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Posts from the ‘Teaching strategies’ Category

Jan 10

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Taking SEL Home

When I pick up my daughter from school, I often ask her these questions: What made you laugh? Who did you help? Were you brave today? Her answers give me insights into how her day went, what she enjoyed doing and how she felt at school. She doesn’t always want to talk about how school went, but it is important for me as a parent to initiate that conversation and create the time for us to check-in. Sometimes she will ask back, how was your day Mom? And that gives me a chance to tell her about what I do when she is at school. My hope is that I am building a space where she can feel safe talking about the silly moments, and also the challenges that she will inevitably encounter. Since this is her first year in elementary school, I’d like to support her in navigating this new environment. Her teacher is great at communicating any social and emotional challenges, and has given us ideas for things we can do at home based on her observations. We greatly appreciate you Ms. B!

Most educators who value the whole child would like parents to be partners in growing the minds and hearts of their students. They’d like parents to reinforce at home the social and emotional skills they nurture in the classroom. The reality is that most parents want the same thing! But they need a little guidance from teachers about what is being done in the classroom and how they can support their children at home. In an ideal world, schools would have a parent education program where parents would come together and discuss real-life situations, brainstorm best ways to handle them, practice the skills educators are teaching in the classroom, and… the list could go on! Unfortunately, many schools don’t have a fully developed parent education program, but that shouldn’t stop teachers from building a connection with parents.

There are several things you can do to get your parents on board with your SEL program and practices. Here are some ideas:

  • Include your SEL focus or standard in your regular communication with parents. For example, if you send a monthly calendar home, include your SEL goals and the competencies you’ll be addressing with students. Include one or two activities well loved by students that they can practice with their parents.
  • Highlight students’ use of social and emotional skills when you meet with parents, in addition to providing updates on their academic growth. Having a conversation with families about students’ competencies will show them that this content is part of your classroom. It will also give you an opportunity to learn about parents’ approach and how they talk to their kids about these skills.
  • Celebrate students’ social and emotional growth and let parents know about it. Human beings tend to focus on those things that need to be improved, and sometimes we forget that there is so much we have already accomplished! Let parents know when you see their child develop socially and emotionally.  Are they better able to handle a conflict with a peer? Have they reduced visits to the office? Can they let somebody else lead a group? Parents love to know that their child is improving!
  • Provide parents with resources to help them with challenges typical of their child’s age group. If you have taught the same age group for a while, you can probably anticipate the social and emotional issues that students will need to navigate during the school year. What about supporting parents with these common challenges, so they can be more effective at home? For example, many students pushback when parents try to help them with homework. Is there anything you can provide parents to make it easier (or less painful!)?
  • Model and keep an open communication with parents. As we’ve seen in other posts, we need to model the skills we want our students to develop. That is also true for working with parents, even when we have difficult conversations! Use your empathy skills and optimism, enlist parents to help you, and be open to their support.

Having a strong home-school connection yields many benefits for teachers, parents, and students. When it comes to the social and emotional development of students, educators can “take SEL home” by communicating with parents about the classroom’s SEL goals and focus competencies, celebrating and discussing students’ social and emotional growth with families and providing resources, whenever possible, so parents can be more effective. Try these strategies and let me know how it goes! And if you have different ones, please share in the comments below. I’d love to hear from you!

Nov 16

Where did trust go? Strategies to earn your students’ trust

After several months into the school year, you might find that you have established positive relationships with most of your students… but maybe not all of them. Although, as educators, we care deeply about our students, there are certain relationships that may be more challenging and require a bit more work. In my experience, there is one ingredient that allows for honest communication, a sense of respect towards each other, maybe even a shared purpose. Do you know what it is? It’s trust. Trust is at the heart of any successful relationship.

Creating a classroom where teachers trust students (and the other way around!) has many benefits: students are more likely to improve their academic performance, more willing to follow class rules and more likely to engage with the content and ask questions. In addition, there are several studies that show how when teachers trust their students, their pedagogy changes. For example, teachers share more control of the classroom with students or are more likely to engage in constructivist practices or differentiate instruction. Teachers’ trust in students also plays a crucial role in students’ social integration and sense of belonging in school. But… what is trust? And how can we give and earn trust?

Trust is something that you feel; it is an emotion, a basic human signal that helps us survive and thrive. When we don’t trust a person, our emotion is signaling “this is not okay”, which might take us to disengage, ignore the person or fight back. Try to remember a boss or a colleague that you didn’t trust. Were you able to fully express yourself? Did you feel safe in the relationship? Did this person trust you back? The answer to these questions is probably no. Trust is reciprocal and also contagious. If you don’t trust your students, you’ll rarely gain trust FROM them, and the other way around. If a student doesn’t trust you, you will probably have a hard time trusting him or her. But don’t worry, there are things that you can do to break this cycle!

