SEL Its not about the Solar System

hi

i’m caitlin kaiser and i’m so excited to

talk to you today about social and

emotional learning

during my first year as a teacher i

remember getting a phone call from my

brother luke

luke at the time was attending a

specialized high school for students

with disabilities

and he is the youngest of my six

siblings and the only boy

he’s such a ham he usually opens up

these daily phone calls with

how is my best best sister doing and we

all know he calls each of us his number

one sister

but on this particular day he wasn’t his

chipper and i know he had a bad day at

school

but when i asked him what was going on

to tell me more about it

he didn’t say anything he was silent and

he finally said kate

i hate the solar system i thought what

does science have to do with a rough day

at school

after some questioning i understood that

it wasn’t about the planets or the stars

that he was projecting this frustration

onto

what is more so about a connection he

was missing

with his peers and with the teacher in

the room

it’s something that i’ve kept in mind as

an educator since then

remembering that relationships come

first

working with the youth population is an

incredible and unique profession

whether it’s working in the classroom as

a teacher like i had been

or on a school campus as an

administrator there’s working with the

out-of-school time programs as a

counselor or

coach and there’s folks on an

interdisciplinary team that work to

support the overall health and wellness

of a student

there are so many different roles in

supporting our young people

truly because it does take a village

like with any other profession there are

day-to-day challenges in education

and prior to the pandemic some of those

challenges might have sounded like

where is your homework or what time is

that assembly today

wondering how that lesson just did not

go as planned

and being asked constantly is this for a

grade

it almost always is but there is one

challenge that separates this profession

apart and that is that it’s almost

impossible to separate a student’s

academic needs from that of their social

and emotional needs

it’s interesting because education is

one of those few professions that we go

home

worrying about somebody else’s kid

whether it’s are they going to study for

this test and do their homework in order

to raise their grade

or if you worked with a population like

i did i’m wondering

are they going to eat dinner and

breakfast before i see them again

tomorrow

or do they have some way to wash that

dirty uniform

as a teacher i want to spend the answers

the time on the answers to these

questions because i know that it impacts

how my kids are going to be when they

come through my door

but the reality is other instructional

tasks take precedence

there is a disconnect from the expected

outcome of instruction

and the process in which it takes to

produce those results

this expected outcome of instruction

high test scores

increasing student data outweighs the

process

in which it takes to cultivate all of

the skills our students need to be

successful

from their academic skills to their

social skills

to regulating their emotions and we need

to shift the way that we talk about

student success

to include these social and emotional

skills in order for our students to be

academically successful and personally

successful

teachers are under pressure to maximize

instructional time within the classroom

and to reduce discipline referrals and

to address

major concerns before they become major

tragedies

that we hear about in the news teachers

are under pressure to maintain their own

health and wellness as well as

advocating for that of their students

and now as we enter the new part of the

school year in 2020

there are new learning environments that

we have to navigate all of this

creates pressure and stress on a teacher

and if a student is unable to navigate

their environment

time is taken away from that instruction

further adds to the stress

so the good news is if we make time for

this there is a systematic

research-based way of approaching it

called social and emotional learning

but first one of my daily challenges one

school year was working with a former

student of mine named charles

charles is this little pipsqueak of a

first grader who could not reach the

back of the sink in our classroom

could not find anything in his messy

desk

charles struggled to follow all of our

rules and our procedures in the

classrooms

he was constantly in confrontation with

his peers

and he was performing well below grade

level on all subject areas

for charles when i redirected him he

oftentimes became very upset and

frustrated

would shut down and disrupt all of the

classmates in our environment

for charles if he was unable to navigate

these challenges

and these emotions within the classroom

he was unlikely to show the apt

the academic growth we were looking for

so i asked my mentor of mine to come in

and observe my interactions with charles

in the classroom

and after we debriefed he asked me what

is it that you know about charles

somewhat embarrassed it’s not a whole

lot i shared that he was performing

below grade level

that was important to me as his teacher

but aside from that he also lives with

his mom

and he has a dog or maybe it’s a couple

of dogs

i’m not sure so he recommended using a

strategy called ten times two

for ten consecutive school days i need

to spend two minutes a day getting to

know charles on a personal level

asking him what he likes and what he

dislikes how he feels throughout the day

anything that’s not an academic so on

the first day when i asked charles to

come see me at my back table

he was confused and irritated even

when i asked him to come see me because

he hadn’t even done anything

