November 10, 2022

Why Social and Emotional Learning is so Important: Read on to Know

C Child development has been the primal concern for ages. Every parent to their wards has passed on knowledge from ages. The most knowledgeable and experienced elders stood as teachers to the budding generations in the tribe. Civilizations moved on to become great civilizations, cities become mega cities, countries became superpower, but what stands at the core of every human development is the passing on knowledge, skills sets and experiences.

“Educating the mind without educating the heart is no education at all.”

A child unable to express feelings, trembling in stress, with sweaty palms, unable to ask questions, gets mostly bullied, mostly in deep silence fear, fear of attempting, fear of failures, facing difficulties in taking decisions, is of course a common scene. Many times, these situations are unnoticed.

…the emotional centres of the brain are intricately interwoven with the neocortical areas involved in cognitive learning... when a child trying to learn is caught up in a distressing emotion, the centres of learning are temporarily hampered…

What skills are the best predictors of academic and life success? Why is it that some children grow up to be fulfilled adults in challenging careers and satisfying relationships, while other children, from apparently similar backgrounds and academic performances, struggle in relationships, dead-end careers and depressions? A growing number of educators recognize that students who receive an exclusively academic education may be ill-equipped for future challenges. It’s not just enough to feed the mind. Understanding the relation between emotions, intelligence, success and happiness is very important, which comes through Emotional intelligence.

EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE: Emotional intelligence is the ability to identify and regulate one’s emotions and understand the emotions of others. Emotional intelligence (EQ) is equally important as intelligence quotient (IQ). EQ is the strongest predictor of performance. 90% of top performers are high in Emotional intelligence. A student with high EQ can communicate better, be more successful in their endeavours. the process which helps in acquiring Emotional intelligence is called social and emotional learning.

SOCIAL AND EMOTIONAL LEARNING: It is that concept of education, through which students acquire the skills necessary to navigate through different phases of life. Self-doubt, anger management issue, interpersonal behaviour, inability to withstand failure, confusion in taking decision, unable to take proper decision, inability to ask question, doubts at teachers or bosses, lack of focus. The social and emotional learning frame work works on the students and solve the above problems. It helps students to identify their feelings, understand and communicate with others, solve problems, build positive relationships, achieve necessary level of self-awareness and make good empathetic decisions. This is done through various activities. The activities are so designed to target specific problems in the students that need development. There are five crucial competencies basic to social and emotional learning:

i) Self and other Awareness: understanding and identifying feelings, knowing when ones feeling shift, understanding the difference between thinking, feeling and acting, understanding that one’s actions have consequences in terms of others feelings.
ii) Mood Management: handling and managing difficult feelings, controlling impulses, and handling anger constructively.
iii) Self-Motivation: being able to set goals and persevere towards them with optimism and hope even in the face of setbacks.
iv) Empathy: being able to put yourself in someone else shoes both cognitively and affectively, being able to take someone’s perspective, being able to show that you care.
v) Management of Relationships: making friends, handling friendships, resolving conflicts, cooperating, collaborative learning, and other social skills.

SOCIAL AND EMOTIONAL LEARNING AND ACADEMICS: Why should helping students in the social and emotional realms of their lives enhance their academic learning? If we think back to our school days and remember a teacher we enjoyed learning, from the optimal learning environment reflects an internal brain state well attuned for learning. Most of us have assumed that the kind of academic learning that goes on in school has little or nothing to do with one’s emotions or social environment.

Now neuroscience is telling us exactly the opposite. The emotional centres of the brain are intricately interwoven with the neocortical areas involved in cognitive learning. When a child trying to learn is caught up in a distressing emotion, the centres of learning are temporarily hampered. The child’s attention becomes preoccupied with whatever may be the source of the trouble. Because attention is itself a limited capacity, the child has that much less ability to hear, understand, or remember what a teacher or book is saying in short, there is a direct link between emotions and learning.

THE METHODS TO INTEGRATE SOCIAL AND EMOTIONAL LEARNING AT HOME: Parents have a dual role to play in raising an emotionally intelligent child. At home, they should strive to create an environment of trust, respect, and support. Remember that modelling “emotionally intelligent” behaviour at home is the first step in nurturing children.

