OL - 5031 SEL: Strengthening Hearts and Minds

I'm knocking out a few online graduate level classes this summer. And when I say "this summer", I mean I'm cramming them in at the last moment before thier due date. Trying to accumulate enough credits to earn a salary advancement - seems a Catch 22 - pay now for expensive classes so that you can slowly recoup the costs in bi-weekly partial payments...but it's all good. I thought I'd share my "Reflection Paper" at the end of Module #3.... enjoy. - K

     My mentors in teaching always said, “Stick around education long enough and the pendulum will eventually swing”. We’ve been through portfolios, discovery learning, Daily 5, higher order thinking, Common Core, cooperative learning, Bloom’s Taxonomy, scaffolding, Six Traits and countless other buzzwords that were going to change the face of education. One to one technology initiatives have come and gone in the district in which I teach. At one point our school taught with homogenous grouped instruction. Say those words today and you’ll be reprimanded quicker than a New York minute. Entering my twentieth year of teaching, I have watched the proverbial pendulum swing more than once. Very little of the educational jargon has stuck or produced a long-term effect. Administrators change. Politicians change and policies change.  What I have learned is that at the very basis of education is the ART of Teaching. Teaching is an Art. I have a Bachelor of ARTS degree in Elementary Education. And the thing that makes the “art of teaching” so special is educators’ ability to build and maintain relationships that connect students and drive them to be the best versions of themselves. 

A few years ago I was having a conversation with an administrator that was just passing through on his road trip of a career. This fella was my age and had spent less than five years as a teacher in an actual classroom. We were discussing a 4th grade student that had become a major behavior concern and had given both of us a run for our money. Thinking I

had a captive and supportive audience, I let on to my principal that in my career I had learned that teaching students how to add and subtract fractions was less important than finding a way to connect with them and build relationships that foster a child’s desire to learn and do their very best. Now maybe I wasn’t as eloquent when I said it but that’s how I remember the intent of the conversation. Imagine my surprise later in the year while sitting in on a performance review with said administrator when he brought up that same conversation and used it as a strike against me and perhaps a reason for lower scores from my Math students. 

Remembering back to that year as one of the more challenging classes in my career, I contest that those scores reflected a class size over thirty students. The scores were a reflection of multiple new students moving into the district, specifically into our grade, thus changing the social dynamic of an otherwise peaceful classroom. The new students came from foster care, broken homes, and other childhood traumas that led them to acting out and attention seeking behavior that regularly disrupted the day to day intentions of our lessons. One of those students, not yet 10 years old, brought a knife to school and threatened a younger child on the bus. That confrontation is actually what led to the initial conversation that the principal and I had months earlier when I spoke of the need to “Build Relationships”.

That principal has since moved on, lasting three short years in our community. I’m still here, having served fifteen years as a 6th grade teacher and currently still teaching 4th graders. And I still hold fast to my personal belief that establishing trust and a shared respect between teachers and students is far more important and productive that focusing solely on the content areas and dumping of information on children. By teaching children that they are a valued person with important input that is necessary for the success of our class, I’ve learned to create workers that want to perform to their highest capabilities in order to receive that positive feedback and lifelong connection.

Now that we have an administration and school board that supports the direct instruction of Social Emotional Skills, it is a breath of fresh air and a great relief to know that dedicated time will be allotted and even expected to address the emotional needs of all of our students. The long term effect will be healthier and happier students, less negative behavior incidents and ideally, increased academic performance. Stick around long enough to see your former students mature into productive members of the community in which you live and you will be able to reflect on the real importance of an educational journey. Did it matter that I taught you what a declarative sentence was when you were 11 years old? Was it mandatory that you mastered the identification process of metamorphic rocks before you had ever reached the legal age to drive? Was learning about Ancient Mesopotamia more or less important than learning how to regulate our own emotions? Those content areas are a vehicle for establishing expectations, teaching responsibility and giving/earning trust. 

In completing this course I have learned that the pendulum is swinging in a direction that I can fully understand and support. States and local districts are recognizing the absolute need to teach self awareness, self management, social awareness, relationship skills and responsible decision making. Using the five Social and Emotional Competencies and explicitly teaching free-standing lessons to those points, will drive us to the desired outcomes of positive social behavior, fewer conduct issues, less emotional distress and lastly, improved academic performance. Teaching these skills throughout elementary school and into high school will produce adults that reflect positively on their educational journey. I have longed for the days when an equal amount of effort and resources are dedicated to teaching social skills as have been put on the academic core areas. It proves what professionals in the ART of education have known all along, we must teach the whole child. We have to reach them where they are and meet certain, basic social needs before we can teach other content. The pendulum is swinging and I think this time, it’s going to stick.