In the time since the COVID-19 pandemic began in 2020, we have seen a sharp increase in the number of schools putting an intentional focus on social-emotional learning. For many administrators, the goal is to give students and teachers the tools to deal with the multitude of challenges that have resulted from the pandemic.
Since 2020, we have seen more and more children struggle with time management, learning stamina, effective communication and self-regulation skills, to name just a few of these challenges. Many children have had difficulty re-acclimating to the in-person school environment. Others seem to have mysteriously forgotten how to communicate with their peers while many more struggle to express their emotions appropriately.
As these challenges have piled up over recent years, coupled with the many professional and personal difficulties teachers are facing, administrators have scrambled to find ways to help both teachers and students.
Enter social-emotional learning or SEL.
The thing is, SEL is not a new idea, born of the challenges of the pandemic. Schools have been incorporating social-emotional learning strategies for decades. According to the Social Emotional Learning Alliance for the United States (SEL4US), social-emotional learning is a practice that helps kids and adults learn and apply the skills necessary to develop healthy identities, manage emotions, set and achieve goals, feel and show empathy, establish strong relationship skills and make responsible decisions.
If you think back to your own schooling, depending on the type of school you attended, you will likely remember something along the lines of character education or virtues training. In other words…social-emotional learning.
So, if SEL has been around for so long and includes critical skills like the ones listed above, why are we just now beginning to see so many parents seemingly against it? Well, there are many answers to that question, but oftentimes, the true answer comes down to just one thing…misunderstanding.
As a whole, we have not done a great job of helping parents to understand what SEL really is, why it is important and how it is being incorporated into the classroom experience. Thus, we have a large number of parents who simply don’t understand what we mean when we say our school focuses on social-emotional learning.
So how do we fix this? There are 4 simple things we can do to help parents and caregivers better understand social-emotional learning and how it is being used in the school.
- Use Less Jargon
Educators are good at jargon…too good, and we often use it when communicating with parents who are likely unfamiliar with our terms. Instead, use simple language. Rather than using terms like “social-emotional learning” or “whole child development,” use words like kindness, empathy and being sensitive to other cultures.
At the end of the day, most parents want to know how their child is doing at school, aside from academics and most parents want their child to grow up to be a good human. That’s the goal of SEL, but we can use other language to communicate that.
- Be Clear About What SEL Is
Many parents have pre-conceived notions about what SEL actually is, and oftentimes, those notions are incorrect. Clearly communicate to your families what SEL is in YOUR school or district. Perhaps you have a list of traits or virtues that are being taught. Maybe you have adopted a specific curriculum. Share these, along with resources, with families so they clearly understand what SEL means for their child.
- Clearly Communicate How and When SEL is Integrated into the Classroom
Once you have communicated what SEL means in your school or district, it’s just as important that you share how and when it is being integrated into learning. If you’re using a specific curriculum, communicate how many minutes or days per week children will be engaging with it. If you are focusing on key traits, will these be introduced each week during a school-wide community meeting, taught once a month by the school counselor or integrated into a variety of classroom activities each week? Clearly communicating these parameters will often help ease parents’ ill feelings.
- Engage Parents
After communicating what SEL is and how and when it will be used, it’s critical to continue to engage parents in your school’s programming. Sending resources home to better educate them is a great start, but be sure to continue sharing with them as the school year progresses. Share some of the strategies or language being used at school and encourage them to use these at home as well. Help them understand how the programming is beneficial to their child AND their family, how strategies can be used at home to make life just a little bit easier. Let’s face it…we are all facing challenges in this post-pandemic world and can use all the help we can get…even parents.
I’d love to hear what you are doing (or have done!) to get buy-in from your parents for SEL programming. Comment on this post or shoot me an email at akedconsult@gmail.com.
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