A Personal Perspective: Social emotional learning in education requires real conversations about the world and what is happening for children.
Educators need support to implement SEL.Administrators often require educators to implement social-emotional learning in schools, libraries, camp programs, and wherever children exist. But I argue that institutions are causing harm by not understanding the meaning of “social-emotional learning" and by not supporting effective implementation methods.
The lessons included learning objectives, feelings check-ins, activities, discussion questions, outcomes, and a closing activity with takeaways. It was incredibly helpful. I did not have to come up with and prepare entire hour-long lessons of life skills material. I could focus on my teaching style—as a social worker, I wasn’t used to being in front of a classroom of 25 children, so having these lessons made it a bit easier.
While the curriculum was written to be accessible for any child, it felt as if there was an undertone in the curriculum and the school directed at Black children specifically:Most of us were Black educators, including the principal, but there were problematic class differentials at play. We were told we had to achieve Black excellence—even if that meant becoming militant with the children.
I found myself creating new lessons and inserting real-life material, like “What Do We Do When a Family Member Goes Away,” when I found out a student I had known for years had a father in prison. I incorporated texts likeIt was clunky and I was testing it out all on my own, but I had to do it. As a cis-hetero Black, first-generation immigrant educator with class and able-body privilege, I knew I didn’t get enough of these conversations, and my students were not getting them either.
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