How does Social Emotional Learning affect Classroom Climate and Behaviors?

Seminar Title

How does Social Emotional Learning affect Classroom Climate and Behaviors?

Social Emotional Skills

8th Grade

Middle School

Social Studies

All Disciplines

“Please stop rubbing glue all over your arms, we talked about this!” I sighed as I had to patiently re explain the concept of self-control to a 14 year old boy. Every year students seem to come in with fewer social emotional skills, which then hinder their growth and our classroom success. I was inspired by the idea that if we can go slowly by learning these social emotional skills first then we can go fast academically as the year goes onward! Students need to be explicitly taught social emotional skills because human being precedes human doing and if they cannot regulate then how will they learn? Review of my work will provide you an opportunity to reflect on your classroom practices regarding social emotional skill development and brainstorming about better supporting our student in their development.

How does Social Emotional Learning affect Classroom Climate and Behaviors? The question guiding my research is as follows: How does social emotional learning affect classroom climate and behaviors? A review of literature confirms that if students are proficient in social emotional skills they are more likely to succeed as an adult over students who lack these skills; however what is the impact in the classroom as students grow into adults? As a result of my review of literature, topics I focused on included 1) what is social emotional learning 2) why is social emotional learning important to human development including the lifelong effects 3) social emotional learning and the effects on school climate. The concentration of my work centered on explicitly teaching my students social emotional skills in order to improve climate and behaviors in school. My work originally was just going to be done in my morning advisory, however, it quickly became clear that all of my students needed more focused and explicated lessons to improve their proficiency regarding these skills. To help students better understand the importance of social emotional skills I used modeling and their life experiences to connect to the content. I explicitly taught them the five social emotional competencies and the skills related to each. In addition, I surveyed the students once a month about application of these skills in school and how they would rate themselves in terms of proficiency and application. If behaviors arose, I circled back to our social emotional skills and talked through how we could improve and support. Over time I found students to be more mindful of their classmates and while these skills are always going to need improving as they go through life, most of my student not only are more self-aware, they have a better understanding of their shortcomings regarding these competencies. The one piece of data I found most interesting was when students were asked about their own abilities regarding social awareness, many rated themselves well, however, when asked what they felt their classmates needed to work on, the greatest area of need identified was social awareness. We had several conversations about these results and why students might come to those conclusions. Due to my passion for human development and now my better understanding of how social emotional learning increases student success in many realms, I plan to continue doing this kind of work every year with my students. One of the most powerful moments of feedback came from a student who said, “Oh! Now I get why I’m in trouble all the time. I have NO concept of self-management and I really gotta get that together before high school.” Students are at the stage in their lives when personal development is at the forefront of their priorities and with the helpful guidance of explicitly taught appropriate social emotional skills, students can get on the path to becoming the best version of themselves.