i asked him i want to get to know you a

little bit better what’s something that

i should know

that’s going on with you he thought for

a moment

and he shared that his dog sammy joe was

sick

he was worried about sammy joe and even

waking up because sam and joe’s been up

in the night so he’s a little bit tired

and hopefully after school they were

gonna be able to play outside on day two

i asked charles when do you feel happy

at school

and he thought again and he said when

the other kids play with me at recess

and i had a lightbulb moment one of our

challenges with charles was conducting a

daily pocket check

to make sure that he wasn’t sneaking in

any captive lizards or insects after

recess

so i noted that but on day three we had

a spelling test

and i asked charles how do you feel

about the spelling test today

he didn’t say anything he just froze up

so we spent a couple minutes talking

about

what anxiety was and how being nervous

felt

taking a few deep breaths in together

before we studied for that spelling test

after that we had a routine charles

would come in we conferenced for a few

minutes every day

and we got so used to it i noticed a

couple things changed

first i had to remember charles is not

giving me a hard time

charles is having a hard time a shift

that changed my frustration level as a

teacher

i also acknowledged that charles was

getting through more of our lessons

and he wasn’t shutting down when i

redirected him

and at recess when i observed him he was

connecting with his peers

teaching them all how to connect or

capture these lizards and insects which

wasn’t ideal but that’s fine i’ll take

it

our 10 days were expired and our two

days our two minutes became five minutes

and became 10 minutes would have been

the whole morning if i let him

so i told charles in order to keep us on

track we got to use one of our sam

timers

when the sand is all gone we have to

continue the next day

okay sound good if i had to observe a

label

an emotion in charles at that time it

would have been

unimpressed he agreed

and i put that sand timer back on my

desk and the next morning

it was no longer there i wasn’t

surprised when it wasn’t the first place

that i looked it was shoved inside

charles’s messy desk

this connection with our students and

between

their peers starts with identifying our

emotions

so emotions aren’t something we talk

about in our academic curriculum

but they are important to talk about

emotions are not good or bad

they just are emotions there are natural

reactions to our experiences

and everybody has them so you and me

and at school the kindergartner the 10th

grader the principal

the bus driver and our parents and

guardians but these emotions

dictate how long a student can attend to

a task

how they connect with their peers and

what their relationship is like with

their teacher

so in order for us to build those skills

we have to

spend intentional time building

relationships that cultivate skills

the good news is if we make this time

that social and emotional learning can

be taught through explicit instruction

or through best practices throughout the

school day but what’s even better

is that these skills are not only for

our students to develop but they’re also

for adults

these help us to be successful

professionally

and also personally students who

participate in this academic instruction

with sel

infused in it or with explicit sel

curriculums

on average score an 11 percentile points

higher than their peers on reading and

math standardized tests

and they also show a decrease in problem

behaviors so

so often these behaviors are functions

of an unmet need

to be seen and heard and valued as a

whole student

aside from their academic behaviors

for our students they want to be able to

connect with each other

and feel safe within their environments

to take risks academic risks

for our students these behavior

challenges on average decrease in eight

percent within

one school year but in the long run

they’re 19

less likely to be arrested which means

they’re using their sel skills to

navigate those uncomfortable emotions

and to make responsible decisions that

impact their future

we need to make this shift to add

success

to include their social and emotional

skills starting with students

and us as adults but since not every one

of us is a teacher can do this in the

context of our classrooms we have to

start within our own environments

and what that looks like is starting

with normalizing our own emotions

identifying what they are and how to

manage them in safe and productive ways

it also means to recognize understand

and respect

the emotions of others in order to be a

little bit more curious

instead of furious if we don’t feel the

same way

it looks like connecting

and making those connections stronger

face to face instead of through an app

and it looks like reflecting on our

current relationships

how often do we have relationships with

challenges like the ones i experience

with charles

ones where we expect a certain level of

outcome when we don’t invest in the time

that it takes to get there

through a relationship so the thing is

whether you have kids and you work with

kids

or you don’t and you only see them in

public or at family gatherings

they’re always watching us kids watch

everything

and we have the responsibility to show

them what positive and productive

relationships look like

through using these social and emotional

skills

what causes change when we all work

together as a community to make this

cultural shift

that will empower our young people to

not only be academically successful

but competent risk takers empathetic

listeners

and courageous leaders of change that we

know that they can be

it’s not always about the solar system

but it is always about their

relationship

thank you