Strategies to Earn Your Students Trust

  • Be Honest. The way you show up in class affects your students’ emotions and their disposition to learn. If you are upset or stressed, your students will be too. Remember when we talked about Teaching is an Emotional Practice? Emotions are contagious. Being honest also means avoiding gaps between what you say and what your students perceive. Check for understanding, and when you commit to do something with/for your students, do it!
  • Be Coherent. Model the behavior you hope your students display in class. Check your goals, classroom routines and assignments: are they aligned? If you want students to show initiative, make it possible for students to make choices about how they learn. If you encourage students to provide feedback, do something with it! Being coherent means that you are consistent (in your expectations, classroom structures, etc.) and reliable, you’ll do what you say you’ll do.
  • Treat ALL students as people. You can foster genuine connections when you show students that you care. The emphasis here is not in caring (which I know you do!), but in showing Have you recently had a non-school related chat with students that display challenging behaviors? Those informal conversations can go a long way in your efforts to give and earn your students’ trust. Celebrate students’ accomplishments (big and small) and persevere in getting to know them. Show care without conditions: everybody gets it just by being in your classroom.
  • Trust Yourself. Trust starts with you! In order to trust your students, you need to trust yourself first. Even when you make mistakes or things don’t go as you had planned, show yourself some compassion. Have faith in yourself.

Trust is at the heart of any successful relationships and a key ingredient for positive learning environments. Trust is both given and earned: we need to trust our students, so they can trust us. Be honest and coherent, and treat all your students as people. Have faith that whatever small step you take to improve trust in your classroom, your students will greatly benefit from it.

Feb 2

Ready for School?

A few weeks back, I registered my daughter for kindergarten in the local school district. It was a moment filled with different emotions: excitement for the new experiences she will have, worry for the challenges, and also a bit of sadness because she is no longer my little “baby”. A moment of true self-awareness! Read more

Dec 2

Teachers’ Voices on SEL

“Social Emotional Learning (SEL) is becoming a world-wide phenomenon.” These are the words of Dr. Elias and Dr. Hatzichristou in the latest issue of the International Journal of Emotional Education. It appears that SEL competencies are valued across countries and cultures, and more and more teachers and administrators are ready to teach these skills in schools. Great! AND we know that SEL programs and practices help students be more engaged, resilient and ready to learn. So… let’s do it! Read more

Oct 19

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3 Skills To Discuss Racism with Emotional Intelligence

“You do not look how I expected you to look. Are you Asian?”. He turns to my husband and asks “Don’t you think you should have told us your wife was Asian?”.

A former colleague recently posted these sentences on Facebook in response to the article “Go Back to China” recently published in the New York Times. Reporter Michael Luo was told to go back to China when walking with his family and friends on the Upper East Side of Manhattan on a Sunday morning. My colleague was among many others who replied to Luo’s article describing their own experience of racism and discrimination. Read more

Sep 7

3 Strategies to Navigate Emotions

I recently met with a fantastic group of principals. Two weeks into the new school year and they were already discussing serious issues taking place at their schools. You could almost touch the tension in the room. We started the meeting with a simple breathing exercise, so we could all (including myself!) get our minds ready to engage and participate in meaningful ways. Learning ways to navigate emotions and deal with the stress of daily life is a major goal in Social Emotional Learning that applies to both students and adults. Read more

Aug 11

We Feel, Therefore We Learn

Emotions drive learning. That is one of the most exciting findings from Immordino-Yang’s years of work in affective neuroscience with great implications for teaching and learning. Emotions are an essential piece in the learning process, so how can we foster them in the classroom? What can we do, as educators, to engage students in meaningful ways? In my earlier posts How emotions affect learning part 1 and part 2, I discussed how the emotions students experience in the classroom can affect their disposition to learn. Read more

Jul 20

I Do, We Do, You Do

“Mama! Remember… You cannot say stupid”. My 4-year old daughter does not let me forget that she is watching and learning from the way I behave, what I say and how I relate to others. As a parent, I need to be able to model the behaviors and skills that I expect her to develop and practice on a regular basis. As you have probably experienced at some point, children and youth are watching adult behavior all the time, and they often feel puzzled when we ask them to do things they don’t see adults doing. Intentionally or not, adults model social and emotional skills for children and youth. Read more

May 26

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Finish the Year with Gratitude

The days are getting longer, the weather is warmer… summer is almost here! For students, this means a few more weeks wrapping up final projects and for teachers, battling to keep students engaged while trying to finish their own final projects. At this point of the school year, everybody is plain done! With this in mind, what are some activities that teachers can do to finish the year on a high note? Read more

Mar 22

2y + 3x = SEL

It has been almost 6 years since the Common Core State Standards were released. The adoption of common standards in the US has brought exciting changes for students and teachers, and a fair amount of frustration, anger and fear of failure. Although the standards have received many criticisms, Montoy-Wilson, a 2nd grade teacher in East Palo Alto (California), describes them as a tool to address the achievement gap and equip all students with proper tools for the 21st century: Read more

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