i) Be a Good Listener: Listening is a core competency skill. Unfortunately, it’s not always practiced by parents.
ii) Model the Behaviour you Seek: whether its apologizing when you’re in the wrong or treating others with respect and kindness, children learn a great deal about relationships from observing the behaviour of their parents.
iii) Nurturing Self-Esteem: A child with a good sense of self is happier, more well-adjusted and does better in school. Strategies for fostering self-esteem includes giving your child responsibilities allowing them to make age-appropriate choices, and showing your appreciation for a job well done.
iv) Become Emotional Coaches: Parents should think themselves as emotion coaches. they can encourage their children to use feeling words, such as “I feel sad” or “that made me really angry” to express emotions. When children learn to express feelings, they become happier and healthier. Such children are less likely to have problems with depression, violence, or other mental health issues, as they grow older.
v) Avoid Physical Punishment: Although described as a form of discipline, physical punishment frequently occurs as a result of anger, used by parents in response to feelings such as frustration, powerlessness, and disrespect when children fail to adhere to their expectations. Like other forms of anger, it may work in the short term through intimidation and the arousal of fear. As such, it can be rewarding for the adult who experiences immediate control over a child when embracing such punishments. Children look to their parents for love, support, guidance and example. As such, physical discipline is a betrayal of a child’s trust and of a parent’s role to protect a child from harm and it fails to support the child’s development of emotional intelligence.

THE METHODS TO INTEGRATE SOCIAL AND EMOTIONAL LEARNING AT SCHOOL: Effectively weaving social emotional and academic components into the fabric of a school helps students remain motivated to develop skills to navigate and succeed within their learning communities and to serve as responsible contributing members of society. The earlier the social emotional learning skills are developed, the better. According to a study commissioned by the OECD, teaching kindergarteners basic social and emotional skills can have long term academic benefits on students.

Overall, students with strong social and emotional skills are:
- more engaged in learning
- less-likely to drop out of school
- less-likely to have behaviour issues
- more confident and have higher self esteem

Many activities can be adapted to help teach core social and emotional skills. Some of them are given below:

i) Art Activities: Art is a great way for students of all ages to relieve stress and express their emotions in a positive healthy way. Start by picking a piece of music or a poem or story for students to react to use prompts like. How did it make you feel? Is this music happy or sad? What does this music remind you of?
ii) Practical Task: A classroom is a busy place and there’s a lot of happening. Keep it organized with a chart that encourages students to take responsibility and complete simple, age- appropriate classroom tasks like watering plants, erasing the chalk board, delivering attendance to the office, keeping classroom library organized. Turning the lights off and on in the classroom. This will improve the sense of responsibility in students. Let students work together to plan a classroom party. Turn a celebration into a chance to teach responsibility, budgeting, time-management, team-work and more.
iii) Mindfulness Activities: Mindfulness breaks can help students of all ages learn how to identify and regulate their emotions when they’re sad, scared or stressed. Roleplay some stressful situations and teach students to stop. Stop-take a breath to calm down-observe the situation-proceed with a solution. Ask students to identify where they are holding stress in their bodies. This can be tense shoulders, a frown, or even a bouncing leg, guide them through releasing stress for a more balanced body.
iv) Goal Setting Activities: A big part of social emotional learning is cultivating a growth mind set and what better way to do that then setting goals. Make goal setting a regular part of classroom routine.
v) Listen to Students: Sometimes stop the lesson and listen to students, respect what they have to say and validate their feelings. Take a lot of brain breaks throughout the day. Use ice breakers, icebreakers are a fun and easy way for all ages to share a little bit about themselves in a low-pressure environment.
vi) Reading: Let students read the books, boost reading and comprehension. Use books that help talk about feelings. This helps open the door to questions and conversations this will allow some insight into how students are feeling and how more lessons and activities can be planned to help growth and development of the students. Let the students write a story together, this will enhance the feeling of being together.
vii) Calm Down Corners: Create a calm down corner to help students deal with hard emotions. A calm down corner looks different in every class room. But, try adding books, flexible sitting and calm down jars. Send students to calm down corner when they need. Some quiet time alone and encourage students to pay attention to their emotions, and use the resources on their own.
viii) Encourage Positive Self Talk: Gently correct students when you hear negative self-talk throughout the day, and use it as an opportunity to suggest kind thoughts. I can do better; I am going to work hard and get this right.
ix) Random Acts of Kindness: Promote random acts of kindness in classroom to build a positive school culture and help students develop empathy. Some of the ideas are, hold the door open for the person behind you, talk to a classmate that looks lonely.
x) Debating: Debate is a great way to teach middle school students how to formulate arguments, actively listen and respectfully disagree with their peers. Pick a debate topic, around a novel or current event or select a quote of the day. Now when they challenge and discuss it, encourages empathy and critical thinking.

CONCLUSION: It is understood that many of the problems in the schools are the result of social and emotional malfunction and debilitation from which too many children have suffered and continue to bear the consequences. Children in class who are beset by an array of confused or hurtful feelings cannot and will not learn effectively. In the process of civilizing and humanizing our children, the missing piece is, without doubt, social and emotional learning. The clear emotions determine whether academic content will be processed deeply and remembered. A scholarly message through this article is that if we can learn to identify, express and harness our feelings, even the most challenging ones, we can use those emotions to help us create positive, satisfying lives.

Posted in Blogs and tagged Blogs, Social and Emotional Learning, Self-Motivation, Empathy, Mindfulness, Emotional Coach
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