to do is support their natural resilience. The challenge for society is that risk factors like poverty, poor health care, inequity, and abuse deprive students of developing their natural resilience. Importantly, Dr. Masten identifies schools as a key system for maintaining and promoting the resilience of children.

So, as our students return to school, let’s make sure that in concert with our colleagues in the schools and the communities we are a part of, we do “swim out” and support our students with current mental health needs. But let’s also realize that as educators we have a very real and attainable opportunity to promote the “Ordinary Magic” of student resilience through our everyday interactions with our students.

Going “upstream” does not necessarily require extraordinary efforts or new initiatives; it does, however, require awareness of our ability to promote student well-being, and an intentionality to make the most of our everyday interactions with students.

Some great resources for strategies to promote student resilience in everyday interactions include:

• Edutopia: https://www.edutopia.org/article/resilience-resources
• The Devereux Center for Resilient Children: https://files.constantcontact.com/520aa58f101/cc3cc4e9-7c5f-4329-903d-3433f3da6a6d.pdf
• The American Psychological Association: https://www.apa.org/topics/resilience/guide-parents-teachers
• Positive Psychology.com https://positivepsychology.com/teaching-resilience/

References:

DiCorcia, J. & Tronick, E. (2011). Quotidian resilience: Exploring mechanisms that drive resilience from a perspective of everyday stress and coping. Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews. 35, (7),  pp1593-1602.

Masten, A. (2001). Ordinary Magic: Resilience processes in Development. American Psychologist. 56 (3), 227-238.

SAMHSA (2019). Risk and Protective Factors. Downloaded from: https://www.samhsa.gov/sites/default/files/20190718-samhsa-risk-protective-factors.pdf

Summer is here, and if you haven’t taken the opportunity yet, it’s time to relax. Teacher stress amidst the pandemic has understandably received a lot of attention, but even before COVID-19 turned our world, including our schools, upside down in an unprecedented way, 61 percent of teachers reported that work was “always” or “often” stressful, which is twice the rate of the general population and akin to the stress levels reported by doctors and lawyers (Greenberg, Brown, & Abenavoli, 2016).

That stress also has a ripple effect. The negative impact of stress may begin with an  educator’s physical health and mental well-being and spreads to affect relationships with students and colleagues, the classroom environment, student achievement, and teacher turnover (Bintliff, 2020; Center for Health and Health Care in Schools, 2020; Greenberg, Brown, & Abenavoli, 2016; Ingersoll, Merrill, & Stuckey, 2014).

While there are a variety of ways to combat stress in general, including diet, exercise, meditation, and other techniques, SEL provides a unique lens for stress management in the context of the classroom.

In addition to helping manage personal stress levels, educators with strong social and emotional skills are better at navigating everyday challenges, are more prepared for the challenges of classroom management, are better able to model social and emotional skills to students, and are more adept at implementing social and emotional programs. National surveys indicate teachers want more professional development on the topic of SEL and how to tailor it to meet the needs of their students, yet most teachers do not receive SEL instruction in their preparation programs (Hamilton & Doss, 2020; Melnick & Martinez, 2019; Schonert-Reichle, Kitil, & Hanson-Peterson, 2017; Schwartz et al., 2020).

If you are an educator seeking to integrate SEL into your teaching practice–whether for personal stress management, professional development, classroom management, relationship development, or for all of these reasons–take the summer months to engage in the following activities to build your personal social and emotional competence before the busy school year begins.

Reflection

A foundational practice educators can start with is reflecting on their own social and emotional competencies. If your district uses an existing SEL framework for students, consider using that same framework as a basis for your reflection so your efforts are aligned with the work you are doing with students. If your district does not have an SEL framework, CASEL’s competencies is a nice research-based place to start.

Once you decide which competencies you want to reflect upon, ask yourself the following questions: What does this competency mean to me? Why is this competency important for my role as an educator? How does this impact my students? My colleagues? How can I enhance my own skills in this competency, as well as the skills of my students and/or colleagues?

Personal growth plan

Once you have reviewed your responses to these reflective questions, decide which strategies you would like to use. There are a variety of SEL strategies that can support educators in their growth. For example, if you want to work on Optimistic Thinking, you can use a strategy like The Sense that Keeps Me Going, available through this free guide.  Once a strategy or group of strategies is selected, create a personal growth plan to determine how and when the strategies will be used. Reflecting on past experiences of trying to acquire a new habit or practice can be helpful in determining how this new skill will be developed.

Once you have selected a strategy, ask yourself the following questions: How often will I practice the strategy? How will I remind myself to use the strategy?  How will I record and track my use of this strategy? How will I evaluate the outcome of my use of the strategy?

Build a support team

When you are working on a new goal, habit, or skill, having an accountability partner can add to your success. Think about when you work with students. You may often serve as their accountability partner in helping them stick to deadlines and making sure they are on track with learning different subjects. That doesn’t change when you reach adulthood! In fact, the busier your lives become, the more important accountability partners and extra support can be.

Once you’ve finalized your growth plan, find a trusted manager, colleague, or friend with whom you can share your SEL goal and who can help you stay on track. Schedule time to check-in with them about your progress.

Reflecting on your SEL competencies, identifying strategies to strengthen them, creating a growth plan and finding a support team to help you meet your goals are all activities that you can work on during the next few months to prepare for the coming school year.

The past year has highlighted the importance of social and emotional learning, both for teachers and students. If educators can take time this summer to reflect on and strengthen their own social and emotional competencies using the steps above, they will be better prepared to support SEL for their students when school resumes.