What is Social Emotional Learning?
CASEL (Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning) has identified five interrelated sets of cognitive, affective and behavioral competencies. The definitions of the five competency clusters for students are:
- Self-awareness: The ability to accurately recognize one’s emotions and thoughts and their influence on behavior. This includes accurately assessing one’s strengths and limitations and possessing a well-grounded sense of confidence and optimism.
- Self-management: The ability to regulate one’s emotions, thoughts, and behaviors effectively in different situations. This includes managing stress, controlling impulses, motivating oneself, and setting and working toward achieving personal and academic goals.
- Social awareness: The ability to take the perspective of and empathize with others from diverse backgrounds and cultures, to understand social and ethical norms for behavior, and to recognize family, school, and community resources and supports.
- Relationship skills: The ability to establish and maintain healthy and rewarding relationships with diverse individuals and groups. This includes communicating clearly, listening actively, cooperating, resisting inappropriate social pressure, negotiating conflict constructively, and seeking and offering help when needed.
- Responsible decision making: The ability to make constructive and respectful choices about personal behavior and social interactions based on consideration of ethical standards, safety concerns, social norms, the realistic evaluation of consequences of various actions, and the well-being of self and others.
CASEL.org
What does that look like at KCMS?
At Ken Caryl Middle School, we believe that social emotional learning helps youth acquire and apply the knowledge, attitudes, and skills necessary to understand and manage emotions, set and achieve positive goals, feel and show empathy for others, establish and maintain positive relationships, and make responsible decisions. Social and emotional skill building can have a positive impact on school climate, help students become good learners, and prevent or reduce many risky behaviors, including drug use, violence, bullying and dropping out.
Each week students are taught a social emotional learning lesson in their advisement class that focuses on one of the five CASEL competencies. We cover topics such as goal setting, bullying, kindness, and gratitude. We also include social emotional learning in periodic academic lessons to help students relate to the material and apply it to their daily lives. Some students may also participate in a small group focused on a specific social emotional topic that they need support in. These are just a few of the ways we use social emotional learning in our school.