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Education Dive
High school SEL requires approach geared to teens' changes
Lauren Barack
Nov. 4, 2020
Dive Brief:
While social-emotional learning lessons are commonly found in
elementary school, they are less likely to be in high school
curriculum, writes Edutopia, citing a 2019 survey, “Support for Social
and Emotional Learning is Widespread,” from the RAND Corp. Yet teens
still have a need for these tools, as they make the shift into
adulthood.
There are ways for educators to work SEL lessons into existing classes
for teens. One way is to designate the first few minutes at the start
of class to ask high school students to mention what they’re grateful
for. Another is to have teenagers play simple games, such as passing a
ball to one another, designed to connect them together — and perhaps
even laugh.
Educators may also want to scale back homework, which can relieve
stress for not just students but teachers as well. And schools can
consider assigning an adult to each teen, someone who regularly checks
in with them — separate from their academic needs — to make sure they
feel someone is connecting to them on a personal level.
Dive Insight:
Pressures and life changes are different for teens than for children at
the elementary and middle school level — from physical hormone
adjustments, to social pressure from peer groups, as well as facing the
transition into adulthood that could mean leaving home for college,
living on their own, or finding work.
There are often classes devoted to some of these needs, from job
training courses to those that focus on health and wellness. But SEL
skills can just as equally be woven into existing courses, whether
that’s art or English, politics or literature, where human emotions and
communication are explored and studied, and can be used to help
students examine these in themselves as well.
Empathy and social awareness, core SEL skills, can be interwoven into
English language arts classes, for example, by having high school
students examine texts they’re reading for different perspectives, as
CASEL suggests in its high school guidelines. Then there’s active
listening skills, which can even be taught online, a key SEL lesson
that can help teens learn how to listen to each other. This is not only
useful in defusing peer issues, but also in how they support each other
as they collaborate on school work.
Politics courses, where subject matter and discussions can be
polarizing, can also be harnessed to teach self-management skills. The
nonprofit Common Sense hosts a free online lesson, designed
specifically for high schoolers, that teaches strategies for managing
civil discourse, and how to apply them when and if tempers start to
flare.
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