Social Emotional Learning is Necessary for Students' Success

Teaching Ahead: A Roundtable reported an article in Education Week and suggested emotional and social learning can take on various forms in the classroom, especially for teachers of color. It can be a regular morning meeting, where students review and discuss their perspectives on school culture and current events. It can be an analysis of a conflict of a novel and a discussion about different paths the characters might have taken. It can be a simple moment that provides a student the space to think and reflect without the threat of punishment, rather than react automatically, and often aggressively, to distress. It can be a situation in which a teacher of color shares an experience about how to handle encounters of racism or other injustices related to identity. It can be a scenario that pushes students to generate various solutions for coding problems in a computer science class.

Implementing more emotional and social learning will require a new movement in American education. It is not enough to train and develop the brains of our children, while leaving their hearts empty or unloved. In order to make our children more prepared for the real world, teachers must look beyond grit and structure. We must teach our children to feel, to adjust, and to thrive in the face of any adversity they may encounter.